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Kim Mills: In September, documents leaked to the media by a former Facebook employee revealed that the company's internal research had found that its apps could be harmful for teens, particularly for teenage girls' mental health. The headlines about toxic social media seem to confirm parents' worst fears about the effects of all the time that kids are spending online. Recent surveys have found that 95% of U.S. teens have a smartphone, or access to one, and more than 80% have at least one social media account on Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook, or other sites.

But psychologists' research has suggested that there are nuanced answers to the questions surrounding how all this social media use is affecting teens' health and wellbeing. For instance, is there such a thing as healthy social media use for teens? And if so, what does that look like? Does social media cause depression and anxiety, or conversely, can it be a source of social and emotional support for kids? Do teens understand how social and media algorithms work, and why they see the content that they do online? Why does that matter? And what can parents, educators and others do to maximize the benefits and minimize the potential harms of social media?

Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association, that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills. Our guest today is Dr. Linda Charmaraman, a senior research scientist and director of the Youth, Media & Wellbeing Research Lab at the Wellesley Centers for Women. She studies young people's social media use and is conducting a three-year National-Institutes-of-Health-funded study to follow middle school students and their parents during this critical developmental period. She's looking at how social technologies, including smartphones, social media, YouTube, and gaming affect kids' health and wellbeing in the longer term. She's published dozens of journal articles and seven book chapters, and has been widely quoted in the media offering advice to parents, educators, policymakers, and others.

Thank you for joining us today.

Linda Charmaraman, PhD: Thank you so much for having me.

Mills: Let's start with the Facebook documents leak, since that's been such a big news story. The headline was that Facebook's own research found that its platforms, particularly Instagram, could be harmful to teens' mental health. Facebook's research found associations with anxiety, depression, body image issues, and even suicidal thoughts. Were you surprised by these findings, and do they square with what you and other researchers have found?

Charmaraman: I'm so glad you mentioned that study, because it has definitely been going around in my circles. And let me just say the first answer to your question is no, I'm not surprised, because there's been hundreds of studies about social media platforms in general that have differential impacts on young people depending on how they use it. And so I'm not surprised that there's some data coming from their internal sources that shows some of the harm that can be found. Other studies have found similar findings. In fact, one of our body-image-related papers about teenage girls and boys have found similar things about, about 20% or 30% of them have some kind of social media-related body dissatisfaction resulting in it, and that there are celebrities that they friend that can exacerbate some of those issues.

And so the point I wanted to make about that is that this research is out there, peer reviewed in academic journals, and it isn't until there's a leak in the press that gets wind of this, that it's suddenly national news, it's on people's news feeds all the time, even though this is not peer reviewed data and it's not nationally representative, it's actually based on pretty small samples. So the national attention it's getting, I think it's somehow misdirecting what should be really the point of it, is that we need to increase our attention on social media literacy programming in the schools, and parental guidance, and monitoring and empowering youth to use it in more positive ways without relying on an industry or a product to keep them safe.

Mills: So how are teens using social media these days, and what sites are they on? We all hear that Facebook is for old people now. So where do young people congregate online and how do social technologies fit into their everyday lives?

Charmaraman: Yes, yes. Well, I am specializing in middle school youth, so 11- to 15-year-olds, and the ones that are in my study of, I'm over about 1500 youth that I'm following over time, in their top 10 sites, Facebook doesn't even crack the top 10. Instagram is number two. So YouTube is number one and then Instagram and then TikTok and then Snapchat. So, they're all very close together though, about 70% of them are on Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and they definitely are interacting in ways that are being more and more common nowadays, to use it as not just connection, but for also raising awareness of social issues that they care about.

So, there's ways that youth are using it that might not be what other generations might imagine them using it for, there's a lot of narrative out there that it's a lot of online drama, which there is, there are online drama instances, of course, and there's a lot of cyber bullying, there's a lot of media headlines about all the negative things that can go wrong, the worst case scenarios. But the Pew Research Center, in a nationally representative sample, found that only about 20-something percent have really negative experiences on social media, but mostly, almost 80% of people have primarily positive and connecting experiences and socially supportive experiences. And so what I'm hoping for, knowing about this data, and knowing what kids are actually doing on these sites, is that we support the positive interactions and also help prevent some of the negative. But knowing that all of it is happening, not just the negative.

Mills: But for that 20%, it's pretty important. They could be having some issues, for example, with teenage girls around body image. Are you seeing big gender differences in the way that young people use social media and the effects that it can have?

Charmaraman: Yes, definitely some gender differences. You can probably see it in your own households out there, where the boys are more gravitating towards games and sites like Discord and Twitch and YouTube and watching videos of other gamers, and girls are a lot more about the image-based platforms, like Instagram and Snapchat and-where you can use filters and create this other vision of themselves. Girls are more likely to use Pinterest than boys. So there's definitely gender differences that are seen in offline instances as well, where boys just gravitate towards certain activities more than girls.

Mills: And in terms of the negative effects, are there more negative effects for girls or boys, or is it evenly distributed?

Charmaraman: Yes, it really depends on what constructs you're interested in looking at. For instance, for body image, girls report-are socially groomed to be able to report that they experience that more. I'd say it is a thing happening in boys, but they're not socially groomed to admit it as much, I would venture to guess. But it does happen in boys. And for girls, especially since there's such a huge societal preoccupation about girls' bodies and needing to comment about girls' bodies, and to adhere to perfect beauty ideals, that girls have much more than boys in a lot of cases. And so there's a lot more just being self-conscious about those things, the images you put up and how it relates to your social status online and offline.

So girls have been shown to maybe have a little bit more of a tendency to be socially comparing themselves to other people, and perhaps to other girls. So not just their bodies, but just in general. And when you have that vulnerability, it often affects your self-esteem and how you feel about yourself. And so it's all connected in a way. So it could be that they're already bringing that vulnerability to how they use platform, and that's why they go down a road that might be not as happy road than the boys, that might not be caring about the social comparisons and body comparisons.

Mills: So a moment ago you mentioned cyber bullying, and I know that's gotten a lot of media coverage over the years. How common is it? Has it changed? Is it as frequent a concern among the kids you are dealing with?

Charmaraman: Yeah, no, that's a very interesting question because in one of my latest papers, we're looking at subpopulations in specific groups of adolescents in which we're trying to figure out, are they more prone to being victimized by cyber bullying? For instance, we had this paper about LGBTQ youth, and how definitely the dominant narrative in the past has been that LGBTQ youth are harassed in significantly greater frequency than their straight peers. And in our latest research, we try to look this community-based sample in which is representative of the communities and not just people who identify as LGBTQ youth, we compare them with straight youth and how they're experiencing cyber bullying, and they weren't significantly different in how they experienced cyber bullying, the frequency.

It could just be that I'm also in a very liberal part of the country, I live in the Northeast where it's very progressive. However, it is really promising to hear that it might not be as much of the dominant narrative. Now, the narrative we found instead of cyber bullying, which is what everybody wants to talk about, is more about social isolation, that there's still a lot of social isolation with LGBT youth and not knowing who to talk to about their different identities, and about the support that they might need that maybe only online sources can get because of their geographic restrictions. And so the narrative might want to be a little more broad than just peer-on-peer harassment. It could be that there's other things going on in different vulnerable youths' lives in which social media could play a role in.

Mills: So it sounds like there might be something positive then, at least for the LGBTQ kids in social media, that maybe gives them an opportunity to see examples of how their lives might turn out, or connect with other LGBTQ kids, that's what you're saying?

Charmaraman: Yes. And some sites are a lot more amenable to, and more open and receptive and even celebratory. For instance, Tumblr has been a site that the LGBTQ community has cited as-even back 10 years ago, Tumblr was something that was very open or receptive, although there are some algorithms that recently called into play some of the censoring that was happening based on certain keywords. But overall, even though Tumblr has lost popularity in the general public sphere, in our recent surveys that even just in fall 2020, that youth, LGBT youth, in this age range of 11 to 15 are still using Tumblr and still finding it to be a safe space for them to explore their identities. And it's just wonderful to know that those things don't come and go as easily as people think of as social media sites being fads.

Mills: Are some of these sites inherently riskier for teens than others? Like TikTok where you see kids all the time who are out making videos of themselves, or are they doing things that might be risky? Kids will always do things that are risky and crazy, but are there some sites that are more perilous for kids of this age?

Charmaraman: I would say it's not the site per se, but certain sites have features in which if users know about those features and how to manipulate those features for not innocent purposes, then that's when we get into the risky categories. The sites that the parents are less familiar with, for instance, TikTok, probably parents are less familiar with that than Facebook. And so they don't know all the ways that they can hide their identities, or create other accounts in which the parents don't monitor, or they don't know the existence of, so they can do wacky things that they probably wouldn't want their parents to know about. And so it's not exactly about the site per se, it's about how the users find ways to not be under surveillance of the adults that might judge that-their grandma, they don't want grandma to see that TikTok, but it's okay, their friends will have a laugh over that particular video, but the grandma will need to see this other side of them.

Mills: So a lot of parents want to know at what age is it okay for kids to get a smartphone, or social media account. What would you tell them? How young is too young for social media?

Charmaraman: That's a great question, and a very common concern, I have to say. The average age of getting a smartphone in the U.S. is I think 10.3, the last I saw. And that's pretty young, that's fourth grade. I have a fourth grader, and I don't think that she is quite ready for it, but there's a lot of reasons why people get a smartphone, sometimes it's very instrumental to just where are they at. How do I get you a ride? How do I pick you up? Very basic ways to communicate with your family when you're not right next to each other all the time.

I would say that it really depends on the family and the kid, and the use of the phone, because in our research, we found that most of the time when you look at the general trajectory of how people start getting initiated into their first social media sites, it's because they first got that phone. So what do you think is going to happen next? When they get the phone, they're not going to just be on Google, searching Google and being on YouTube. They're going to find out that their friends are all on these other sites and they're going to start downloading things. And so usually about a year later, they're on at least one or two, and then two years later, they're on three, four, five different sites, because that's just the natural progression of the peer influence.

And if their school site has a huge peer pressure to have everybody on TikTok, then it's very likely that your kid is going to be pressured into it. So it depends on the peer group. We have some research that we're doing on actually the age of initiation, and if it makes a difference in the long run. And we are finding that, the younger that they are initiating, let's say in terms of social media, and this is not smartphone, this is social media, and specifically Instagram and Snapchat. We wanted to look at these specifically, because there's so many different ones out there. We wanted to be very clear.

Usually, the younger that they are, the more likely they are to have more online harassment happen, because they've been on it longer, they have more followers, they have more chances for mean things happening online, more online drama. There's a lot more behaviors in which they're doing things that are secretive that their parents don't know about, maybe they're adding friends that the parents wouldn't approve of, or they're adding sites that their parents wouldn't approve of. They're more likely to get a little bit fixated on the phone more the younger they are, because it's part of their everyday routine in a way.

And although one positive thing about starting early on social media that we found in our studies is that they're more likely to know about the positive behaviors and socially supportive behaviors that are a part of being a part of a community, a socially supportive community. But if you start much, much later, a lot of times there's a lot hesitancy to jump into community that you weren't a part of for a long time. And if you're 14, there's so much that has happened on your peer social media sites and communities that you almost feel left out, you almost don't even know how to jump in there. You didn't grow some of those behaviors that will help you find the social support that you might need.

Mills: Yeah. So there's a lot of pressure then to keep up.

Charmaraman: Absolutely.

Mills: So there's been a growing public awareness in recent years of how social media algorithms control what we all see online, and that these contribute to the political polarization and other societal problems that we're living with right now. In your research, have you found, are kids and teens, maybe some of the older teens, aware of these algorithms? Do they understand how they work and why they're seeing the stuff that they're seeing?

Charmaraman: I was actually surprised that in some of the interview studies that I've done how much middle schoolers both know and don't know. So they know that there are algorithms out there. They've heard that word. They know that there's content that's fed to them based on what they have already inputted. They know that basic thing. And the thing that I think is really interesting is that most of the time they don't think there's anything wrong with that. They don't think there's anything creepy, or sinister. Or they think, wow, they know about me? I'm famous, or I must be important that they want to know more about my habits. So I don't have any desire to shield what these companies want to know about me.

So that's why there are protections against people from signing up for social media too young, because you're supposed to be 13 due to federal requirements of COPPA, and advertisers aren't supposed to find out information about people younger than 13. And for a good reason, because of these understandings and comments from middle schoolers that they're happy to give up their information, they're happy to keep their GPS on, and show everybody where they're at, and check in at all these locations, because it makes them feel famous, it makes them feel seen.

Mills: What do you tell parents then, some who might be listening to this discussion once we've posted it, about the best ways to encourage healthy social media use in kids? Are there warning of potentially unhealthy social media use that parents should be looking out for?

Charmaraman: Yes. Yes. There's the normative levels of addiction. And then, when you first start on a site, or a game, you want to be on it all the time. So that's the normative level, but if it goes into other areas of your life that you find they're missing meals, they are not as interested in hanging out with their friends offline anymore, they are losing sleep. They're not doing well in school, because they are so hooked on whatever it is that screen is calling to them. That's when you might need to maybe ask your pediatrician, ask for a school counselor to check in, ask if the teacher has any ideas in their class about how this might be affecting their schoolwork. And there's just a lot of ways in which parents could know the signs, because you will be the ones to know the signs before other people outside the family.

And so if you're waiting for somebody else to say, your kid has a problem, it's really going to be about your nuclear family unit that will really be on the same page. You are actually seeing them day-to-day, how they've changed over time, and you can keep track of that. I think a lot of conversations about social media and right from the time that you give them the first iPad, the first time you give them their first phone, or let them use your phone, every time that they want to start up a new social media site, that's a great time to have another conversation. It's not just one talk. It's multiple talks over many periods of time at each different age stages.

When you're about to start middle school for the first time, when you're about to start high school for the first time, what are the new rules that you might want to have in place? Because the rules that were good for sixth grade are not going to be the same rules you might have for a 10th grade, when there's a lot more autonomy and a lot of things that are happening that the parents really have no idea about. But if you've instilled with them the values that you want them to continue on in the cyberspace world, and you feel comfortable that they've been able to handle themselves in healthy ways and not get too over concerned about the drama that's happening, and know about the social media literacy behind it, fake news and all that kind of stuff, then you can feel that you've done your part in that journey of, those discussions over a long period of time.

Mills: So I'm wondering if there are ways to make these social media platforms safer for young people, particularly the middle schoolers that you're studying? I'm just wondering how do we square the desire of the companies that make and provide these platforms to be successful with protecting young people from the potential harms?

Charmaraman: Well, one thing that probably should be done with much more rigor is to really monitor who are these people that are on your sites, and how old are they really? Because technically there's only, you have to be 13, but it's so easy to bypass those age requirements and put in a fake birth date. And I think companies, it would be in the best interest of their users if they could monitor that more and be really clear about if this is a parent-approved signing up, and to have real accountability in that, because a lot of times there's these long user agreements that people barely scan maybe when they sign up for the next app, the next site. And so I think if there were user-friendly language agreements, user agreements that were for youth, so they can understand what are the privacy considerations, what are they going to use with their data in the language that they could understand? I think that would be one step to make sure that they are protected in the privacy and prevention of harassment concerns that parents have.

Mills: Do you think these companies are really motivated to do this though? Is there a way to get them to do it without having to establish some sort of a, I don't know, watchdog agency, some federal regulators that are going to crack down out?

Charmaraman: Yeah. They are a business and they have a capitalist model perhaps, and so I think there needs to be probably some kind of external regulation system, whether it's the government, or some other board of overseers that understand the implications of this, maybe people who are computer science programmers, ethical decision makers, psychologists, therapists and educators and parents, and a board of overseers to understand this process, because they don't have financial conflicts of interest like businesses and advertisers who may only care about the head count, they only care about the number of clicks, they only care about how many ads can we put within this YouTube segment, and how many times can we place ads within this five-minute video?

So they have a whole other set of concerns. And another thing is that the COPPA requirement of age 13 is based on a federal regulatory body that isn't necessarily researchers. It's not based on research. And that's why I have this NIH grant, that's part of the reason why we wanted to do it with middle schoolers, to understand this vulnerable age of anywhere between nine to 13, when they're signing up for social media for the first time, what are the implications of 10 versus 12 versus 14? Is there a sweet spot of when is, does it really not matter anymore if you hit this age, then you're good to go, or if there's a critical age in which maybe you shouldn't go any younger than this because X, Y, Z might happen? It's a longitudinal study, so we still don't have all the answers that we want to tell the listeners today about. And we look forward to being able to share that, but that's definitely the kind of research that needs to be happening at this a critical age group.

Mills: And then what's the practical application of your work when it's done? Do you make it available to the social media companies, or does it just go to NIH? How does it get used and translated into something that will make a difference?

Charmaraman: Yes, yes. That's the perennial dilemma of all of researchers who get funded-dissemination and translation to the different audiences in which it needs to go to, whether it's policymakers, marketing executives, to computer programmers, to the general public and families, educators, there's so many different pieces to the messages that we want to convey that it needs to be its own project, its own separate project with a big team of people to try to advocate for different audiences to be able to find things in ways that they can reach it.

So things like webinars, things like doing a podcast, doing open access publications whenever possible so that the general public can click on your article and not just be behind a firewall where you have to pay if you're a part of an institution, having YouTube channel ready for the different disseminations of your pieces, having these five-minute video abstracts of your pieces to reach more people who don't have the time or the inclination to read academic articles from front to back. These are all conversations that we need to have. We need to have more convenings and think tanks of people of many different backgrounds that could chip away at all the different ways that we could help families and youth use social media in healthier ways.

Mills: Well, thank you for joining us today, Dr. Charmaraman. I think what you're doing is really important. I appreciate the work that you are doing to keep our kids safe.

Charmaraman: Thank you so much. And I can't wait to continue this conversation.

Mills: You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology at www.speakingofpsychology.org, or on Apple, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us at speakingofpsychology@apa.org. Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lea Winerman. Our sound editor is Chris Condayan.

Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills.

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Keeping teens safe on social media, with Linda Charmaraman, PhD

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Linda Charmaraman, PhD, discusses how teens use social media today, its impact on their mental health, and what parents, educators and others can do to maximize its benefits and minimize its potential harms.

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Through out research data has shown that teens who are more active on social medias tend to have higher rates of depression, anxiety, body dysmorphia and all other types of negative mental problems due to seeing so many "perfect" people and lives. Another cause for all these negative effects tends to be online bullieing.

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In this pod cast, Kim Mills alongside other well-known psychologists, discuss the statistics of young people whom they have been working alongside under the notion of understanding the percent of young people using social media and the effects that has on them. In this podcast Mrs Mills and her colleagues go over both positive and negative and the effects they have, notably stating that seems both young boys and girls tend to suffer from several negative psychological effects such as depression, anxiety and body dysmorphia; this was backed by facebook who leaked reports stating and reinforcing all this.

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Many parents worry about how exposure to technology might affect toddlers developmentally. We know our preschoolers are picking up new social and cognitive skills at a stunning pace, and we don't want hours spent glued to an iPad to impede that. But adolescence is an equally important period of rapid development, and too few of us are paying attention to how our teenagers' use of technology - much more intense and intimate than a 3-year-old playing with dad's iPhone - is affecting them. In fact, experts worry that the social media and text messages that have become so integral to teenage life are promoting anxiety and lowering self-esteem.

Young people report that there might be good reason to worry. A survey conducted by the Royal Society for Public Health asked 14-24-year-olds in the UK how social media platforms impacted their health and well-being. The survey results found that Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all led to increased feelings of depression, anxiety, poor body image, and loneliness.

Indirect communication

Teens are masters at keeping themselves occupied in the hours after school until way past bedtime. When they're not doing their homework (and when they are) they're online and on their phones, texting, sharing, trolling, scrolling, you name it. Of course before everyone had an Instagram account teens kept themselves busy, too, but they were more likely to do their chatting on the phone, or in person when hanging out at the mall. It may have looked like a lot of aimless hanging around, but what they were doing was experimenting, trying out skills, and succeeding and failing in tons of tiny real-time interactions that kids today are missing out on. For one thing, modern teens are learning to do most of their communication while looking at a screen, not another person.

"As a species we are very highly attuned to reading social cues," says Catherine Steiner-Adair, EdD, a clinical psychologist and author of The Big Disconnect. "There's no question kids are missing out on very critical social skills. In a way, texting and online communicating puts everybody in a context where body language, facial expression, and even the smallest kinds of vocal reactions are rendered invisible."

Lowering the risks

Certainly speaking indirectly creates a barrier to clear communication, but that's not all. Learning how to make friends is a major part of growing up, and friendship requires a certain amount of risk-taking. This is true for making a new friend, but it's also true for maintaining friendships. When there are problems that need to be faced - big ones or small ones - it takes courage to be honest about your feelings and then hear what the other person has to say. Learning to effectively cross these bridges is part of what makes friendship fun and exciting, and also scary. "Part of healthy self-esteem is knowing how to say what you think and feel even when you're in disagreement with other people or it feels emotionally risky," notes Dr. Steiner-Adair.

But when friendship is conducted online and through texts, kids are doing this in a context stripped of many of the most personal - and sometimes intimidating - aspects of communication. It's easier to keep your guard up when you're texting, so less is at stake. You aren't hearing or seeing the effect that your words are having on the other person. Because the conversation isn't happening in real time, each party can take more time to consider a response. No wonder kids say calling someone on the phone is "too intense"- it requires more direct communication, and if you aren't used to that it may well feel scary.

If kids aren't getting enough practice relating to people and getting their needs met in person and in real time, many of them will grow up to be adults who are anxious about our species' primary means of communication - talking. And of course social negotiations only get riskier as people get older and begin navigating romantic relationships and employment.

Cyberbullying and the imposter syndrome

The other big danger that comes from kids communicating more indirectly is that it has gotten easier to be cruel. "Kids text all sorts of things that you would never in a million years contemplate saying to anyone's face," says Donna Wick, EdD, a clinical and developmental psychologist. She notes that this seems to be especially true of girls, who typically don't like to disagree with each other in "real life."

"You hope to teach them that they can disagree without jeopardizing the relationship, but what social media is teaching them to do is disagree in ways that are more extreme and do jeopardize the relationship. It's exactly what you don't want to have happen," she says.

Dr. Steiner-Adair agrees that girls are particularly at risk. "Girls are socialized more to compare themselves to other people, girls in particular, to develop their identities, so it makes them more vulnerable to the downside of all this." She warns that a lack of solid self-esteem is often to blame. "We forget that relational aggression comes from insecurity and feeling awful about yourself, and wanting to put other people down so you feel better."

Peer acceptance is a big thing for adolescents, and many of them care about their image as much as a politician running for office, and to them it can feel as serious. Add to that the fact that kids today are getting actual polling data on how much people like them or their appearance via things like "likes." It's enough to turn anyone's head. Who wouldn't want to make themselves look cooler if they could? So kids can spend hours pruning their online identities, trying to project an idealized image. Teenage girls sort through hundreds of photos, agonizing over which ones to post online. Boys compete for attention by trying to out-gross one other, pushing the envelope as much as they can in the already disinhibited atmosphere online. Kids gang up on each other.

Adolescents have always been doing this, but with the advent of social media they are faced with more opportunities - and more traps - than ever before. When kids scroll through their feeds and see how great everyone seems, it only adds to the pressure. We're used to worrying about the impractical ideals that photoshopped magazine models give to our kids, but what happens with the kid next door is photoshopped, too? Even more confusing, what about when your own profile doesn't really represent the person that you feel like you are on the inside?

"Adolescence and the early twenties in particular are the years in which you are acutely aware of the contrasts between who you appear to be and who you think you are," says Dr. Wick. "It's similar to the 'imposter syndrome' in psychology. As you get older and acquire more mastery, you begin to realize that you actually are good at some things, and then you feel that gap hopefully narrow. But imagine having your deepest darkest fear be that you aren't as good as you look, and then imagine needing to look that good all the time! It's exhausting."

As Dr. Steiner-Adair explains, "Self-esteem comes from consolidating who you are." The more identities you have, and the more time you spend pretending to be someone you aren't, the harder it's going to be to feel good about yourself.

Stalking (and being ignored)

Another big change that has come with new technology and especially smart phones is that we are never really alone. Kids update their status, share what they're watching, listening to, and reading, and have apps that let their friends know their specific location on a map at all times. Even if a person isn't trying to keep his friends updated, he's still never out of reach of a text message. The result is that kids feel hyperconnected with each other. The conversation never needs to stop, and it feels like there's always something new happening.

"Whatever we think of the 'relationships' maintained and in some cases initiated on social media, kids never get a break from them," notes Dr. Wick. "And that, in and of itself, can produce anxiety. Everyone needs a respite from the demands of intimacy and connection; time alone to regroup, replenish and just chill out. When you don't have that, it's easy to become emotionally depleted, fertile ground for anxiety to breed."

It's also surprisingly easy to feel lonely in the middle of all that hyperconnection. For one thing, kids now know with depressing certainty when they're being ignored. We all have phones and we all respond to things pretty quickly, so when you're waiting for a response that doesn't come, the silence can be deafening. The silent treatment might be a strategic insult or just the unfortunate side effect of an online adolescent relationship that starts out intensely but then fades away.

"In the old days when a boy was going to break up with you, he had to have a conversation with you. Or at least he had to call," says Dr. Wick. "These days he might just disappear from your screen, and you never get to have the 'What did I do?' conversation." Kids are often left imagining the worst about themselves.

But even when the conversation doesn't end, being in a constant state of waiting can still provoke anxiety. We can feel ourselves being put on the back burner, we put others back there, and our very human need to communicate is effectively delegated there, too.

What should parents do?

Both experts interviewed for this article agreed that the best thing parents can do to minimize the risks associated with technology is to curtail their own consumption first. It's up to parents to set a good example of what healthy device usage looks like. Most of us check our phones or our email too much, out of either real interest or nervous habit. Kids should be used to seeing our faces, not our heads bent over a screen. Establish technology-free zones in the house and technology-free hours when no one uses the phone, including mom and dad. "Don't walk in the door after work in the middle of a conversation," Dr. Steiner-Adair advises. "Don't walk in the door after work, say 'hi' quickly, and then 'just check your email.' In the morning, get up a half hour earlier than your kids and check your email then. Give them your full attention until they're out the door. And neither of you should be using phones in the car to or from school because that's an important time to talk."

Not only does limiting the amount of time you spend plugged in to computers provide a healthy counterpoint to the tech-obsessed world, it also strengthens the parent-child bond and makes kids feel more secure. Kids need to know that you are available to help them with their problems, talk about their day, or give them a reality check.

"It is the mini-moments of disconnection, when parents are too focused on their own devices and screens, that dilute the parent-child relationship," Dr. Steiner-Adair warns. And when kids start turning to the internet for help or to process whatever happened during the day, you might not like what happens. "Tech can give your children more information that you can, and it doesn't have your values," notes Dr. Steiner-Adair. "It won't be sensitive to your child's personality, and it won't answer his question in a developmentally appropriate way."

In addition Dr. Wick advises delaying the age of first use as much as possible. "I use the same advice here that I use when talking about kids and alcohol - try to get as far as you can without anything at all." If your child is on a social media platform, Dr. Wick says that you should friend them and monitor their page. But she advises against going through text messages unless there is cause for concern. "If you have a reason to be worried then okay, but it better be a good reason. I see parents who are just plain old spying on their kids. Parents should begin by trusting their children. To not even give your kid the benefit of the doubt is incredibly damaging to the relationship. You have to feel like your parents think you're a good kid."

Offline, the gold standard advice for helping kids build healthy self-esteem is to get them involved in something that they're interested in. It could be sports or music or taking apart computers or volunteering - anything that sparks an interest and gives them confidence. When kids learn to feel good about what they can do instead of how they look and what they own, they're happier and better prepared for success in real life. That most of these activities also involve spending time interacting with peers face-to-face is just the icing on the cake.

Frequently Asked Questions

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How Using Social Media Affects Teenagers - Child Mind Institute

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How does social media affect teens? Experts say kids are growing up with more anxiety and less self-esteem due to social media. Read advice for parents from specialists in our article.

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Most students and teens agree that social media can help with school assignments as well as boost mental state as they can more easily communicate with others who share interests and hobbies

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https://hilo.hawaii.edu/campuscenter/hohonu/volumes/documents/TheEffectsofSocialMediaonCollegeStudentsTerriPinyerd.pdf

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20% agreed that social media helps with school assignments; 25% agreed that social media helps to make new friends; and 55% just used social media for fun. Discussion According to the data we collected from the anonymous questionnaire, most college students would prefer to use social media and therefore spent vast hours checking social media sites. Facebook is very popular among college students, even though students would use it when they had classes. Ninety percent of students spent their time on entertainment; there were not too many college students who preferred using social

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Department

Management and Entrepreneurship

Abstract

This study seeks to understand the perceptions of professors using social media (also called Web 2.0 tools) in the classroom, what kinds of mobile devices are used to access the social media used, and what drives individuals to use them. In addition, it seeks to identify the advantages and concerns faculty has with the use of social media for classroom instruction. Two-Way Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) procedure was used to ascertain whether differences existed between two dependent variables and (a) gender, (b) different academic ranks, and (c) gender *rank to determine if there are any interaction effects between genders regarding the magnitude of their perceptions of advantages and concerns about social media use for classroom instruction as they migrate through the ranks. Professors, regardless of sex or rank, held statistically the same views of the advantages as well as the concerns related to social media usage in the classroom.

Journal Title

Interdisciplinary Journal of E-Learning and Learning Objects

Recommended Citation

Roebuck, D., Siha, S., Bell, R. L. (2013). Faculty Usage of Social Media and Mobile Devices: Analysis of Advantages and Concerns. Interdisciplinary Journal of E-Learning and Learning Objects, Volume 9, 171-192.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Faculty Usage of Social Media and Mobile Devices: Analysis of Advantages and Concerns

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This study seeks to understand the perceptions of professors using social media (also called Web 2.0 tools) in the classroom, what kinds of mobile devices are used to access the social media used, and what drives individuals to use them.

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Through out this experiment

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Social media is defined as a place where one can share pictures, videos and thoughts. this allows many people to view these things and respond, due to this it is often that teens tend to get addicted to other peoples lifes and in return become less happy with there own.

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Social Media: Defining, Developing, and Divining

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Social Media: Defining, Developing, and Divining

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https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15456870.2015.972282