This is Speaking of Teens, I’m Ann Coleman.

An article from The New York Herald, September 19, 1874 reads, “It was soon learned that the large Granite Mill, No 1, was in flames and the wild and painful rumors followed that nearly all of the four hundred operatives employed there were being literally roasted alive. Everywhere there was the wildest terror and excitement, and it seemed as if the whole community was paralyzed with grief and insanity.” 20 child workers died in that fire. Because according to the 1870 US census, 1 out of every 8 kids under 16 worked – many in factories.

The new technology of the industrial revolution created the need for child labor (they needed little people to crawl around inside the machinery when something broke or got stuck. The factory owners said they’d go bankrupt without child labor. By 1900, 1 out of 5 kids was working. But slowly, over the next 100 years, laws began to change. The Fair Labor Standards Act which prohibits child labor, wasn’t passed until 1938.

This week on Speaking of Teens, deciphering the impact of social media on teens and exactly what can be done about it.

What does child labor have to do with kids and social media?

Well, I’ll tell ya’. Just like the factories who needed kids to keep things running – so do the social media companies. They need kids and teens to keep the gears turning. Actually, they’re the main cog in the big social media machine.

Young people create the content that fuels the process of the algorithm and pushes the content out to other young people to consume. Take away the kids and you have no laborers to replace them and profits plummet.

Facebook’s own internal research (leaked in 2021) asked the rhetorical question, “Why do we care about tweens?" "They are a valuable but untapped audience." "Our ultimate goal is messaging primacy with U.S. tweens, which may also lead to winning with teens."

It’s all about expanding consumer base – competition for market share. As a matter of fact Meta is extremely concerned about the aging out of its users, who are primarily over 40. My own 89-year-old mother has been faithful Facebook user for years. But Facebook has been losing young users to Instagram, Snap and TikTok for years now. They bought Instagram for that very reason.

One of it’s internal blog posts in the leaked documents was titled, 'The internet wasn't built with young people in mind, but we're about to change that,' The post announced that it was hiring employees to re-envision its full range of products for kids ages 6-9 and tweens ages 10-12.

Other leaked documents described tweens as a valuable untapped audience and discussed how the company could rope in younger kids by “exploring playdates as a growth lever.” I don’t even know what that means. But basically, their hope is to hook kids early and keep them on their platforms for life.

These internal documents also acknowledged that the company knew Instagram hurt girls’ body image , stating, “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls” and “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression. This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”

A couple of years have gone by since those documents were leaked, and things have gotten no better for our teens. We can’t afford to wait 100 years to do something to protect our kids. They need help now. Gen Z may be in worse shape than those child laborers working in factories all those years ago.

But there are questions here. Can we put all the blame on social media for the youth mental health crisis? Are all kids suffering because of social media? Has science clearly proven causation or is there merely a correlation between kids mental health and the appearance of social media and smart phones? And, as I’ve mentioned on this podcast before, parents have always had some “newfangled thing” to blame for the ruination of an entire generation; cars, Elvis, music lyrics, music videos, violent TV, violent video games. Is social media just the latest “newfangled thing” to catch the blame for ruining youth?

This month has been very active for high-profile opinions about social media and adolescence. On May 10^th the American Psychological Association issues a health advisory on social media use in adolescence. And 13 days later, the US Surgeon General issued an advisory about the effects of social media on youth mental health.

The APA and the Surgeon General examined the same scientific data. But because nothing’s ever that simple, the advisories each have a slightly different tone.

Let me just quote the APA a little here ” Using social media is not inherently beneficial or harmful to young people. Adolescents’ lives online both reflect and impact their offline lives. In most cases, the effects of social media are dependent on adolescents’ own personal and psychological characteristics and social circumstances—intersecting with the specific content, features, or functions that are afforded within many social media platforms. In other words, the effects of social media likely depend on what teens can do and see online, teens’ preexisting strengths or vulnerabilities, and the contexts in which they grow up.”

Of course – as parents we know this. Every kid is different. Not every kid is going to be impacted in the same way by social media, they don’t all use the same apps in the same way, the same amount of time, and they’re not going to internalize what they see in the same way. It’s the same way with books they read, advertising they encounter, video games they play and interaction with peers in real life.

The APA makes this point and even states that, “Scientific findings offer one piece of information that can be used along with knowledge of specific youths’ strengths, weaknesses, and context to make decisions that are tailored for each teen, family, and community.”

The APA also points out that it’s really impossible to see at what age a kid is “ready” to handle social media. It depends on the kid, their level of maturity – but they say it’s likely the younger they are the riskier it is. Big help, huh/

They also point out that the internet as a whole can be racist and that it’s even been encoded into the algorithms of social media, which can fuel that racism. But they further point out that their recommendations, while based on currently available scientific data – it’s data that can’t, by the nature of the studies, be said to be causally definitive. Meaning, you can take a group of kids and look at the hours they spend on social and look at their mental health and it may be that the kids who spend more than 3 hours on social have worse mental health than those who spend less than 3 hours. But it’s impossible to say whether it is in fact that social media use that caused their mental health to be worse than the kids who were on it less.

For example, perhaps the kids who spend more time on social are kids who have mental health issues to begin with. Maybe they have in-person social anxiety, so they spend more time in their room on their phone. They can control for some things in the studies but not for all things. But one of the reasons it’s hard to make causal connections is because the tech companies, who may have this internal data that would help the researchers, won’t hand it over.

The other problem with the data, as the APA points out, is there are aren’t many longitudinal studies on social media use – looking at kids’ use and mental health outcomes over a period of years and on into adulthood. Longitudinal studies are how researchers can tell what the long-term effects are – and there’s just not much out there on social media use yet. And they point out that there are not enough studies on marginalized youth – those who are marginalized racially, ethnically, sexually…

Now, let’s look at the Surgeon General’s Advisory as well and what federal and state lawmakers are talking about and doing.

The Surgeon General’s Advisory points out that almost every single kid age 13 to 17 uses social media of some kind – 95% - with more than a third of them saying they use it “almost constantly” – constantly!

And even though the minimum age to use most social media platforms in the US is 13, almost 40% of kids between the ages of 8 and 12 are on social. THAT surprised me a little. And actually, that statistic came from Common Sense Media’s 2021 Census of Media Use by Tweens and Teens, and when I dug into the report it doesn’t break it down any further than just 8-12 – I’m going to hope that’s mostly 12-year-olds.

So, while the APA says, “Using social media is not inherently beneficial or harmful to young people.” The Surgeon General’s Advisory says, “More research is needed to fully understand the impact of social media; however, the current body of evidence indicates that while social media may have benefits for some children and adolescents, there are ample indicators that social media can also have a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents. At this time, we do not yet have enough evidence to determine if social media is sufficiently safe for children and adolescents. We must acknowledge the growing body of research about potential harms, increase our collective understanding of the risks associated with social media use, and urgently take action to create safe and healthy digital environments that minimize harm and safeguard children’s and adolescents’ mental health and well-being during critical stages of development.” (emphasis added)

The issues that clearly stand out in the research highlighted in the Advisory are that a lot of factors that play into whether or not social media is going to negatively impact an adolescent’s mental health – things like, the amount of time they spend on it, the type of content they consume, the activities and interactions on the platform, the degree to which it keeps them from things like exercise and sleep, their individual strengths and vulnerabilities (like pre-existing mental health issues) and cultural, historical and socio-economic factors.

And it states, “There is broad agreement among the scientific community that social media has the potential to both benefit and harm children and adolescents.”

So, great – where does that leave parents? Well, let me give you some highlights on the research – a lot of this may be new to you.

As you likely know – especially if you’ve been listening to this podcast since the beginning – the adolescent brain is very malleable - those synapses in the prefrontal cortex are strengthening and pruning and changing based on a kid’s experiences – the get better and better at what they do more often – the brain shapes itself depending on what your kid does, thinks, feels. And the emotional center of the brain – the amygdala and the reward system – all these areas of the brain interact with each other and a couple of other parts that form sort of a social system, which is why peers are so important and is why they do things with or in front of peers they wouldn’t do by themselves, it’s why likes and comments on social are so critical, it why mental health issues and substance issues are most likely to occur during adolescence.

So, it’s not surprising that research has shown that there are actual neurobiological changes that occur in the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex that could increase sensitivity to social rewards and punishments. In other words, the more they use social, the more sensitive they become to the likes and not getting likes and negative comments and such.

On the flip side, research has also shown that social media can provide an outlet for kids of marginalized groups to find social support. For example, it’s been shown that social media “may support the mental health and well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, transgender, queer, intersex and other youth by enabling peer connection, identity development and management, and social support.”

Additionally, in another study, 7 out of 10 adolescent girls of color reported positive or identity-affirming content related to race across social media platforms. And a majority of adolescents report social media helps them feel more accepted and connected to what’s going on in their friend’s lives.

But, it all depends on what the scientists are studying and what questions they’re asking – this is why we say social is both good and bad…

For example, in another study, at least 1/3^rd of adolescent girls of color said they were  exposed to racist content at least monthly on social media.

And I think this is really notable: a longitudinal study has shown that kids aged 12-15 who spent more than 3 hours a day on social were twice as likely to experience poor mental health such as anxiety and depression – TWICE as likely. And other studies show that (at least 8^th and 10^th graders that were surveyed) spend an average of 3.5 hours per day on social but a quarter of them spend 5 hours or more and at least 1 in 7, spend more than 7 hours a day on social media.

So, is that the mental health crisis in a nutshell? Maybe so. There’s certainly plenty of research and anecdotal evidence to back it up.

For instance, it’s been clearly documented that when social media began to catch on in the mid-2000s, adolescent mental health began declining; between 2008 and 2018 the number of 18- to 23-year-olds who reported experiencing a major depressive episode in the past year, increased by 83%. Over that same period of time, suicides became more prevalent and are now the second leading cause of death for adolescents 15 to 24. Of course, again, there’s no causal connection – only a correlation that most researchers can’t really pin on any other factor.

But researchers did have a unique opportunity to observe a sort of natural experiment that happened in the mid-2000s – the staggered introduction of Facebook to college campuses across the US. They took the survey data of college student’s mental health that was collected on campuses in those years as Facebook was rolled out and used some fancy scientific techniques to find that the introduction of Facebook on a college campus had a negative impact on student mental health, which also impacted academic performance. They were also able to show a lot of additional evidence that this negative impact was due to the students’ ability to engage in “unfavorable social comparisons”.

Research has also shown with college age kids (they probably couldn’t talk any teenagers into doing it) – but college kids who limited their social media use to 30 minutes a day for 3 weeks saw a significant improvement in the severity of their depression (this was especially true if they had higher levels of depression to begin with). Another study showed that deactivation of Facebook for a month, improved depression, anxiety, life-satisfaction, and happiness among young adults at the rate of 25 to 40 percent of what they would have gotten from actual psychological interventions including self-help therapy, group training, and individual therapy.

And there’s a wealth of research showing social media’s correlation to poor outcomes for adolescent girls (more so than boys) – especially girls who already have mental health issues like anxiety or depression. I cannot even imagine the shape I would have been in if social media had been around when I was in the 8^th grade – I was a complete mess. Social media is like fuel to the flame of an already unsteady young girl and adds to body image issues, eating disorders, poor sleep, low self-esteem, higher depression.

The correlational data about the negatives of social media on kids, teens, tweens – it could fill a football field. And, the fact is, we can’t just be worried about the negative impact of using social media. We also have to worry about the online predators, cyberbullies, sextortionists and drug dealers selling them fentanyl-laced pills. And this may blow your mind - Nearly 6-in-10 adolescent girls say they’ve been contacted by a stranger on certain social media platforms in ways that make them feel uncomfortable.

If you’ve never watched Undercover Underage on the ID channel – that show will truly open your eyes to how many men, there are out there trying desperately to talk to your daughter. It’s terrifying.

But listen – I don’t mean to scare you to death with all of this. I know how easy it is to just throw up your hands and say – “what should I do?” “what can I do?” Actually, my son was born in late 2000 so when they were all given ipads in the 5th grade (my husband just reminded me – I was thinking it was later) so in 2012 – they got it when they were 11 years old and I can vividly remember walking across the street to my best friend’s house and my son and hers (my Godson) and a couple of other kids from school were all there and they were all on Instagram that very day - before we even knew what it was and what was going on – they were standing in her living room making pictures of themselves with their air soft guns slung over their shoulders and posting them on the accounts they had literally set up in the car on the way home from school!

We were totally thrown into the deep end and didn’t know how to swim! No prep – no warning – school didn’t prepare us. We were clueless.

He didn’t get a phone until I think 13 but none of us knew a much about how to keep them safe, what sort of limits to have – it was a freakin’ free for all. I can tell you quite honestly, I think I attempted to have some limits a few times with the phone, but I had literally no idea how to enforce them. Bark didn’t come along until he was in the 9^th grade and by then the cat was long out of the bag.

So, I know you know social is not going anywhere. Kids aren’t going to voluntarily stop using it. And it’s hard to enforce use limits. I totally get it. But we’re going to talk about that in a minute.

And why are limits so hard for kids? Well, it’s the platforms’ design. They are literally designed to hook you – to “maximize user engagement” – push notification, autoplay, infinite scroll, displaying likes and the algorithms that show more of what you watch (supposedly). It overstimulates the reward center and can eventually trigger pathways comparable to addiction – like we said, it can literally rewire your brain. You know the feeling! I can remember telling myself (back before Pinterest had infinite scroll) – just one more page, then, just one more page…until it was like 2 in the morning. And teens do not have the finished pre-frontal cortex we do…they don’t have as much self-control as we do – so imagine how it feels to them!

National surveys of teens show that at least a third of them feel addicted to social media and over half say it’d be really hard to give it up. And they’ll tell you (most of them) they know these platforms manipulate them to spend more time on there.

But here’s the good news – generally speaking, when the US Surgeon General comes out with an Advisory, it’s a big deal. These Advisories can make a difference. They’ve been known to change public perception, influence legislation, and ultimately have even saved people’s lives.

Past Advisories such as the one from 1964 on smoking and health prompted the surgeon general’s warning you now see on cigarette packages and led to the ultimate ban of “Big Tobacco” advertising on TV and radio and has had an enormous impact on smoking in America. In 2014 (50 years after the Advisory) it was estimated that 8 million people’s lives had been saved in those 50 years. Just to give you an idea – in 1964, 42% of Americans smoked, in 2014 it was 18% and today it’s down to around 11.5%.

And, actually, political leaders have dubbed the giants of social media, Meta, TikTok, YouTube – “Big Social Media”. Just like Big Tobacco the social media industry, in the hot pursuit of profits over ethics, has directly and relentlessly targeted adolescents while clearly knowing their product was harmful.

Our kids have been monetized and their mental health has been damaged to line the pockets of Big Social Media stockholders.

Teens themselves blame social media for increases in the rates of anxiety and depression – this was actually part of the leaked documents from Facebook – from their own research – it stated that teens believe the "constant comparison" driven by social media "is 'the reason' why there are higher levels of anxiety and depression in young people." The fact that our kids know they’re being manipulated, know it causes them harm but still don’t stop using it, shows you just how addictive it is – and shows you how much they do, in fact, use it to connect with friends and get their entertainment. Social media is clearly a double-edged sword for them.

And I don’t have to tell you how hard technology and social media make your job as the parent of a teen or tween. A study done by the Pew Research Center in 2020 found that 2/3^rds of parents feel this makes their job more difficult that it was for parents 20 years ago. There’s no doubt that’s true – we don’t know how to deal with this – we never had to deal with it. Again, Facebook’s own research says that teens feel they’re all alone trying to cope with the stress that social media adds to their life and that (quote) "parents can't understand and don't know how to help...social media has fundamentally changed the landscape of adolescence." No truer words.

In doing my research I read an interesting New York Times article where they went out and interviewed teens in the city about the Surgeon General’s Advisory. And of course, like you, they weren’t at all surprised by most of the findings. They said they realized there’s a risk of harm when using social. But they also say that parents have a hard time understanding the positive side. For example, they mentioned (quote) “how Instagram has opened their eyes to new career paths, or how TikTok has taught them about new cultures.”

These teens say it would be helpful if they know up front about the harms social can cause so they can learn to better navigate those issues. They feel like social is here to stay so learning how to make the best of their experiences with it is the best idea – they just want a road map for the world they currently inhabit.

Many of these kids feel the biggest challenge is the amount of time they spend on social. Even middle schoolers talked of hacked accounts, impersonators and rumors spread on social that hurt their reputations. The body image issue, of course, came up – how hard it is on your self-image when you’re constantly comparing yourself to the “ideal” on social or elsewhere online. That’s not new – even those of us that didn’t grow up with the internet can tell you that we compared ourselves constantly – magazines, TV, movies, our friends. But I have a feeling, social makes it a heck of a lot worse.

And think about yourself on social. Don’t you compare yourself, your family, your kids, your life to what you see? I KNOW what it does to me and that’s why I don’t use personal accounts on Facebook or Instagram. Even my business Instagram makes me nervous. I have been taking a major break for probably a couple of months now. Every time I open the app, I just get so overwhelmed. I feel like I need to like all my people’s posts and make comments and rally around causes and put myself out there…but, literally, my heart starts racing when I see someone has 450 likes and I have 20. It can truly make you feel like a big loser. And if I can feel that way – holy cow – I think about those middle schoolers, and it breaks my heart.

Back to the Times article, a lot of the teens say their parents don’t have any idea how often they’re on social or even what they do online at all.

Some also made another good point – that passing laws or asking tech companies to do more isn’t what will really help. They suggested that families need to get up to speed on what’s going on in their child’s online world and for the kids to tell them more about it. I know – tell us how to do that, right? Hold on.

At least one kid pointed out that teens find community online a lot of times when they can’t in the real world and teens want adults to focus on that issue – why is it that these kids are so marginalized – do something about that.

So, what about these laws some states are talking about or just passed and what’s the federal government talking about doing these days?

The governor of Utah just days ago, signed two bills into law that they say are meant to protect kids from the addictive features and targeted ads on social. They’re supposed to go into effect March 2024.

I’m sorry – this is another one of those things that elected officials do to make themselves look good to their constituents. Because this law – I just don’t see how it’s enforceable.

Part of the law prohibits social media platforms from “using a design or feature that causes a minor to have an addiction” to that platform and gives minors the right to sue to collect damages for addiction or physical or emotional harm that comes from using that platform.

The law also prohibits kids under 18 from using social media between 10:30 PM and 6:30AM, requires parental consent for minors to sign up for social media and requires the platforms to verify the age of users younger than 18.

It also forces the tech giants to allow parents and guardians to set time limits for the minors use of their account and allows parents to access all of their children’s posts. Plus the platforms can’t display ads or targeted content to minors, collect their personal information, or display minors in public search results.

If you listened to episode 49 about TikTok, you might remember that I talked about how the US government wants to pass a law to ban TikTok and how it would likely be found to be in violation of the First Amendment Right of Free Speech (for the people wanting to see TikTok – not the platform itself).

Well, Utah’s law would not only face that same challenge, but it has additional problems. It’s too vague; I mean “using a design or feature that causes a minor to have an addiction” – which design feature does that and how do you prove addiction? And there’s the issue of enforcement. How do you prohibit use between those times? And significantly, how will they verify age? This is what a lot of people are talking about with Utah’s law and with what some in Washington want to do. How do you prove your age online? Through IDs – government issued IDs. So, people worry about the eventual effect of something like this. What about people who don’t have one? Will they not be able to go online? And what if you like being anonymous online? What if you don’t want the world knowing certain things about you, which sites you visit, what if you want to remain anonymous for religious, political or sexual identity reasons?

The other problem is that a law like this could conflict with part of another federal law called the Communications Decency Act and may be preempted altogether by the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. So, there’s no question that Big Social Media will be suing to try and prevent the Utah law from ever going into effect and will do the same thing at the federal level if any of the several bills introduced to congress becomes law.

The same day that the Surgeon General issued the Advisory, the White House announced the formation of a task force that aims to address the impact of social media on teens and children. At least a lot of eyes are on this issue and at some point the law makers could possibly come up with something that actually helps.

But, as I said earlier, we don’t have the luxury of waiting around and hoping that a bunch of out of touch politicians can legislate our kids out of the distress many of them feel from using social media.

Unfortunately, it falls to us to educate, to monitor to stay informed about a constantly evolving world of technology and social media. It seems like an almost impossible task. It also feels really unfair and beyond what we should have to do.

So, what do we do? Well, the APA, and the Surgeon General have some great advice and the New York Times asked 8 experts in children’s mental health to add to or clarify those suggestions. I’m of course going to link to all 3 in the show notes, but I’ll give you an overview here. But before I do, I’m going to tell you that the most important thing you can do, to keep them safe online or in real life, is to work on your connection with them. To be able to have these conversations, for them to trust you, you need to start there. You can listen to episode 26 to learn more about that. Now, I’m going to hit the highlights:

1. The critical window for monitoring your kids social media use is ages 10 to 14. You provide hands-on scaffolding by maybe starting out with one app, review all their posts and friend requests, talk to them about what they’re seeing and how they use it. You don’t have to sit with them the entire time but take a few minutes every day to review what they’ve done. And make sure everything’s set to private.
2. Talk and listen. Make sure to keep an open and ongoing dialogue about their online life. Make sure they understand the benefits and the risks, respect privacy and protect their personal information, make sure they know they can talk to you about anything and that nothing they ever do is beyond repair.
3. Create a family media plan – agree on the rules and boundaries and how social media will be used. I’ll have a link to the American Academy of Pediatrics website where you can create such a plan.
4. One of those rules should be having tech-free zones and times like the dinner table, have a certain amount of outdoor or in-person time with friends. And, most importantly, have a firm rule about all tech leaving the bedroom by 9 pm – or at least an hour before the time they need to be asleep – and they need to be getting at least 9 or more hours of sleep a night if at all possible. And this is critical – not just to have them turn phones and computers off, but they need to leave the bedroom and stay somewhere under guard – if you have to, lock them up (drill a hole in a lock box to run the cord through to charge it!). This one thing is so important to not only give them uninterrupted sleep but to help keep them safe. Now if you haven’t already been doing something like this, you don’t have to tell me how difficult this might be to impose retroactively. I think I might have literally had to physically rip the phone out of my son’s hands had I tried this. BUT, if you have a discussion over a period of days, tell them about the research, ask them to tell you about their online experiences, ask them how they feel about their social media use, - again a little at a time – do it in the car, on walks, making dinner – build up to it. It’s the single best thing you can do to help your teen with this.
5. And I think this is a great tip – work with other parents to try and establish some shared norms and practices. In other words get together and set some rules. It’s hard as hell to try and get your kid off their phone if 6 of their friends are on it talking with each other until midnight. Form a mom’s group and band together. I wanted to do this years ago but I was too chicken at the time to approach other moms about it. Looking back, I should have at least tried.
6. Help teens understand how their brain works and how social media is so impactful on their brain during adolescence.
7. And try to get them to commit to under 3 hours of social media use a day. Remember that statistic? Double the mental health issues if they go over 3 hours and way too many kids do. Help them with app timers if they need it.

Okay so that’s a mile-high overview a few things you can do between now and next week when I’ll dig deeper and give you more insight into how to help your kid on social, what sort of boundaries you can put in place, how you can talk to them. I’ll even dig into putting together a Media Use Plan.

If you’d like to discuss any of this in the meantime, come on over and join the Speaking of Teens Facebook group today. I’ll have the link in the description right there where you’re listening. And, by the way, I’ll be live in the group this Wednesday May 31^st at noon central US and Canada - talking about our emotions and how we can be better moms by becoming more emotionally aware and regulated. So, join the group and join me Wed at noon.

Now, you can find the show notes for today’s episode – all the links I mentioned – at neurogility.com/54

Speaking of Teens is sponsored by neurogility.com, where I help moms build stronger relationships and decrease conflict with their teens.

Our producer and editor is Steve Coleman, researched, written, and hosted by me, Ann Coleman.

Until next time – go hug your teenager.