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Time for Kids

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Piper Leypoldt, 11, of Durham, North Carolina, likes to watch cooking videos on YouTube. Recently, she learned that the site collects users’ data, such as search history and location­. She’s not concerned. “Other websites I use at home and school…

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I used to think social media was a force for good. Now the evidence says I was wrong

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I used to think social media was a force for good. Now the evidence says I was wrong

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Matt Haig

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I used to think social media was a force for good. Now the evidence says I was wrong | Matt Haig

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More and more, it’s clear these platforms create divisions, exploit our insecurities and risk our health, says novelist Matt Haig

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YouTube

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Should Social Media Be Held Responsible For The Atrocities And Deaths It Facilitates?

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Should Social Media Be Held Responsible For The Atrocities And Deaths It Facilitates?

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Forbes

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Not a week goes by without another tragic story of how social media directly facilitated the injury, death or suffering of someone in the world. Earlier this month a young female child was sold in South Sudan using Facebook to increase the bidding price, while two months ago a false rumor spreading on WhatsApp in Mexico led an angry mob to burn two innocent men to death. Perhaps most infamously, Facebook has been singled out as a primary facilitator in the Myanmar genocide. As social media is increasingly used to facilitate horrific activities across the world, should the companies behind those platforms bear responsibility for the misuse of their platforms? In particular, as companies make explicit decisions regarding how much to invest in tools and staffing to counter misinformation and illegal use of their platforms, knowing full well the dangers posed by underinvestment, should they be held accountable in cases where they specifically declined to invest in protecting their users against a given threat, knowing full well that that lack of investment could lead to serious harm to those users?

Every day around the world, bad actors are misusing social platforms to commit horrific atrocities. Each time another atrocity makes headlines, the companies predictably issue statements that they are sorry about the misuse of their platform, but that there is nothing further they could have done to prevent the situation.

In the case of Myanmar, the company had long refused to answer questions regarding the number of Burmese speaking content moderators it employed or any other concrete details regarding its efforts to combat misuse of its platform to advance the violence there. The public and policymakers were left with nothing more than the company's assurances that it was doing what needed to be done. Of course, that trust turned out to be misplaced, as it turns out the company had invested insufficient resources until the public outcry and threat of legislative action forced it to boost its investment in the country. Yet, even with all of these new resources, its total investment in the country pales compared to what would be needed to match its investment in other countries that are not undergoing active genocide.

How does a company like Facebook decide precisely how many moderators to hire for each language and socio-cultural focus? For a company that declines to even offer rough estimates of the number of moderators it has by language, getting it to offer any clarity into how it determines those staffing numbers is impossible.

In the case of Germany, the company had long claimed that it had done everything possible in terms of staffing and technical solutions to combat hate speech in the country. Yet, after the passage of new hate speech laws and the threats of future legislative action, Facebook changed its stance almost overnight, rapidly hiring a vast new army of moderators and deploying a number of new technical features - all the things it had long declined to do.

In the case of Myanmar, it raises the question of why, when concerns first began to be raised about the misuse of Facebook's platforms in the conflict in the country, did the company not immediately hire thousands or even tens of thousands of moderators to halt the growing misuse in its tracks before it could lead to further violence?

There are certainly no technical constraints preventing the company from hiring many tens of thousands of content reviewers, using the same scaling model as China's highly successful moderation program. After all, China's efforts demonstrate that it is quite tractable to achieve platform-scale moderation.

The issue really comes down to one of cost. Facebook and its peers simply do not wish to pay for armies of humans to engage in what amounts to a non-revenue-generating cost.

The company has repeatedly acknowledged again and again the role of misinformation on its platforms, including in the death or serious injury of people across the world and that it is actively investing in fighting misinformation. This raises the question, however, of whether the company feels that it is in any way responsible for the deaths and injuries of people harmed by the misinformation flowing through its platform.

After all, Facebook could almost overnight make a severe dent in the flow of misinformation simply by hiring 50,000 or 100,000 moderators and redesigning its algorithms and interfaces to achieve a different temporal trajectory for regionally viral content to slow the flow of false information until it can be counteracted. The problem is that these actions would cost the company considerable revenue and would affect the content virality upon which its advertising revenue depends.

Asked about whether Facebook felt any responsibility whatsoever for the Mexico murders caused by a false viral WhatsApp rumor or the child bride whose sale was facilitated by its platform, a company spokesperson offered that it felt that combatting misinformation as a whole was its responsibility and that human trafficking was against its terms of service. However, when asked specifically whether it felt that it bore any responsibility for these tragic situations, the company declined to comment.

It is worth pointing out that Facebook actually profits monetarily from atrocities committed on its platform. In the case of the child bride sale, the company earned advertising revenue from all of the users who viewed, posted or otherwise engaged with the sale content. This raises the question of whether, in such circumstances, the company conducts a subsequent review to identify all of the advertisements shown alongside the post and refund all money it earned from those advertisements. The company declined to comment when asked, suggesting that it keeps what amounts to "blood money."

In addition to direct monetary benefit, the company also benefits indirectly in acquiring behavioral and interest data about users who engaged with the child trafficking content that is used to enrich its behavioral profiles of those users to offer them more accurate and targeted advertising in future. In essence, by recording which users viewed the content, the company is able to associate and strengthen the advertising selectors associated with those accounts, increasing its ability to sell more targeted advertising to them in their future usage of its systems. This raises the question of whether the company should go back and delete all modifications made to user profiles as a result of viewing or engaging with illegal content to ensure that Facebook does not profit even indirectly from the publication of that content through its platform. Under such a model Facebook would still retain security logs showing which users viewed what content, but it would delete that activity from the user profiles themselves to prevent it from affecting future advertising to ensure it did not benefit. The company declined to comment when asked whether it currently did so or whether it has ever considered doing so.

Of course, we don't hold phone companies responsible for terrorists using their phones to coordinate violent attacks, so why should we hold social media platforms to account for the misuse of their systems?

The answer is that phone companies do not perform any moderation of any kind of their systems and that their systems facilitate only person-to-person communication, not global broadcasting. In the US, the local phone company does not have an army of human reviewers monitoring all of the phone calls transiting its networks and terminating calls that violate the set of topics and perspectives that it views as acceptable uses of its telephone connections. Nor can one's phone by itself be used to instantly broadcast false information to a billion plus people globally.

Facebook, on the other hand, actively moderates its platform, deciding what is allowed to stay and what to delete, based on its own internal guidelines of what it considers to be acceptable speech. As a moderator that is already actively reviewing the content on its platform and evaluating posts according to a set of corporate guidelines, the company is necessarily stepping into the space of active editorial control.

Most importantly, however, the phone company's one-to-one communications model means that misinformation travels slowly, a person at a time. With social media, a post can be sent to millions with a mouseclick. This makes it far more dangerous as a tool for spreading misinformation.

In the end, should we hold social media platforms to account for misuse of their systems that leads to human rights abuses, serious injury, death and even genocide? If a company knowingly fails to invest in what it believes is the necessary level of moderation in a given country due to concerns about cost, recognizing that that refusal to invest will likely cost human lives, should be held accountable? Should the company at the very least be required to hand back the direct monetary profit they earn from those atrocities and delete the behavioral data they record that will indirectly monetarily profit them in future? The fact that Facebook declined to comment on any of this reflects that for now the companies aren't being forced to grapple with these issues. Until governments step forward and force the companies to take some level of responsibility, the companies and their leaders will likely continue to stand their ground and " delay, deny and deflect."

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Should Social Media Be Held Responsible For The Atrocities And Deaths It Facilitates?

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As social media is increasingly used to facilitate horrific activities across the world, should the companies behind those platforms bear responsibility for the misuse of their platforms? Should they at the very least be required to hand back the money they earn from facilitating those atrocities?

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What's the average age when kids get a social media account?

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What's the average age when kids get a social media account?

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CNN

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What's the average age when kids get a social media account? | CNN

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About 56% of US youth have their own social media accounts, according to Common Sense Media. The average age when signing up for an account was 12.6 years.

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"In this TEDx Talk, Amiri Tulloch explores how black activism has thrived on the social media platform Twitter. Examining the topic from a local to international lens, Tulloch details three factors of black activism’s success on Twitter: its protest power, educational opportunities, and global influence.

Amiri Tulloch is a junior at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA" (6:05).

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Black Activism on Twitter | Amiri Tulloch | TEDxPhillipsAcademyAndover

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InternetSafety101

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Key principles for all age groups include:

Keep lines of communication open

Create a list of Internet rules with your kids (See Rules 'N Tools® Youth Pledge )

Set parental controls at the age-appropriate levels and use filtering and monitoring tools as a complement--not a replacement--for parental supervision.

Supervise all Internet-enabled devices and keep computers in a public area of the home.

Talk to your kids about healthy sexuality in the event they encounter sexually explicit online pornography at home, school, a friend's house, the library or their mobile device.

Encourage your kids to come to you if they encounter anything online that makes them feel uncomfortable or threatened. (Stay calm and don't blame your child; otherwise, they won't turn to you in the future for help when they need it.)

Teach them not to interact with people they don't know offline, because an online predator or cyberbully can disguise him/herself.

Check the history file on your computer to see which sites your child has accessed.

Teach your child the golden rule: do unto others as they would have done unto themselves.

Specific Guidelines by Age Groups
Two- to Seven-Year-Olds Eight- to Ten-Year-Olds Eleven- to Thirteen-Year-Olds Fourteen- Eighteen-Year-Olds

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Internet Safety 101: Age-Based Guidelines

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Internet Safety 101, is an initiative of Enough Is Enough, a 501c(3) whose mission is to make the Internet Safer for Children and Families.

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More teens now say they prefer texting to talking to other people in person, and they admit smartphone apps are waking them up at night and distracting them from homework, the survey by Common Sense Media shows.

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Most American teenagers are constantly using social media, and half admit that it distracts them from looking up and talking to people right in front of them, a new survey shows.

More teens now say they prefer texting to talking to other people in person, and they admit smartphone apps are waking them up at night and distracting them from homework, the survey by Common Sense Media shows.

No surprises there to anyone who knows a teenager, but the survey also shows that teens are very much aware of the pitfalls of social media use. They suspect that social media companies are trying to manipulate them, and they deny that their constant use of Instagram, Snapchat and other apps is making them lonely.

"Social media has transformed adolescence and the lives of millions and millions of teens," said Jim Steyer, CEO and founder of Common Sense Media, which conducts research into media use.

"Teens have even told us in this landmark report that they are distracted from their friends, from their homework and from sleep," Steyer told NBC News. "A lot of teens feel addicted to social media."

Common Sense interviewed more than 1,100 teens aged 13 to 17 for about three weeks this spring and found some surprises. Teenagers are not mindless slaves to their smartphones, the survey found.

"Teens are often depicted as being heedless of the consequences of spending so much time on their smartphones," the report reads.

"In reality, our survey reveals that teens are fully aware of the power of devices to distract them from key priorities, such as homework, sleep and time with friends and family."

More than half - 57 percent - said social media distracts them from doing homework and 54 percent admitted that they sometimes ignored people they were with to pay attention to social media. And 29 percent said a text or other notification had woken them up at night.

"A large proportion of all teens (44 percent) say they get frustrated with their friends for being on their phones so much when they're hanging out together," the report reads.

There's no doubt that mobile devices dominate the lives of young people. More than 80 percent of the teenagers surveyed said they used social media.

That's no more than in 2012, but now, 70 percent say they're using social media multiple times a day, compared with just a third of them in 2012, the survey found.

Apps often drive this. One example is the Snapchat "streak," in which users must send at least one message every single day to certain friends and acquaintances.

And while the teens don't necessarily fight back by refusing to be drawn in, they are at least aware of what's happening, the report showed.

"Nearly three out of four teens (72 percent) believe that tech companies manipulate users to spend more time on their devices," the report reads.

"We find it very encouraging that teens are very aware that social media companies like Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook are manipulating them. That means that they're increasingly aware that those companies don't necessarily have their best interests at heart," Steyer said.

But teenagers like the technology. The proportion of teens who say their favorite way to communicate with their friends in person dropped from 49 percent in 2012 to 32 percent in 2018.

It's not all negative. A quarter of the teens surveyed said these apps make them feel less lonely, and only 3 percent said using them makes them feel more isolated.

"A major difference since we did this study five years ago is that teens prefer texting to talking," Steyer said. "They literally would rather text than talk to someone face to face or on the phone. As a parent, I don't like that."

Parents can and should limit time spent on mobile devices and using social media, Steyer said.

"We have to get our teens off of devices, away from social media and platforms," he said, "away from just staring at phone screens and out in the beautiful outdoors."

"This is not going to go away. The genie is out of the bottle. This is reality going forward in our kids' lives, but we can provide them guidance and judgment as to how best to use social media in a positive way."

The survey also puts to rest any lingering doubts that Facebook is for old people only. Just 15 percent of the teens surveyed said it was their first choice in social media.

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Teens would rather text than talk to you, survey finds

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More teens are distracted by social media, using smartphone apps like Snapchat and Instagram constantly, a new survey by Common Sense Media shows.

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How parents can help their kids navigate the pressures of their digital lives - without pulling the plug on the positives

As adults witness the rising tides of teenaged anxiety, it's tough not to notice a common thread that runs through the epidemic - something that past generations never dealt with. Clutched in the hand of nearly every teen is a smartphone, buzzing and beeping and blinking with social media notifications.

Parents, all too often, just want to grab their teen's phone and stuff it in a drawer. But is social media and the omnipresence of digital interactions really the cause of all this anxiety?

The short answer is: It's complicated.

Recent studies have noted a significant uptick in depression and suicidal thoughts over the past several years for teens, especially those who spend multiple hours a day using screens, and especially girls. But many of the pressures teenagers feel from social media are actually consistent with developmentally normal concerns around social standing and self-expression. Social media can certainly exacerbate these anxieties, but for parents to truly help their children cope, they should avoid making a blanket condemnation. Instead, parents should tailor their approach to the individual, learning where a particular child's stressors lie and how that child can best gain control of this alluring, powerful way to connect with peers.

Many of the pressures teenagers feel from social media are actually consistent with developmentally normal concerns around social standing and self-expression.

A Link Between Social Media and Mental Health Concerns

Many experts have described a rise in sleeplessness, loneliness, worry, and dependence among teenagers - a rise that coincides with the release of the first iPhone 10 years ago. One study found that 48 percent of teens who spend five hours per day on an electronic device have at least one suicide risk factor, compared to 33 percent of teens who spend two hours a day on an electronic device. We've all heard anecdotes, too, of teens being reduced to tears from the constant communication and comparisons that social media invites.

Through likes and follows, teens are "getting actual data on how much people like them and their appearance," says Lindsey Giller, a clinical psychologist at the Child Mind Institute who specializes in youth and young adults with mood disorders. "And you're not having any break from that technology." She's seen teens with anxiety, poor self-esteem, insecurity, and sadness attributed, at least in part, to constant social media use.

Teenage Challenges and Stressors, Exacerbated

But the connection between anxiety and social media might not be simple, or purely negative. Correlation does not equal causation; it may be that depression and anxiety lead to more social media use, for example, rather than the other way around. There could also be an unknown third variable - for instance, academic pressures or economic concerns - connecting them, or teens could simply be more likely to admit to mental health concerns now than they were in previous generations.

It's also important to remember that teens experience social media in a wide range of ways. The ability to raise awareness, connect with people across the world, and share moments of beauty can be empowering and uplifting for some. And many teens understand that the images they see are curated snapshots, not real-life indicators, and are less likely to let those posts make them feel insecure about their own lives.

Above all, says researcher Emily Weinstein, who studies teens and their social media habits, parents need to keep in mind that it's probably not just social media that's making their teens anxious - it's the normal social stressors that these platforms facilitate, albeit at a different size and scale.

In the same way that different teenagers need different types of social support from their parents, they need different types of digital support, as well. If your teen seems irritable or overwhelmed by social media, pay attention to what specifically is causing those feelings.

"So many of the behaviors we're talking about have pre-digital corollaries," says Weinstein, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. "They're the same sort of developmental challenges that adolescents have grappled with for decades, though now they're taking place in different spaces that can certainly amplify them and shift their quality, quantity, and scale.

"But the idea of wanting to fit in, the critical importance of peer relationships, and the process of figuring out which version of yourself you want to be and how you want to express that identity to others - those features of adolescence are not new."

What's Triggering about Social Media?

Youth and technology expert Amanda Lenhart's 2015 Pew study of teens, technology, and friendships reveals a range of social media-induced stressors:

Seeing people posting about events to which you haven't been invited

Feeling pressure to post positive and attractive content about yourself

Feeling pressure to get comments and likes on your posts

Having someone post things about you that you cannot change or control

In analyses of thousands of adolescents' reactions to digital stressors, Weinstein and her colleagues have found even more challenges:

Feeling replaceable: If you don't respond to a best friend's picture quickly or effusively enough, will she find a better friend?

Too much communication: A boyfriend or girlfriend wants you to be texting far more often than you're comfortable with.

Digital "FOMO": If you're not up-to-date on the latest social media posts, will it prevent you from feeling like you can participate in real-life conversations at school the next day?

Attachment to actual devices: If your phone is out of reach, will your privacy be invaded? Will you miss a message from a friend when he needs you?

For Parents, Strategies on Mitigating Anxiety - Without Overreacting

With so many different stressors, a key piece of advice for parents is to individualize your approach. In the same way that different teenagers need different types of social support from their parents, they need different types of digital support, as well. Weinstein suggests that if your teen seems irritable or overwhelmed by social media, pay attention to what specifically is causing those feelings.

Giller agrees. "Really check in with your teen about what's going on," she says. Parents can and should help support and problem-solve with their teen, but they should also offer validation about how difficult these situations can be.

Don't just take your teen's phone away if you suspect drama. In most situations, it's best to work with your teen around social media expectations.

Relatedly, don't just take your teen's phone away if you suspect drama. Doing so won't get to the heart of the social issue at play - and it could potentially make your teen more upset by separating her from her friends and other aspects of digital media she enjoys.

However, as a family, you can also set screen-free times - whether it's every evening after 9 p.m., on the car ride to school, an occasional screen-free weekend, or longer stretches over vacations and camps. "Many teens say they appreciate" these chances, says education writer Anya Kamenetz, whose upcoming book The Art of Screen Time: How Your Family Can Balance Digital Media and Real Life explores these issues in-depth.

A significant part of your teen's phone habits may be related to her parents, too. " Be good role models in your own use of tech," advises Kamenetz. That means being mindful of your own distracted habit of reaching for your cell, but it also means rejecting the isolation that screen time can generate. Make digital media an opportunity for real-life social opportunities, she says. Share some media activities with your teenager - playing games, watching YouTube clips, or reading up on mutual interests together.

And in most situations, it's best to work with your teen to set social media expectations. "You want to build consensus and get their buy-in," says Kamenetz. Constant surveillance or control won't build trust. Make it an open, mutual discussion.

You want to get teens to put their devices down on their own, says Weinstein, "so that you're helping them build their ability to manage their interactions with and through technology." And that's increasingly looking like a key life skill that we'll all need to develop, now and into the future.

Illustration: Wilhelmina Peragine
We're in a moment where anxiety is running rampant, spreading like an epidemic among adolescents. What can we do? In a series of pieces, we look at how to help teenagers face their fears, build resilience, and grapple with the pressure to achieve - on the road to college and beyond. Read more at What Do Anxious Teens Need?

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How parents can help their kids navigate the pressures of their digital lives - without pulling the plug on the positives As adults witness the rising tides of teenaged anxiety, it's tough not to notice a common thread that runs through the epidemic - something that past generations never dealt with.

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PediMom

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As many parents probably already know, their teenage kids can be absolutely addicted to social media. And with the various websites and array of social media platforms, sometimes teens can spend all day glued to their screens. While I'm not exactly defending teens' reasons to be stuck on social media all day, enlightening others is a good goal to have when trying to raise awareness about the potential negative impacts that social media can have.

One of the first reasons that comes to mind when talking about why our generation is addicted to social media is probably because of the Fear Of Missing Out, or FOMO. While some don't care if they're the first ones to see a new post by someone popular in their school, or even a celebrity, teens often give a lot of attention to their phones so they can see and understand what's going on in the world in terms of pop culture.

Basically, it's the fear that many teenagers have that if they don't go on social media, they will miss out on a huge event, or something that they deem as important. Often in school, a student's peers may be discussing a post or video that they all saw and shared the previous day, and if that student wasn't on social media at the time, they feel left out of the conversation, and not as engaged in it as well.

In BBC's article, titled, " FOMO: How the Fear of Missing Out drives social media 'addiction '", several high school students were challenged to not go on their phones or check their notifications for a week. One person said that the longer they didn't go on any of their social media platforms, "the more disconnected and isolated from the world [she] felt". FOMO is one of the main reasons why many teenagers feel the compulsive need to spend a decent chunk of their time on social media; to make sure they are up-to-date with all happenings in order to fit in.

Another reason why teenagers today obsess over social media is because their profiles really dictate how they appear to others. That is, the more likes and/or followers they have, the more popular and envious they come off as to others. Some teens may constantly be on social media platforms to hunt for more followers, make their posts the best that they can be, or find a way to get more likes on their posts.

Psychologist Emma Kenny states that likes on social media sites, such as Instagram, give you a physiological high, and is a reward cycle, prompting users to keep going back to and worrying about the amount of likes that they get. A lot of teenagers, myself included, have deleted posts if they didn't get a high enough number of likes.
Getting a low number of likes and followers, in teenagers' minds, equates to low status and ridicule, especially in a school environment, while having a high number of each equates to popularity.
An additional reason why teens may be addicted to social media is because of how quickly and easily they can communicate with their friends, no matter where either of them are. With the click of just a couple buttons, kids in my generation are able to send pictures to each other on Snapchat, as well as gossip and converse through DMs (direct messagings) or IMs (instant messaging). Teenagers can appear as if they are addicted to social media, even if they are not, because they devote a lot of their time to talking to their friends online through these social media platforms.

Social media can act as an escape from the real world. If a teenager is stressed, sad, or even depressed, they may turn to social media to forget their problems, even if it is only for a couple of hours. It's also a lot easier to express yourself on social media, and teens who may be shy in real life are more likely to have a bolder online presence; they are able to think about their words, and come off as witty, even if in real life they are nothing like that at all. Additionally, if a teenager is feeling isolated or disconnected from their family or friends, they may turn to social media.

On these platforms, it's easier to make friends, and more often than not, people are accepted wholeheartedly and right away, creating a sort of safe haven for those who feel this way. Most of the time, people post certain events in their lives, whether positive, like getting a job or getting into college, or negative, like failing a test or having a loved one pass away, in order for their online friends and followers to comment and give them praise, support, or reassurance.

A final reason why teenagers may spend an abundance of their time on social media, or on their phones in general, is to pass the time to avoid being bored. Too many times during dinner parties or get-togethers full of adults have my sister or I decide to pass the time going on our phones and scrolling through social media rather than just sit there and do nothing. It was not as if we wanted to avoid talking to people: it was just the fact that no one wanted to talk to us. Instead of doing absolutely nothing throughout the hours that these events took (and becoming wholly bored in the process), we take it upon ourselves to become engrossed in our phones to give us something to do.

So, with all of that in mind, it's painfully clear that a good portion of the world's teenagers are addicted to their phones. The impacts of this, though, are frighteningly negative. The "perfect" people that are showcased online tend to lower teenagers' self-esteem. Without even thinking, we compare ourselves to others, especially those we see on social media platforms. When teens determine that they aren't "good enough" because they don't look a certain way, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, a hard time sleeping, disconnectivity, obsession with self-image, substance use, loneliness, and self-harm may manifest itself in teenagers.

Moreover, because teens spend a lot of their time on social media, they have less and less face-to-face conversations and connections because they are experiencing that all online. While this doesn't seem like such a bad thing, the psychology website PsyCom reports that this results in a difficult time fine-tuning empathy and communication skills, attributes that need daily practice and experience.

For teens, it's quite understandable and obvious, really, why they spend so much time on social media. Whether it's to stay up-to-date with events, or just to pass the time because they have nothing else to do, social media is certainly a large part of a teen's lifestyle. While there are some positive sides to social media, like being able to stay in touch easily, there are too many negative effects of social media which cannot simply be ignored. While it won't go well if you tell your teen to completely cut out social media, it would be a good idea to limit their time on it, given all of the potential downsides.

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Why Teens Are Addicted to Social Media - PediMom

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By Suha Malik, age 15 As many parents probably already know, their teenage kids can be absolutely addicted to social media. And with the various websites and array of social [...]

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Piper Leypoldt, 11, of Durham, North Carolina, likes to watch cooking videos on YouTube. Recently, she learned that the site collects users’ data, such as search history and location­. She’s not concerned. “Other websites I use at home and school…