Today’s Topic: The impact of social media and devices on children

Navigating the evolving digital landscape is hard enough as a busy adult. Doing so alongside your children is a journey marked by both exciting opportunities and pressing challenges. In recent years, the conversation about the impact of social media, screen time, and technology on young minds has reached new heights. In 2023, the American Psychological Association issued a landmark health advisory on the impact of social media on young people. Following the APA’s advisory, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released his own, titled Social Media and Youth Mental Health, in which he posited there’s growing evidence that social media is causing harm to young people’s mental health. Then, two months ago, Dr. Murthy called for a surgeon general’s warning label to be placed on social media platforms, which would require an act of Congress to implement.

So you could conclude simply that social media is bad for kids. But it’s more complicated than that. While research indicates that social media and tech can have profound negative effects on youth mental health, some uses of social media can also foster healthy connections for marginalized young people. There are no easy answers for parents — but experts have some ideas of how to navigate these challenges.

The harm of social media and tech 

Social media experiences — as opposed to screen time — can have more profound impacts on kids’ mental health, according to Sophia Choukas-Bradley, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychology, licensed clinical psychologist, and director of the Teen and Young Adult Lab at the University of Pittsburgh. 

Dr. Choukas-Bradley told Take Care she finds herself “struck by the growing body of research on these specific social media experiences.”

She adds: “Both survey-based longitudinal studies and experimental lab studies show that social comparisons on social media predict worse wellbeing. This is especially true for upward social comparisons related to body image – such as when adolescents compare themselves to carefully curated and edited images of social media influencers. For adolescent girls in particular, physical appearance is central to self-esteem, and girls are bombarded with messages about the importance of physical attractiveness.”

Research from Choukas-Bradley’s Teen and Young Adult Lab shows that young people “who are more concerned with their physical appearance online are more likely to report worse body image and depressive symptoms over time.”

When — and how — parents should act 

Jessica Elefante, the author of “Raising Hell, Living Well: Freedom from Influence in a World Where Everyone Wants Something from You,” has spent the recent years of her career working on what she calls “inoculation to the culture of influence we are all living under at the crossroads of the Internet and capitalism.” A decade ago, what she found while researching screen time and media addiction gave her cause for concern. She later learned her own early experience with brain fog, memory loss, disassociation and malaise now had a name: digital dementia. 

Though a decade ago Elefante advocated for mindful balance and boundaries with tech when she had a young son at home, she no longer believes that balance is possible. She says we’ve jumped the shark; there’s no keeping the algorithms away. 

“Today my son is about to be 13 and I can say that he's doing great and we know better now, but I have another son who is about to be 3,” Elefante says. “You would think it should be easier today to protect him since we know better. In the last decade, science has caught up, as has the collective consciousness of what's happening to us. But at the same time, Big Tech was embedding itself into the very foundations of childhood. I cannot opt out the younger one like I did the older. I scan QR codes at pickup from daycare. Baby monitors track breathing and heart beats. My phone scans my camera roll and finds his face.”

Today, her research centers on how people are influenced and impacted at the intersection of tech, media, and money. A critic of today's tech-centric culture, Elefante is the Brooklyn chapter co-chair of MAMA — Mothers Against Media Addiction, a grassroots advocacy group made up of parents who want to reclaim their children’s childhoods from screen addiction and tech overuse. 

She says her research from a decade ago feels quaint compared to new statistics about kids and social media: An increase in “financial sextortion” of minors; suicide as the second leading cause of death for children ages 10 to 14; and social psychologists warning about the rise of the mental health crisis in line with the rise of screen usage.

MAMA advocates for centering real-life experiences and eschewing the overuse of Big Tech at school, at home, and in communities. The group was part of a coalition advocating for legislation in New York State which passed in June 2024 — the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act and the New York Child Data Protection Act. MAMA is now working state by state to exact this first-of-its-kind legislation across the U.S. 

Elefante says waiting for new research to confirm parental fears of the impact of tech on kids isn’t a possibility. “We can't wait for airtight proof which takes decades to make changes. If we see something is making our kids sick, we act,” she says. In addition, she says that studying and regulating big tech is like “trying to pin down a shadow. What you're studying one minute is outdated, upgraded before the next. I hate that even though people like myself have been sounding the alarms since 2012, we had to ‘wait for proof’ this past decade. We essentially ran an experiment on an entire generation even though early adopters and over users were saying this was unsafe.”

When are screens and social media okay?

Choukas-Bradley’s research suggests a major use of social media that benefits older children: it helps them connect with a world beyond their own schools and communities, which can be an especially good thing for young people with marginalized identities. 

“Recent research suggests that LGBTQ+ adolescents report more positive experiences with social media than their non-LGBTQ+ peers, such as using social media to connect with communities of peers. For rural LGBTQ+ youth in particular, social media may be the only way to find and connect with other LGBTQ+ peers, reducing isolation and risk for mental health issues,” Choukas-Bradley says. But that exposure to social media is a “double-edged sword” for these kids, she adds: research suggests that youth of color and LGBTQ+ kids are more vulnerable to negative social media interactions, like hate speech or cyberbullying.

Choukas-Bradley has one big suggestion for parents: Keep phones out of bedrooms. Nocturnal social media use can mess with our sleep, which is especially important for growing young people. She also recommends “fighting technology with technology” by using apps such as one sec, which encourage “mindful and intentional, rather than mindless and habit-driven, uses of social media.” These apps make you wait before you can open an email or check a new message on Instagram, denying yourself the instant gratification and subsequent fleeting dopamine rush that comes with checking every new notification that lights up your phone screen.

Communal experiences — like watching a movie together and then discussing it afterward as a group — are a strong antidote to having members of your family scrolling silently on their individual screens in the living room, Elefante says. And as a baseline, using tech-enabled devices to create — to look up a how-to video for building a birdhouse or researching a school paper — rather than to mindlessly consume content someone else created is a positive thing. 

Choukas-Bradley agrees — and suggests supplementing teens’ healthy social media use with activities IRL, outside, and offline. “It’s important to build exciting, stimulating, and meaningful lives outside of the world of social media. For example, research shows that time spent in nature is beneficial for both mental and physical health,” she says. 

Elefante urges parents to think about the tradeoffs of giving kids free rein on devices or social media. “If I let my kid turn to a device every time he is alone or feeling sad or bored then he will never learn how to sit in his sadness and boredom or experience the benefits of what comes with both of those. If I let him pacify himself at every uncomfortable moment or feeling then the world will become a really intolerable place,” she says. 

Her thesis: Every time a child turns to a screen, they’re turning away from an in-real-life moment — whether that’s with parents, family, classmates, or nature. “I fear for any child watching endless unboxing videos of toys on YouTube Kids,” she says.

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution

Choukas-Bradley says “overly simplistic debates” around this topic miss the point because social media isn’t going anywhere. If anything, it will only grow more sophisticated and alluring. “It’s here to stay, and it’s likely going to continue to evolve to be more complex, engaging, and immersive,” she says. Instead, she suggests we shift the conversation. “The questions we should all be asking are: How can we hold technology companies accountable for creating better and safer products for teens? And how can we help adolescents to use social media in healthier and more values-aligned ways?”

Although there’s no panacea or one-size-fits-all approach to tech and parenting, the choices you make about supplying tech and social media for your kids will likely differ depending on their ages, maturity, and developmental stages. For example, Choukas-Bradley suggests a kid in elementary school doesn’t need an iPhone or TikTok — get them a flip phone and tell them it’s only for emergencies, she says.

But as kids get older and are exposed to social media elsewhere, keeping them 100% offline isn’t so realistic. “Because adolescence is a developmental period when peer relationships are extremely important for wellbeing, and because the majority of peer relationships now occur online, adolescents will find a way to use social media to reach their peers,” she says. “We also have decades of research to suggest that it’s not effective to promote total abstinence from behaviors that teens want to engage in, such as alcohol use and sex. So again, the question for parents of adolescents shouldn’t be ‘how can I keep my kid from using social media altogether?’ but rather ‘how can I help my kid to navigate social media in healthier and more values-aligned ways?’”

Social media can be a slippery slope to negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Choukas-Bradley suggests checking in with yourself to ensure your social media use is aligned with your personal beliefs and values. “Because social media is designed to hook and sustain our attention at the expense of all else, it can be difficult to use these technologies in ways that align with our values,” she explains. “One of my core values is interpersonal connection. But when I use social media, I sometimes find myself drawn into superficial status metrics, leading me further away from my values. I've had to carefully select the apps I use, and when and how I use them, to make sure they’re allowing me to support my relationships without undermining them.”

To push back against the ubiquitous nature of tech that surrounds kids today, Elefante says we shouldn’t be afraid of a little conflict — or “making trouble,” as she calls it.  “Good trouble, but trouble nonetheless. To become free from influence means pushing back against it,” she says. “I hope everyone knows they can make change every single day. It's fun. Just say ‘I don't have one’ the next time someone asks you to tap your phone.”