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There's a Cell Phone in Your Student's Head

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https://yogauonline.com/yoga-health-benefits/posture-improvement/a-new-epidemic-study-links-text-neck-to-spine-damage/

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Do you spend your day hunched over a laptop or with your head bent at an unnatural angle while texting or checking email or Facebook updates on your smartphone? If so, pause for a second, sit up straight, and take notice: you may be setting yourself up for chronic neck pain and even spine damage.

How Text Neck Undermines the Health of Your Spine

The constant slouching linked to poor sitting posture or smartphone use can lead to loss of the natural curve of the neck, according to a study in Surgical Technology International. This in turn leads to increased stresses on the upper spine and neck, which may lead to early wear, tear, degeneration, and possibly surgery. (1) (2)

It's all about the cumulative effect. While texting with your head bent over your smartphone won't hurt you in the short run, over the long term it will. Most of us spend an average of two to four hours a day with our heads tilted over smartphones, tablets, or laptops, the study's authors estimate. Cumulatively this is 700 to 1400 hours a year of excess stresses on the cervical spine. According to the study's authors, it is possible that a high school student may spend an extra 5,000 hours in poor posture due to cell phone and computer use.

This puts a lot of stress on the cervical spine, which may result in premature wear and tear and accelerate degenerative processes such as arthritis or intervertebral disc degeneration.

Benefits of Yoga: More than Posture Improvement

As we all know, technology is here to stay, so what can we do? First of all, increase your awareness of the importance of good posture. When you use your smartphone, be sure to sit upright with a neutral spine. Avoid spending hours each day hunched over a smartphone, tablet, or laptop.

It is also very helpful to focus on strengthening the main posture support muscles and increase spinal flexibility through yoga. Research has shown that therapeutic yoga for posture can be very effective and in addition, offers stress management. Yoga has the potential not only to address back pain and joint issues, but also to lead to more energy and vitality as energy flows more freely in the body.

When standing with good posture, the average adult's head weighs approximately 10 to 12 pounds. But due to gravity, the more the neck moves forward, the heavier the head becomes and the more pressure is put on the cervical spine. According to the authors of the study, if the neck is bent at 15%, the weight of the head increases to 27 pounds, and if the neck is bent even further, say 60%, the weight of the head becomes a whopping 60 pounds! No wonder these positions cause fatigue, pain and can lead to early degenerative wear.

What is Good Posture?

So what is good posture? Good posture is the position where the least strain is placed on supporting muscles, the head is upright, and the shoulders are back and relaxed. We all know that correct posture is better for the spine and back. The authors write, "In proper alignment, spinal stress diminished." They conclude, "It is the most efficient position for the spine."

There are many benefits associated with better posture. Not only does it influence your body language making you look more poised and confident, but studies have shown that good posture even elevates serotonin and testosterone levels while reducing cortisol, a hormone associated with stress. Studies have even shown that poor posture affects long-term mortality, substantially increasing the risk of dying from both heart disease and lung diseases.

Yoga Poses for Better Posture

Yoga poses that are particularly useful for improving posture use the muscles and joints that are associated with bad posture: shoulders, abdominals, and neck. These practices help restore strength and flexibility to the spine as well as opening up the chest and heart area and improving or even reversing bad posture. People who take care of their posture not only feel better and prevent chronic pain from developing but are less likely to lose balance and function as they become older.

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A New Epidemic? Study Links Text Neck to Spine Damage

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Do you spend your day hunched over a laptop or with your head bent at an unnatural angle while texting or checking email or Facebook updates on your smartphone? If so, pause for a second, sit up straight, and take notice: you may be setting yourself up for chronic neck pain and even spine damage.

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Think you can multitask? Try this activity with your students!

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Think you're the world's best multitasker? Know someone who thinks they can do many things at once? Here's your chance to put your skills to this test! In this video, I walk you through the all-new version of my myth of multitasking exercise.

1. Complete the exercise.

2. Share your result below.

3. Then invite at least two people you know to complete it, too! Compare your experiences with each other.

NOTE: This exercise is adapted from my time management keynote speech and workshop. There are some minor changes to clear up confusion that can happen in a short-video format.

Looking for the downloadable PDF? Here it is: The Myth of Multitasking Exercise - Revisited. As promised, here are the definitions of switchtasking and background tasking:

Switchtasking = attempting to do multiple attention-requiring tasks at the same time. Each switch in attention incurs switching cost, which includes a loss of time, decrease in performance, and an increase in stress levels. When most people say they are "multitasking," they are most often referring to switchtasking.

Background tasking = performing a task while something mindless or mundane occurs in the background. Examples include: delegating tasks to employees while you work on more valuable activities, putting a machine to work on a large job while you answer email, and exercising while you listen to music. Background tasking can improve productivity overall.

Multitasking is neither a good thing nor a bad thing...it simply does not exist! The question is, are you background tasking, which may improve productivity, or are you switchtasking, which always harms productivity? Please help me spread the word!

1. Complete the Myth of Multitasking exercise.

2. Share your result below.

3. Then invite at least two people you know to complete it, too!

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The Myth of Multitasking Exercise- Dave Crenshaw

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Bestselling author and small business speaker Dave Crenshaw shares the updated version of The Myth of Multitasking exercise.

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Can students REALLY scroll, listen to music AND learn at the same time?

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Don't believe the multitasking hype, scientists say. New research shows that we humans aren't as good as we think we are at doing several things at once. But it also highlights a human skill that gave us an evolutionary edge.

As technology allows people to do more tasks at the same time, the myth that we can multitask has never been stronger. But researchers say it's still a myth - and they have the data to prove it.

Humans, they say, don't do lots of things simultaneously. Instead, we switch our attention from task to task extremely quickly.

A case example, researchers say, is a group of people who focus not on a BlackBerry but on a blueberry - as in pancakes.
Diner Cook: A Task Master
To make it as a short-order cook, you must be able to keep a half-dozen orders in your head while cracking eggs, flipping pancakes, working the counter, and refilling coffee cups.

And at a restaurant like the Tastee Diner, in Bethesda, Md., the orders come in verbally, not on a ticket.

Chocolate chip pancakes, scrambled with sausage, order of french fries, rye toast - they're small tasks. On a busy day, though, they add up to a tough job for Shawn Swinson.

"My first month here, I was ready to walk out the door," he said.

Asked what it feels like when he's in the middle of rush hour, Swinson said, "Like you're in an insane asylum. It's almost unbearable."

Swinson has learned to handle the pressure. He's an island of calm, even when the orders are flying. But Swinson's boss, manager Frank Long, says very few people can keep up without losing their cool.

"It's singularly the most difficult job in this type of operation," Long said. "Four cooks. Five waitresses. Bus staff. Host. Getting them in and out."

Speed and accuracy are at a premium - especially when the customers are multitasking, too. Lunchtime is the worst, Long said.

"People may have an errand to run. Maybe go to the bank and pick up dry cleaning, and eat. All within an hour, whatever time they have."

It's all part of life these days. We answer e-mails while yapping on the phone. We schedule appointments while driving and listening to the radio. And it seems as if we're focusing on all these tasks simultaneously, as if we've become true masters of doing 10 things at once.

But, brain researchers say, that's not really the case.
Multitasking: A Human Delusion?
"People can't multitask very well, and when people say they can, they're deluding themselves," said neuroscientist Earl Miller. And, he said, "The brain is very good at deluding itself."

Miller, a Picower professor of neuroscience at MIT, says that for the most part, we simply can't focus on more than one thing at a time.

What we can do, he said, is shift our focus from one thing to the next with astonishing speed.

"Switching from task to task, you think you're actually paying attention to everything around you at the same time. But you're actually not," Miller said.

"You're not paying attention to one or two things simultaneously, but switching between them very rapidly."

Miller said there are several reasons the brain has to switch among tasks. One is that similar tasks compete to use the same part of the brain.

"Think about writing an e-mail and talking on the phone at the same time. Those things are nearly impossible to do at the same time," he said.

"You cannot focus on one while doing the other. That's because of what's called interference between the two tasks," Miller said. "They both involve communicating via speech or the written word, and so there's a lot of conflict between the two of them."

Researchers say they can actually see the brain struggling. And now they're trying to figure out the details of what's going on.
Putting The Mind To The Test
At a lab at the University of Michigan, researchers are using an MRI scanner to photograph test subjects' brains as they take on different tasks.

During a recent test, Daniel Weissman, the neuroscientist in charge of the experiment, explained that a man lying inside the scanner would be performing different tasks, depending on the color of two numbers he sees on a screen.

"If the two digits are one color - say, red - the subject decides which digit is numerically larger," Weissman said. "On the other hand, if the digits are a different color - say green - then the subject decides which digit is actually printed in a larger font size."

The tests can be tricky - which is the point. After an attempt, the technician told the test subject, "OK, do the same thing, except try to go faster this time."

MRI studies like this one, Weissman said, have shown that when the man in the scanner sees green, his brain has to pause before responding - to round up all the information it has about the green task.

When the man sees red, his brain pauses again - to push aside information about the green task and replace it with information about the red task.

If the tasks were simpler, they might not require this sort of full-throttle switching. But, Weissman said, even simple tasks can overwhelm the brain when we try to do several at once.

"If I'm out on a street corner and I'm looking for one friend who's wearing a red scarf, I might be able to pick out that friend," Weissman said.

"But if I'm looking for a friend who's wearing a red scarf on one street corner, and in the middle of the street I'm looking for another friend who's wearing a blue scarf - and on the other side of the street I'm looking for a friend wearing a green scarf - at some point, I can only divide my attention so much, and I begin to have trouble."

So the brain starts switching. Scan for red. Switch. Scan for blue. Switch. Scan for green. Switch.

The part of the brain that does this is called the "executive system." It's a bit like one of those cartoon conductors telling the orchestra: louder, softer, faster, slower. You come in here. You be quiet for a few measures.

The conductor in our heads lives in the brain's frontal lobes, basically above our eyes.

"Executive processes allow us to make plans for our future behaviors," Weissman said. "They allow us to exert some sort of voluntary control over our behavior."

The executive system also helps us achieve a goal by ignoring distractions.

"For example, if we're performing a task where we want to watch TV and ignore voices that are coming from, say, our children nearby," Weissman said, "our frontal region brain may configure the brain to prioritize visual information and dampen down auditory information."

And the brain's executive will keep us in that mode until we hear, say, one of our children screaming.

"These are the things that make us the most human," Weissman said. "We are not like jellyfish - it's not like when you poke us, we always do the same thing."
A Role In Evolution
Humans are also not like cats, or dogs, or even apes, when it comes to controlling how our brain responds, and what it responds to. Weissman says this skill probably evolved to help humans - who are pretty vulnerable, physically - to do things like hunt animals that are bigger and stronger.

"As hunters, you know, people had to hunt something, and keep track of where their friends were," Weissman said. "You've got to think about, 'What is that tiger going to do?' you know, and, 'I've got my group of friends' - and surround the tiger."

Weissman says that keeping track of all those things wouldn't be possible without the executive system in our frontal lobes.

Still, Weissman said, "There are lots of animals in the world that hunt without these increased abilities. So I wouldn't say that to hunt you have to have a lot of frontal development.

"But on the other hand, it helps. That's why humans have become dominant on the planet."

Dominant - and, perhaps, too confident in our own skill. Studies show that we frequently overestimate our ability to handle multiple tasks.

For early humans, that sort of miscalculation could have meant becoming a tiger's lunch. These days, the consequences are more likely to be stress, a blunder - or maybe a car crash.

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Don't believe the multitasking hype, scientists say. New research shows that we humans aren't as good as we think we are at doing several things at once - but it also found a skill that gives us an evolutionary edge. Researchers say humans are merely very good at switching their attention from task to task.

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How are phones affecting us physically?

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Nearly three years into the COVID-19 pandemic, screen usage has increased exponentially, especially among children. The average amount of time children spend staring at screens has risen 52 percent since the beginning of the pandemic, according to a recent study published in JAMA Pediatrics.

Even before the pandemic, the average American adult spent about 3 hours and 30 minutes a day using mobile internet in 2019, an increase of about 20 minutes from a year earlier, according to measurement company Zenith. (You probably already know this if you get one of those "screen time usage" reports weekly from your phone.)

Smartphones are an integral part of our lives, but what effect does all this scrolling and staring have on our brains? What can we do to protect ourselves and our children?

Here's what we know.

Smartphones May Affect How We Think

Although there is not yet clear evidence that smartphones have a long-term negative effect on the brain, health experts are concerned that excessive use can be harmful-especially to children whose brains are not yet fully developed.

For example, research has shown that smartphones may adversely affect cognition (but more study is needed to understand the connection). Cognition is the process of acquiring and applying knowledge through thought, experiences and the senses.

A study in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research found that cognitive capacity was significantly reduced whenever a smartphone is within reach, even when the phone is off.

With smartphones, you no longer need to memorize a phone number or find your way around town using a map-your smartphone does these things for you. Research shows this overreliance on your phone can lead to mental laziness.

Modern connectedness also could be rewiring our brains to constantly crave instant gratification.

"Social media, in my view, provides the user with inconsistent positive reinforcement, similar to gambling. When the user posts a message, the number of likes serve as a reward, and the chance of more likes increases with one more scroll or one more message. The user is not always rewarded with likes and positive responses, but these are quite satisfying when occurring. In fact, the user may unconsciously change their views to appease friends who provide likes, and select a friend population with shared values," says UNC Health neurologist Jorge L. Almodóvar-Suárez, MD.

Smartphones May Affect How We See

Since the beginning of the pandemic, there has been an increase in children with myopia (nearsightedness), says UNC Health neuro-ophthalmologist Maja Kostic, MD, PhD.

Nearsightedness is an eye condition in which people can view objects up close clearly, but things farther away appear blurry.

"We are currently doing studies to measure the effect of smartphone usage on children's long-distance vision," Dr. Kostic says. "If kids are looking at phones at a near distance for long hours without any break, then we think this could lead to more and more progression with myopia."

Smartphones Can Impair Social and Emotional Skills

The more time you spend looking at a screen, the less time you spend interacting in person with others. This makes it more difficult to establish interpersonal connections and strong relationships, which are important for mental health and the health of the community at large.

Using screens to zone out or decompress is fine in moderation, but there can be a negative effect if excessive.

"Anything that is done out of moderation is cause for concern," says UNC Health pediatric and adult neurosurgeon Carolyn Quinsey, MD. "For children, they are learning early in life to engage in passive activities instead of being actively engaged, which can become a habit as they grow older."

That lack of face-to-face interaction can lead to depression. Health experts are also concerned that excessive social media use-especially among teens-can lead to depression and anxiety.

"We know that social media can be linked to depression and anxiety," Dr. Almodóvar-Suárez says. "When we go into social media and post, we're posting a manufactured life-picking the best pictures of ourselves or the nicest picture from our trip. We're not showing an ugly part of the trip, like a four-hour bus ride or an unflattering picture. The problem is that when we see that from other people, we start to question why we can't be having that same experience. We feel like something is missing."

Concern about the long-term effects of technology and social media use on teen social and emotional development was the impetus for a new research center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that will study the impact of technology and social media on adolescent brains.

How to Protect Your Brain from Your Phone

You don't have to swear off your phone completely to improve your brain health. The important thing is to be aware of how you use your phone and other devices and to prioritize other activities and in-person interactions whenever possible.

"The first thing adults or children can do is create some awareness around it. A lot of people aren't aware of how much time they're spending on a particular activity that involves a screen," Dr. Quinsey says.

Most smartphones allow you to track your average screen time hours. Pay attention to how much time you are spending.

"If you feel like that's a problem for you or your child, make adjustments," Dr. Quinsey says.

"We can be more purposeful about the time that we're using a screen, rather than it being so habitual."

Some people find it helpful to delete social media apps from their phone or to download software that limits the time they're permitted on a particular site. Others designate hours of the day "phone-free" to protect family time. It can be empowering to trade screen time for reading a book or working on a hobby.

As you scale back your phone time, the increase in your mental clarity or mental health might be motivation enough to keep it up.

To avoid harmful side effects of screen usage on the eyes, adults and children should practice "screen hygiene," a set of best practices for using screens. To start, hold digital media at least 18 to 25 inches from your face.

Also, practice the 20/20/20 rule: Every 20 minutes, look up from your device at something 20 feet ahead for 20 seconds. This relaxes your eyes. For example, look out the window between rounds of Candy Crush or after a chapter or two of an e-book.

Forgoing any use of technology is not realistic, but it's important to set boundaries and time limits-your brain will thank you.
Talk to your doctor if you have concerns about the effect your devices are having on your brain. If you need a doctor, find one near you.
Jorge L. Almodóvar-Suárez, MD, is a UNC Health neurologist. He is division chief and an associate professor of General Neurology and Headache Disorders.

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What Your Phone Might Be Doing to Your Brain | UNC Health Talk

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Here's what researchers know about how smartphones affect your mind-and your eyes.

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We examine the raging debate about smartphones and teenage mental health.

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Read on to see what teens discover when they turn in their smartphones.

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When the only thing better than a flip phone is no phone at all.

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An oldie but goodie, I show this to my classes when we are establishing norms.

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I share this study with my students. We talk about bids and the different ways we can respond to bids - or opportunities to connect with another human. When we are constantly on our phones, we are missing this bids, and as a result, we are missing opportunities to make real connections.

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It's your wedding day. The universe starts a giant egg timer set for six years. When the egg timer goes off, you'll either be divorced or you won't. You've heard the rumor that 50% of marriages end in divorce, but someone knows some tips that can increase your odds of making it. More importantly, they know of a single strategy that would virtually guarantee that you would divorce before the timer went off. Would you want to know it?

Of course, you would. You would do whatever it takes to ensure that you protected yourself from divorce. It's no secret, and chances are, it's right in front of you.

Turning towards

As part of his research, Dr. John Gottman conducted a study with newlyweds, then followed up with them six years later. Many of the couples remained together. Many divorced. The couples that stayed married were much better at one thing: the third level of the Sound Relationship House, Turn Towards Instead of Away. At the six-year follow-up, couples that stayed married turned towards one another 86% of the time. Couples that divorced averaged only 33% of the time.

This is a pretty incredible piece of data. It suggests that there is something you can do today that will dramatically change the course of your relationship. More importantly, it suggests that there is something that you can not do that will lead to its demise. So, how do you turn towards instead of away? In order to understand turning, you have to first understand bids.

Turn towards what? Bids for connection

A bid is any attempt from one partner to another for attention, affirmation, affection, or any other positive connection. Bids show up in simple ways, a smile or wink, and more complex ways, like a request for advice or help. In general, women make more bids than men, but in the healthiest relationships, both partners are comfortable making all kinds of bids.

Bids can get tricky, however, and admittedly I sometimes miss more bids than I don't. Indeed many men struggle in this regard, so it's important to pay attention. Bids usually have a secondary layer. Call it the difference between text and subtext. A few examples to get your brain going:

It is important that you learn to recognize bids and that you commit to making them to one another. Make the word "bids" part of your conversation and perhaps name your bids toward one another. It's okay to say, "I'm making a bid for attention now" as you get to know each other in this early phase of your relationship. You can also practice discerning subtext together. Pick a show that is new to you both and watch it on mute. See if you can interpret the bids that the characters make based only on non-verbals. Once you start to get intentional about your bids, you can concentrate on "turning towards."

To "miss" a bid is to " turn away." Turning away can be devastating. It's even more devastating than "turning against" or rejecting the bid. Rejecting a bid at least provides the opportunity for continued engagement and repair. Missing the bid results in diminished bids, or worse, making bids for attention, enjoyment, and affection somewhere else.

How to turn towards? Pay attention to your partner

Turning towards starts with paying attention. Your work on bids will come in handy here. Simply recognizing that a bid was made opens the door to the response. If you pay attention, you'll respond to both the text and the subtext. As bids get more complicated, so will the nature of turning toward. For now, start simple. Take an inventory of the bids and turning in your relationship and share your responses with one another.

What do I know about how I make bids?

Could or should I get better at making bids? How?

How good am I at recognizing the difference between text and subtext?

What keeps me from making bids?

What is my impulse for turning?

Do I turn away or against more often than I turn towards?

When it comes to turning towards, am I closer to 33% or 86%?

What does it feel like when my partner doesn't turn towards me?

How can I get better at turning towards?

As you continue moving through life together, you will undoubtedly have to risk heading into more vulnerable territory. This will be easier if you've committed to building a solid friendship based on Building Love Maps, Sharing Fondness and Admiration, and Turning Towards Instead of Away.

Learn how to make your relationship work in the first Gottman Relationship Coach program. Unsure which Gottman Relationship Coach product is for you? Take our quiz!

The Marriage Minute is an email newsletter from The Gottman Institute that will improve your marriage in 60 seconds or less. Over 40 years of research with thousands of couples has proven a simple fact: small things often can create big changes over time. Got a minute? Sign up below.

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How do you turn towards instead of away? In order to understand turning, you have to first understand bids.

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This was interesting podcast for both teachers and parents.

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Project Zero Researchers Carrie James and Emily Weinstein, authors of Behind Their Screens: What Teens Are Facing (And Adults Are Missing), give the low-down on teens' behavior online. As part of a multiyear study, they surveyed more than 3,500 teens uncovering information about everything from why they sext to how they navigate friendship dilemmas online. What teens do and why is far more complex than many adults give them credit for. As a result, Weinstein and James say that adults are missing key opportunities to truly guide their teens, instead falling back on tired and useless messaging.

In this episode of the Harvard EdCast, they provide a glimpse into teens' online worlds and offer strategies for adults eager to connect with and help the young adults in their lives.

TRANSCRIPT

Jill Anderson: I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast.

What are teens doing on their smartphones all the time? That question is what drove Harvard researchers Emily Weinstein and Carrie James to find out what's happening behind teen screens. The answer is far more complicated than many adults realize. They surveyed more than 3,500 teens across the U.S. finding out everything from why they sext to how they navigate friendship dilemmas online. What really struck me about their research is as adults, we tend to offer useless advice and dismiss teen phone use as just an addiction. So parents are missing real opportunities to help teens, they say. I asked Emily to tell me more about the complex relationship teens have with their phones.

Emily Weinstein: We heard again and again from teens that they don't want to feel dysregulated when it comes to their technology use, and that they actually have pretty impressive, even amazing awareness of what tech habits they have that are serving them and the tech habits that they wish they could change. We had so many quotes from teens about just this feeling of, I don't know why, but this app, TikTok is running my life, or I keep falling asleep on social media and I wish I didn't. And what we found that's actually so powerful about that recognition is that adults often get really stuck in this position of being like a referee when it comes to teens technology use, where we're just blowing the whistle when kids do something wrong or calling teens out when they misstep. We get stuck in this position.

But when we recognize that actually teens concerns about their own habits sound a lot like the concerns that we have about their habits, we can start those conversations with much more of a, we're in this with you mindset, and be in this coaching role where instead of just blowing the whistle on things being wrong, we have conversations that start with a recognition that actually teens want to feel more agency and control over their tech habits and that we can really play an important role in helping them get there if we start with what they see and what they want for themselves instead of with the assumption that we have to be in this adversarial, constant battle with them over screen time.

Carrie James: Yeah, what's really helpful about that is that it leads us to a conversation where we recognize that we're all vulnerable to the pull of the screen in so many ways. And the tech features that social media companies build into apps and devices, they're really compelling. Things like infinite scrolls, you never reach the end of your feed or you want to see the latest, newest thing and notifications. We're all tempted and pulled in by that, but recognizing that that's one feature that all of us grapple with. But also that it's even harder for adolescents because of their developmental sensitivities to peer feedback and validation that leads them to feel much more challenged about resisting that pull to the screen.

Jill Anderson: I think a lot of adults can relate to that feeling as well. And I want to get back to the concerns and the awareness in a little bit. But I was struck by how much of a bad rap social media gets, almost like everyone points their fingers at it as the root of all causes of young people's problems. But your work is showing that there just isn't a one size fits all for how teens are responding to social media. You met a lot of teens who had positive affirming relationships with social, and of course you've met plenty of teens who had the opposite experience. Did that surprise you? And why is it so important that we make these distinctions in our teens?

Emily Weinstein: The details really matter when it comes to teen social media experiences, and we just saw that so clearly in our most recent research, we've seen that again and again that it's so important that adults actually tune into the particulars of what a teen is actually experiencing on social media and how they're feeling because of it. This is one of the reasons that actually a sole focus on screen time often falls short or a search for main effects might not seem as gratifying. The effect sizes might not be as big as we anticipate, and then we're wondering, why am I not seeing in the data what I feel like I know I see for this kid in my life, which is this really positive or really negative impact? And we really came to the sense from our data that teens experiences just differ so tremendously. And when you look at the details, it's obvious why, because you have teens who are bringing different sensitivities to their social media experiences, and then they are doing different things on social media.

So you have one teen who's spending an hour browsing, you know how to nail a skateboarding trick videos or learning about their interest in a particular language or culture or exploring book talk. And you have another teen who is spending it exactly that same amount of time, an hour, connecting with friends who make them feel really supported, and cousins who make them feel they're part of a really important powerful, strong family unit. And then you have a 13 who's spending that exact same amount of time browsing peers videos that just make them feel like, why does everyone have better friendships than me? Or why is it that I can't have access to these things, these relationships or these feelings or these experiences that my peers have? And then you have other teens who are spending an hour looking at misinformation and conspiracy theories. And when we look at these details, we suddenly see that actually they're having really different experiences on their screens and they're unsurprisingly feeling really differently as a result of those experiences.

Carrie James: There's one idea in various sciences called differential susceptibility that's been really, really relevant in media research. And there's been this powerful metaphor for distilling the essence of that. It's a floral metaphor, orchids versus dandelions. And if we think about it, orchids are very sensitive to different conditions, weather, climate and dandelions are much hardier flowers and they can weather an array of conditions.

And if as a parent you have two kids, you might notice that one is more orchid-like, and one is more dandelion-like. I definitely have two kids and that is the case for me in my parenting in my life. So similarly, if we blow that out and think about why it's so hard to make these really broad claims about the experience that teens in general are having about social media, the reality is that they're differently susceptible to the risks of social media. And it's important to know and tune into those details that Emily mentioned. Do you have a kid who's overall more sensitive or a kid who can weather the ups and downs of their lives in general? And then that's going to get amplified by social media. We think of social media as an amplifier, and the question is, what is it amplifying for your particular kid?

Emily Weinstein: One other piece here that's really important is that even knowing a kid has a particular sensitivity, we still need to have this disposition toward curiosity about their experiences because that interaction between sensitivities and content and onscreen experiences is relevant once more. You can imagine that if you have two teenagers who are struggling with body image issues, you might have one whose social media feed is filled with exactly the kinds of content that really reinforce body insecurity and feeling dissatisfied with their own body. And you might have another teen who has intentionally filled their whole feed with body positivity and inspiring content and things that make them feel much more comfortable in their own skin. And so even that shared sensitivity can play out in really different ways for kids depending on what they're doing on social media. So just once more, the details matter so much.

Jill Anderson: Is there a way as a parent that you can find out whether social media is helping or hurting your teen without breaching their privacy?

Carrie James: One thing is to lean into curiosity and importantly, non-judgmental curiosity. Trying to understand what's hard for teens, but also what's good and compelling about social media and other aspects of their digital lives. Asking about the good stuff first can actually be a really important power move, because if we only ask about what's hard, they'll see it as a leading question and they'll suspect that anything that they say that will confirm our worst instincts or suspicions that all of social media is bad and that teens are just having this really negative experience. So leaning into curiosity, non-judgmental curiosity and exploring both the ups and the downs is really important. Emily, what would you add? You want to bring in a couple of other rules of thumb?

Emily Weinstein: We have found that there is this magic formula of open-ended questions where you're not just asking a yes or no question, but really creating space for teens to share their perspectives. And then following with empathy and validation as the first impulse reaction. Accessing empathy has been something that we've been thinking and exploring a lot in our research. And one of the things we find is that one of the barriers to empathy for adults is often this feeling that we just want to roll our eyes. It feels dumb, like whatever dumb technology thing, and just say to our kids like, "Ugh, it just doesn't matter. Just get off TikTok, put down your phone. Don't worry about what people are doing on Snapchat." And often the what's new, the tech piece really distracts us from seeing the familiar feelings that are under whatever teens are grappling with.

And so when we actually search for the familiar, we realize things like, oh, it's not really Snapchat that's the problem, it's that my teen has just figured out that they were the only one of their friends not invited to the movies. Or it's not really just Instagram. It's that feeling really vulnerable as a teen feeling like you have this question about whether your friends really like you and how you fit into the world. That's really familiar and that's really hard. And social media is amplifying this reality, but it didn't create it. And when we find those familiar seeds of whatever is going on in our own experiences, we can tap empathy and then follow it with real validation in a genuine way that sort of paves the way for continued sharing and positive conversations.

Jill Anderson: You've already mentioned how teens are so much more aware, and they really are more savvy than we give them credit for. Parents seem to be taking almost the least helpful approach often, just telling your kid, You shouldn't sext because it's bad or it's going to ruin your life. Teens already know this. And knowing that, why do teens continue to sext and what do teens want to hear from their parents about sexting?

Carrie James: Yeah, sexting is a really hard topic, and as moms of daughters, Emily and I especially both feel that. But really slowing down and listening to teens, we learned a lot about their experiences and about how complicated it is. One thing that we heard is that there is a spectrum in terms of sexting. Like we unpack nine reasons why, for example, teens sext when they know that it can be a risky thing to do. And some of those reasons are really on the consensual and wanted end. They're really interested in exploring sexuality, they're curious, they want to feel closer to someone who they're talking with or flirting with or have a crush on, or they're in a relationship that's a relationship of trust and it's consensual and it's a positive experience. And we actually heard from teens, older teens in particular that there are plenty of stories where sexting happened, where it was in a relationship of trust and it was consensual and there are zero bad consequences.

So that's a part of their experience that if we don't look at and acknowledge then we don't really understand the full spectrum. Now we should be really worried about the other side of the spectrum, which is a real sense of pressure that teens can feel around asking for sext because boys, for example, feel like they should be asking or feeling like they should send a sext when they've been asked, because otherwise they will experience a negative consequence. They're feeling some sort of sense of threat. They're feeling in some cases, even blackmail, really, really negative experiences.

Emily Weinstein: A lot of teens told us that they feel tremendous pressure around sexting, as Carrie mentioned, that includes pressure to ask for nudes, pressure to send them even when they don't really want to. We also heard from teens about ways that adults impulses can get in our own ways of backfire. So if we say something to teens when something goes wrong, when a sext gets leaked, we double down on the message. See, this is why you should never ever send a nude picture in the first place. It could get leaked, it could ruin your whole reputation. One of the things that we heard from teens is that that message can actually reinforce a feeling that it is okay to forward someone else's nudes if you receive them, because the thinking can go like you should have known better. If it's really the fault of the person who sent it in the first place, then I'm not to blame for just sharing it on because they really should have known better.

And teens told us that they really need us to shift away from the message that is just don't send a sex and amplify two other messages in its place. One is, do not ask someone for a sext because it is extremely hard to say no, especially if the request is coming from someone who you like and you want to feel close to. So tell teens, don't ask for nudes. You put the other person in a really hard position. And then number two, if a picture is leaked, rather than doubling down on this message of that person should have known better, saying again and again to teens, it is never ever okay to forward on someone else's nude picture or share it with people who are not the intended audience.

If for any reason you receive one you absolutely cannot, should not forward it on to others. And those were two messages that teen said, we really feel like there's this void that we're not hearing these two things that are actually really, really important. I think kind of going along with that, we heard, especially from middle school girls, a lot of stress about the pressure around being asked for nudes. And our impulse there as we really engaged with teen's voices was that they really need strategies to help them turn down requests when they're coming and to feel really confident and empowered around having the skills to navigate those inbound requests.

Carrie James: What Emily sharing is so important, because we often just say, don't sext. And that's the beginning and the end of the conversation. And teens told us we need to do better around this. We really need to lean into what's much more complicated than just a warning not to sext.

Jill Anderson: Some of this is really interesting and reminds me a little bit of some of the narrative around consent and how you're supposed to be teaching strategies, at least to younger kids. It's like emphasized so much about consent and having conversations about it. Almost feels like a lot of this can be extensions of that conversation in some way or an ongoing conversation.

Emily Weinstein: Absolutely. We write in our work about the importance of consent as a frame, and how actually the language of consent has been really missing from a lot of conversations adults have with teens about sexting. And once we reintroduce it seems so obvious how some of the messages we were sending fall short and what else we might need to say.

Jill Anderson: You mentioned how teens have the same concerns that parents have, and I want to hear a little bit more about those concerns, because it doesn't seem super obvious, I think, as a parent, what they are.

Carrie James: One big area for this is the digital footprint. A big misconception that a lot of adults have is that teens really aren't aware that the things that they post online can exist forever and come back to haunt them. But again and again, teens told us things like if you post one thing on social media, you can't take it back. Or if someone puts something out there about you, it's too late, it's out there or there's something, it's been saved, it's been stored and you have no way of deleting it. There really was this anxiety and this sense of in some ways like resignation that this is the reality of the world that they're growing up in. So teens really harbor a lot of those concerns that adults have, and yet we know really well that their awareness doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to have a perfect "clean" digital footprint.

So what's going on here? There are a number of different things at play of certainly the social pulls, the more sort of immediate weighty pull of posting something to please and impress one's peers. That's a big thing that's at play for young people. There is also, more generally, the reality that teens are constantly recording and posting things about other teens. So their peers are posting things about them contributing to their co-authors of their digital footprint. So to a certain extent, the digital footprint of an individual teen is literally out of their control, really challenging and anxiety producing for them.

Emily Weinstein: We heard from teens that adults often contribute to this in ways that really undercut the messages we tell them are so important. I'm thinking of a teen who is talking about how she can sit in class and her teachers and people at her school will tell her, "You should never post anything that someone else wouldn't want online. You have to be really thoughtful about what other people do and don't want shared." And then her school account is posting pictures from her play practice that all the teens are really embarrassed by. Their eyes are closed, they look awkward, they feel uncomfortable, and they're like, I don't want that content online. And I think it seems so benign and we've understandably, I think in many cases, schools wanting to share or camps or parents wanting to share proud moments, wanting to share student work. We often are in this position of uploading drama rehearsal pictures or a picture from a sports game.

And we don't even think about what we're modeling around this idea of getting people's permission or making sure that what we put about people online is what they want there. So the realities are just really complicated. And then you layer onto this, that not only are teens in this sort of record everything, collect receipts culture where they're documenting screenshoting, but we also have this reality that the technologies have made it such that content persists and really can get wrenched out of time and place and context and pulls toward completely new meanings in the future. And that is so hard. It's hard even for my adult brain to really imagine how my every text message I send privately be screenshotted and then potentially uploaded in the future. And then what would someone think about that in 15 years from now? And then you layer onto that the reality that perspective taking skills and other parts of cognition are actually still developing for adolescents.

We're asking them to kind of do this herculean task by imagining every possible audience of every possible digital message they send or every possible picture of them that's taken. And Carrie and I just sat with so much discomfort as we were grappling with that in our own work and what the implications are for what we actually can and should say to teens. We certainly don't think that adults should just stop saying to teens think about what you post. Of course, we think that is such an important message. We just saw the many ways it can fall short and the ways that it's just not often enough for teens who are living in this really complex digital landscape.

Jill Anderson: It sounds like it's a lot less about limiting taking screens away, banishing certain things from teens as it is more about having these conversations and developing strategies as a parent, as a caretaker, guardian, whatever, to level up in a way and be able to meet your teen where they're at.

Carrie James: Absolutely, Jill. I think making sure our teens understand that there are strategies that can use privacy settings are an obvious one, but there are less obvious ones, like ways in which teens can use private story groups on Snapchat and Instagram and they do in order to segment their audiences and create some sort of privacy for some areas where they want to let loose. So, knowing whether your teen is tapping some of those affordances is really important. But also recognizing that they're not full proof. And the teens should be aware and they are aware based on our research that there are risks.

And so we actually need to expect and anticipate missteps. We need to acknowledge the reality that there are things that our kids are going to post that they're not going to necessarily feel great about and we need to be there for them when they stumble with great empathy, with encouragement around a growth mindset. We can help teens sort of write their story even just for themselves about their missteps and why they happened, but importantly for others in the future who may find the digital evidence. So I think we just need to shift our mindset away from protecting our kids from the risks at all costs and acknowledging that they're going to make mistakes and how can we coach them through this really difficult reality.

Emily Weinstein: Your question also just makes me think about something we heard from teens, which is that it's really complicated to opt out of social media and it's not without cost. And Carrie and I were just in a conversation with a couple of teens last week and they were talking about how this reality of FOMO is part of life when they opt out and when they opt in. Both said that they were late to the social media game for a variety of reasons. Like their friends were all using social media before them. And they said, "When my friends were on social media and I was having this FOMO experience, like I was left out all the time because there were inside jokes that were happening, there was communication, there were plans, there were logistics, there were sources of shared connection that I just wasn't part of and it made me feel less close to my friends."

And then when I started using social media, you feel like this sense of FOMO because you see everything everyone's doing and you're not always part of it and you have to figure out how to navigate that. And then on top of that, we hear from teens that group chats are key to the FOMO landscape and the social dynamics. So even if you're not on social media, you can still get wrapped up in some of the digital complexity of social life. Which is all to say that I think that so often and understandably we want to just know, "Oh, if I just keep my kid off social media until X age, I'll be doing them a favor." And we came away with this sense that yeah, there are cases where that is true, that we are doing kids a big favor by helping them delay social media, but it can be really complicated and we have to pay attention to what is going on in their social circle and what the implications are.

One other thing here that's kind of interesting is when kids are a little bit on the younger end of their teen years, it's totally appropriate and in many cases expected for parents to be much more involved in their social media live. So maybe I'm actually doing Instagram with my 14 year old, and I'm seeing that that's kind of our agreement. She's going to start using social media and I have the password or she has access to it and we look at it together and we're sort of co-constructing meaning. And then as teens get older, it's less and less comfortable and appropriate to be involved in their social media experiences. And so if we have a 17 year old starting to use social media for the first time, they can end up in this position where they're getting a lot less of that kind of coaching and intervention.

I'm not advocating that 14 year olds parents should be reading their Instagram messages or anything like that, or that we should be putting kids on social media younger. But I just think that some of these tensions are so important for us to at least grapple with and recognize that there aren't really answers here.

Jill Anderson: I just wonder if there's something that we should be doing for the younger kids. We do hear about nine year olds being on TikTok and five year olds getting their smart watches and things. So is there something else we should do for younger kids?

Emily Weinstein: There's one really important thing that we can all be doing and that is really thinking about what we're modeling in our own tech habits. And I think about this a lot because I have a almost three year old and she is so aware of the moments when I am distracted by my phone. And I have really tried in doing this research, one study I got to work on really demonstrated and just quantified the impacts of what some researchers are calling techno fear. This is when parents are distracted, when people are distracted by their phones and they pull us from connections with each other.

And there's really some indication that at all ages kids notice that. And it has negative impacts on the quality of our parent child relationships. And so, one of the things that we can start doing is just taking stock, taking note of our own tech habits, what we're modeling, and then naming aloud the struggle that we feel and the strategies we're using. So in my case, even with a three year old that might look like saying, Oh sorry, I am feeling really distracted by my phone right now. I am going to go put it in the other room so that I can focus on the game we're playing together. And just recognizing that modeling that physical separation, modeling that it's okay to feel this pull and that there are things we can do because we really want to prioritize the relationship. That's a really powerful and simple intervention.

Carrie James: There are other aspects of modeling too, in terms of our digital lives and those have to do more with social media. And so we can model for our kids the kinds of real sort red flag moments. We can look at our own phones and say, Wow, I see something sort of troubling here and name that out loud. Or I'm noticing that everyone on my social media feed looks like they're living their best life. That can't really be true, can it? So really modeling that sort of pause point to wonder what's going on on the one hand. And on the other hand, to really notice that social media can be a highlight reel and really invite that critical lens. And we can do that from even when our kids pre-social media, because there's so much content that they're looking at. If they have an iPad or YouTube, they see stuff online even if they don't have their own social media accounts. So that modeling in a variety of different ways can start early.

Jill Anderson: Well, thank you so much Emily and Carrie. This was amazing. Lots of useful things in this conversation.

Emily Weinstein: Thanks for having us, Jill.

Carrie James: Thank you, Jill.

Jill Anderson: Carrie James and Emily Weinstein are principal investigators at Harvard's Project Zero. They are the authors of the recent book, Behind Their Screens, What Teens are Facing (and Adults Are Missing). I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast produced by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Thanks for listening.

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Harvard researchers Emily Weinstein and Carrie James tell us what teens are really doing while on their phones.

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Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech

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Amid growing concern over social media's impact and influence on today's youth, a new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. teens finds that many young people acknowledge the unique challenges - and benefits - of growing up in the digital age.

Today, social media use is nearly universal among teens. While notable shares say they at times feel overwhelmed by the drama on social media and pressure to construct only positive images of themselves, they simultaneously credit these online platforms with several positive outcomes - including strengthening friendships, exposing them to different viewpoints and helping people their age support causes they care about.

Roughly eight-in-ten teens ages 13 to 17 (81%) say social media makes them feel more connected to what's going on in their friends' lives, while around two-thirds say these platforms make them feel as if they have people who will support them through tough times. And by relatively substantial margins, teens tend to associate their social media use with positive rather than negative emotions, such as feeling included rather than excluded (71% vs. 25%) or feeling confident rather than insecure (69% vs. 26%).

Young people also believe social media helps teens become more civically minded and exposes them to greater diversity - either through the people they interact with or the viewpoints they come across. Roughly two-thirds of teens say these sites help people their age interact with individuals from diverse backgrounds, find different points of view or show their support for causes or issues. And they see digital environments as important spaces for youth to connect with their friends and interact with others who share similar interests. For example, 60% of teens say they spend time with their friends online on a daily or nearly daily basis, and 77% say they ever spend time in online groups and forums.

The survey also illustrates the ways in which teens navigate social norms around what - and how often - they post to these sites. It is much more common for young people to post about their accomplishments or family life than to discuss their personal problems or political beliefs on social media. And while Millennials - some of whom are just older than teens - have been deemed the "selfie generation," roughly half of today's teens say they rarely (25%) or never (26%) post selfies on social media.

For some teens, sharing their life online can come with added social burdens: Around four-in-ten say they feel pressure to only post content on social media that makes them look good to others (43%) or share things that will get a lot of likes or comments (37%).

At the same time, the online environment for today's teens can be hostile and drama-filled - even if these incidents may fall short of more severe forms of cyberbullying. Some 45% of teens say they feel overwhelmed by all the drama on social media, with 13% saying they feel this way "a lot." And a similar share of teens (44%) say they often or sometimes unfriend or unfollow others on social media. When asked why they've digitally disconnected from others, 78% of this group report doing so because people created too much drama, while 52% cite the bullying of them or others.

These are some of the key findings from the Center's survey of 743 teens, ages 13 to 17, conducted March 7-April 10, 2018. Throughout the report, "teens" refers to those ages 13 to 17.

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Teens' Social Media Habits and Experiences

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Teens credit social media for helping to build stronger friendships and exposing them to a more diverse world, but they express concern that these sites lead to drama and social pressure.

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What habits can we help our students develop with respect to social media?

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If you thought you could coast when it comes to talking to your younger child about social media, think again. Your tween may be counting down the days until they turn 13. Not only do they officially become a teenager, but they are also now technically allowed to use social media accounts like Instagram.

If it were up to the country's top doctor though, 13 is still too young for children to be on social media. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy says kids this age are still developing their identities, and the environment on social media often creates a distorted view of self-worth and relationships. The Surgeon General adds he knows it's hard to keep kids off social media due to its popularity. But, he suggests parents create a united front and not allow their kids to get accounts until later in their teenage years.

Still, children will find a way online anyway. The number of children under 13 using fake birthdays and a parent's email address to create accounts on popular social media sites (whether they have permission or not) is a bit startling.

According to 2022 research from Ofcom, the regulator for communications services in the United Kingdom, 33% of parents of children ages 5 to 7 said their child had at least one social media account. About 60% of children ages 8 to 11 owned an account. That means instead of kickball, conversations at recess for your fourth grader may very well be focused more on who posted what on Instagram or TikTok last night. Scary, we know.

That's why the American Psychological Association (APA) came up with a new set of guidelines for parents and children to help them create safe social media habits.

Guidelines for Safe Social Media Usage

We all know teens and tweens are going to use social media no matter what, so it's important to set boundaries and expectations. That was the basis for the APA's new recommendations on social media use. The APA's advisory group came up with 10 recommendations.

One of the first points the APA makes is that kids should have some kind of social media literacy training. "Social media is neither inherently harmful nor beneficial to our youth," APA President Thema Bryant, Ph.D. says in a news release. "Just as we require young people to be trained in order to get a driver's license, our youth need instruction in the safe and healthy use of social media."

Among the other recommendations, the APA says social media use should be tailored to kids' developmental capabilities. For kids on the younger side, adults should closely monitor their usage, which includes discussions around the content they are seeing. Tweens and teens should also be limited in how they're using social media to compare beauty and appearance, as well as be monitored for any signs of problematic social media use, which may interfere with their daily routines, sleep, or physical activity.

"We hope these recommendations will be helpful as we all try to keep pace with the rapidly shifting social media ecosystem," says APA CEO Arthur C. Evans Jr., Ph.D. in the news release. Still, the APA says more investment is needed in research to further determine the impact of social media on our young people.

Positives of Social Media for Kids

There are undoubtedly perks to having kids of the proper age and with parental consent connecting with their peers on social media. Even the APA acknowledges there are benefits, including promoting healthy socialization.

Platforms like Instagram are full of inspiration and allow kids to creatively express themselves. But parents should also be aware of potential exposure to cyberbullying and inappropriate content. Younger children in particular may not realize the consequences of their online actions, which may put them in compromising situations. These are risks that the popular photo-sharing app is taking seriously.

Over the years, Instagram has unveiled numerous safety upgrades to protect kids and teens online. Some recent implementations: an education hub for parents, supervision tools, automatic private accounts for young users, a "Take a Break" feature that discourages endless scrolling, and more.

But Eddie Ruvinsky, director of engineering at Instagram, says monitoring isn't the end-all solution. "It's really about making sure that you have trust and you have ongoing dialogue for any activity that they do," he says.

Here are a few tips to get you started when it comes to teaching your child good social media habits.

Start Talking About Social Media Early

Ana Homayoun, M.A., P.P.S, a social media expert and the author of Social Media Wellness: Helping Tweens and Teens Thrive in an Unbalanced Digital World, who worked with Instagram to create parental safety guides, says parents should start the conversation around social media early. "Even if kids aren't on social media, many are online from an early age and using different websites," she says. "In my experience, kids aren't being informed about Instagram and other social media apps from their parents-they are learning from friends, peers, older siblings, and other influencers-so it's important that parents take an active role in encouraging conversations."

Make a Game Plan

"I encourage coming from a place of curiosity and asking open-ended questions to help children identify why they want to join Instagram, what they think a positive experience on Instagram would look like for them, and who they could turn to if something feels uncomfortable and doesn't go as planned," says Homayoun. "Doing so allows them to proactively think about how they would define and create a positive online user experience," She suggests using the three S's-healthy socialization, effective self-regulation, and overall safety-as a guide for framing the discussion.

Prioritize Privacy

"A lot of people don't always know they have the ability to be private on Instagram," says Lori Malahy, research lead at Instagram. Turning your account on "private" mode means that only approved followers can view, comment, and like your content. This could prevent your child's personal information from ending up in the wrong hands. Take a cue from Dan Zigmond, former director of analytics at Instagram, who required his kids to have a private account and personally know all their followers. (Note that Instagram automatically signs up teens for private accounts).

Enforce Good Social Media Etiquette

Receiving mean comments on social media can hurt a child's self esteem-and writing the comments can get them into trouble. Talk with your child about proper social media etiquette, and utilize the tools outlined in Instagram's resource guide. For example, the app lets you filter out offensive or inappropriate words from your comments.

Set Time Limits

Tweens are still developing self-discipline, so it's not unusual for them to spend hours on social media platforms. Work together to determine an appropriate amount of time they should spend on apps each day, whether it's 15 minutes or one hour. You can also take advantage of Instagram's Activity Dashboard, which lets you set daily time limit reminders, mute push notifications, and more.

Teach Kids Accountability

Cyberbullying is increasingly common nowadays. According to the latest Youth Risk Behavior Survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 16% of surveyed high school students said they were electronically bullied in the previous 12 months. That percentage goes up for those students who identify as female or LGBTQ+.

Thankfully, Instagram lets users control bullying by removing hateful comments, reporting negative behavior, and blocking individuals. "One of the most important things I'd like my son to understand is that things that happen online can affect how people feel offline," says Ian Spalter, former director of design at Instagram. "It's really important for them to take that into account with whatever actions they take online."

Practice What You Preach

You know that kids are sponges, and they're constantly learning by example. By practicing positive social media habits yourself, you're setting up your children for a rewarding and inspiring experience.

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Why It's Never Too Early to Teach Your Child Good Social Media Habits

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Teens and even tweens are going to use social media no matter what. The American Psychological Association issues new guidelines for parents and children to stay safe online.

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With fewer distractions, we can help our students become better listeners and more effective communicators.

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5 ways to listen better | Julian Treasure | TED

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Fantastic and eerily prescient article about the social/emotional impact of screens (in general and in education) originally published in 2017. Feels like it could have been written this week.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/

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More comfortable online than out partying, post-Millennials are safer, physically, than adolescents have ever been. But they're on the brink of a mental-health crisis.

One day last summer, around noon, I called Athena, a 13-year-old who lives in Houston, Texas. She answered her phone-she's had an iPhone since she was 11-sounding as if she'd just woken up. We chatted about her favorite songs and TV shows, and I asked her what she likes to do with her friends. "We go to the mall," she said. "Do your parents drop you off?," I asked, recalling my own middle-school days, in the 1980s, when I'd enjoy a few parent-free hours shopping with my friends. "No-I go with my family," she replied. "We'll go with my mom and brothers and walk a little behind them. I just have to tell my mom where we're going. I have to check in every hour or every 30 minutes."

Those mall trips are infrequent-about once a month. More often, Athena and her friends spend time together on their phones, unchaperoned. Unlike the teens of my generation, who might have spent an evening tying up the family landline with gossip, they talk on Snapchat, the smartphone app that allows users to send pictures and videos that quickly disappear. They make sure to keep up their Snapstreaks, which show how many days in a row they have Snapchatted with each other. Sometimes they save screenshots of particularly ridiculous pictures of friends. "It's good blackmail," Athena said. (Because she's a minor, I'm not using her real name.) She told me she'd spent most of the summer hanging out alone in her room with her phone. That's just the way her generation is, she said. "We didn't have a choice to know any life without iPads or iPhones. I think we like our phones more than we like actual people."

I've been researching generational differences for 25 years, starting when I was a 22-year-old doctoral student in psychology. Typically, the characteristics that come to define a generation appear gradually, and along a continuum. Beliefs and behaviors that were already rising simply continue to do so. Millennials, for instance, are a highly individualistic generation, but individualism had been increasing since the Baby Boomers turned on, tuned in, and dropped out. I had grown accustomed to line graphs of trends that looked like modest hills and valleys. Then I began studying Athena's generation.

Around 2012, I noticed abrupt shifts in teen behaviors and emotional states. The gentle slopes of the line graphs became steep mountains and sheer cliffs, and many of the distinctive characteristics of the Millennial generation began to disappear. In all my analyses of generational data-some reaching back to the 1930s-I had never seen anything like it.
The allure of independence, so powerful to previous generations, holds less sway over today's teens.
At first I presumed these might be blips, but the trends persisted, across several years and a series of national surveys. The changes weren't just in degree, but in kind. The biggest difference between the Millennials and their predecessors was in how they viewed the world; teens today differ from the Millennials not just in their views but in how they spend their time. The experiences they have every day are radically different from those of the generation that came of age just a few years before them.

What happened in 2012 to cause such dramatic shifts in behavior? It was after the Great Recession, which officially lasted from 2007 to 2009 and had a starker effect on Millennials trying to find a place in a sputtering economy. But it was exactly the moment when the proportion of Americans who owned a smartphone surpassed 50 percent.

The more I pored over yearly surveys of teen attitudes and behaviors, and the more I talked with young people like Athena, the clearer it became that theirs is a generation shaped by the smartphone and by the concomitant rise of social media. I call them iGen. Born between 1995 and 2012, members of this generation are growing up with smartphones, have an Instagram account before they start high school, and do not remember a time before the internet. The Millennials grew up with the web as well, but it wasn't ever-present in their lives, at hand at all times, day and night. iGen's oldest members were early adolescents when the iPhone was introduced, in 2007, and high-school students when the iPad entered the scene, in 2010. A 2017 survey of more than 5,000 American teens found that three out of four owned an iPhone.

The advent of the smartphone and its cousin the tablet was followed quickly by hand-wringing about the deleterious effects of "screen time." But the impact of these devices has not been fully appreciated, and goes far beyond the usual concerns about curtailed attention spans. The arrival of the smartphone has radically changed every aspect of teenagers' lives, from the nature of their social interactions to their mental health. These changes have affected young people in every corner of the nation and in every type of household. The trends appear among teens poor and rich; of every ethnic background; in cities, suburbs, and small towns. Where there are cell towers, there are teens living their lives on their smartphone.

To those of us who fondly recall a more analog adolescence, this may seem foreign and troubling. The aim of generational study, however, is not to succumb to nostalgia for the way things used to be; it's to understand how they are now. Some generational changes are positive, some are negative, and many are both. More comfortable in their bedrooms than in a car or at a party, today's teens are physically safer than teens have ever been. They're markedly less likely to get into a car accident and, having less of a taste for alcohol than their predecessors, are less susceptible to drinking's attendant ills.

Psychologically, however, they are more vulnerable than Millennials were: Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011. It's not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades. Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones.

Even when a seismic event-a war, a technological leap, a free concert in the mud-plays an outsize role in shaping a group of young people, no single factor ever defines a generation. Parenting styles continue to change, as do school curricula and culture, and these things matter. But the twin rise of the smartphone and social media has caused an earthquake of a magnitude we've not seen in a very long time, if ever. There is compelling evidence that the devices we've placed in young people's hands are having profound effects on their lives-and making them seriously unhappy.

In the early 1970s, the photographer Bill Yates shot a series of portraits at the Sweetheart Roller Skating Rink in Tampa, Florida. In one, a shirtless teen stands with a large bottle of peppermint schnapps stuck in the waistband of his jeans. In another, a boy who looks no older than 12 poses with a cigarette in his mouth. The rink was a place where kids could get away from their parents and inhabit a world of their own, a world where they could drink, smoke, and make out in the backs of their cars. In stark black-and-white, the adolescent Boomers gaze at Yates's camera with the self-confidence born of making your own choices-even if, perhaps especially if, your parents wouldn't think they were the right ones.

Fifteen years later, during my own teenage years as a member of Generation X, smoking had lost some of its romance, but independence was definitely still in. My friends and I plotted to get our driver's license as soon as we could, making DMV appointments for the day we turned 16 and using our newfound freedom to escape the confines of our suburban neighborhood. Asked by our parents, "When will you be home?," we replied, "When do I have to be?"

But the allure of independence, so powerful to previous generations, holds less sway over today's teens, who are less likely to leave the house without their parents. The shift is stunning: 12th-graders in 2015 were going out less often than eighth-graders did as recently as 2009.

Today's teens are also less likely to date. The initial stage of courtship, which Gen Xers called "liking" (as in "Ooh, he likes you!"), kids now call "talking"-an ironic choice for a generation that prefers texting to actual conversation. After two teens have "talked" for a while, they might start dating. But only about 56 percent of high-school seniors in 2015 went out on dates; for Boomers and Gen Xers, the number was about 85 percent.

The decline in dating tracks with a decline in sexual activity. The drop is the sharpest for ninth-graders, among whom the number of sexually active teens has been cut by almost 40 percent since 1991. The average teen now has had sex for the first time by the spring of 11th grade, a full year later than the average Gen Xer. Fewer teens having sex has contributed to what many see as one of the most positive youth trends in recent years: The teen birth rate hit an all-time low in 2016, down 67 percent since its modern peak, in 1991.

Even driving, a symbol of adolescent freedom inscribed in American popular culture, from Rebel Without a Cause to Ferris Bueller's Day Off, has lost its appeal for today's teens. Nearly all Boomer high-school students had their driver's license by the spring of their senior year; more than one in four teens today still lack one at the end of high school. For some, Mom and Dad are such good chauffeurs that there's no urgent need to drive. "My parents drove me everywhere and never complained, so I always had rides," a 21-year-old student in San Diego told me. "I didn't get my license until my mom told me I had to because she could not keep driving me to school." She finally got her license six months after her 18th birthday. In conversation after conversation, teens described getting their license as something to be nagged into by their parents-a notion that would have been unthinkable to previous generations.

Independence isn't free-you need some money in your pocket to pay for gas, or for that bottle of schnapps. In earlier eras, kids worked in great numbers, eager to finance their freedom or prodded by their parents to learn the value of a dollar. But iGen teens aren't working (or managing their own money) as much. In the late 1970s, 77 percent of high-school seniors worked for pay during the school year; by the mid-2010s, only 55 percent did. The number of eighth-graders who work for pay has been cut in half. These declines accelerated during the Great Recession, but teen employment has not bounced back, even though job availability has.

Of course, putting off the responsibilities of adulthood is not an iGen innovation. Gen Xers, in the 1990s, were the first to postpone the traditional markers of adulthood. Young Gen Xers were just about as likely to drive, drink alcohol, and date as young Boomers had been, and more likely to have sex and get pregnant as teens. But as they left their teenage years behind, Gen Xers married and started careers later than their Boomer predecessors had.

Gen X managed to stretch adolescence beyond all previous limits: Its members started becoming adults earlier and finished becoming adults later. Beginning with Millennials and continuing with iGen, adolescence is contracting again-but only because its onset is being delayed. Across a range of behaviors-drinking, dating, spending time unsupervised- 18-year-olds now act more like 15-year-olds used to, and 15-year-olds more like 13-year-olds. Childhood now stretches well into high school.

Why are today's teens waiting longer to take on both the responsibilities and the pleasures of adulthood? Shifts in the economy, and parenting, certainly play a role. In an information economy that rewards higher education more than early work history, parents may be inclined to encourage their kids to stay home and study rather than to get a part-time job. Teens, in turn, seem to be content with this homebody arrangement-not because they're so studious, but because their social life is lived on their phone. They don't need to leave home to spend time with their friends.

If today's teens were a generation of grinds, we'd see that in the data. But eighth-, 10th-, and 12th-graders in the 2010s actually spend less time on homework than Gen X teens did in the early 1990s. (High-school seniors headed for four-year colleges spend about the same amount of time on homework as their predecessors did.) The time that seniors spend on activities such as student clubs and sports and exercise has changed little in recent years. Combined with the decline in working for pay, this means iGen teens have more leisure time than Gen X teens did, not less.

So what are they doing with all that time? They are on their phone, in their room, alone and often distressed.

One of the ironies of iGen life is that despite spending far more time under the same roof as their parents, today's teens can hardly be said to be closer to their mothers and fathers than their predecessors were. "I've seen my friends with their families-they don't talk to them," Athena told me. "They just say 'Okay, okay, whatever' while they're on their phones. They don't pay attention to their family." Like her peers, Athena is an expert at tuning out her parents so she can focus on her phone. She spent much of her summer keeping up with friends, but nearly all of it was over text or Snapchat. "I've been on my phone more than I've been with actual people," she said. "My bed has, like, an imprint of my body."

In this, too, she is typical. The number of teens who get together with their friends nearly every day dropped by more than 40 percent from 2000 to 2015; the decline has been especially steep recently. It's not only a matter of fewer kids partying; fewer kids are spending time simply hanging out. That's something most teens used to do: nerds and jocks, poor kids and rich kids, C students and A students. The roller rink, the basketball court, the town pool, the local necking spot-they've all been replaced by virtual spaces accessed through apps and the web.

You might expect that teens spend so much time in these new spaces because it makes them happy, but most data suggest that it does not. The Monitoring the Future survey, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and designed to be nationally representative, has asked 12th-graders more than 1,000 questions every year since 1975 and queried eighth- and 10th-graders since 1991. The survey asks teens how happy they are and also how much of their leisure time they spend on various activities, including nonscreen activities such as in-person social interaction and exercise, and, in recent years, screen activities such as using social media, texting, and browsing the web. The results could not be clearer: Teens who spend more time than average on screen activities are more likely to be unhappy, and those who spend more time than average on nonscreen activities are more likely to be happy.

There's not a single exception. All screen activities are linked to less happiness, and all nonscreen activities are linked to more happiness. Eighth-graders who spend 10 or more hours a week on social media are 56 percent more likely to say they're unhappy than those who devote less time to social media. Admittedly, 10 hours a week is a lot. But those who spend six to nine hours a week on social media are still 47 percent more likely to say they are unhappy than those who use social media even less. The opposite is true of in-person interactions. Those who spend an above-average amount of time with their friends in person are 20 percent less likely to say they're unhappy than those who hang out for a below-average amount of time.
The more time teens spend looking at screens, the more likely they are to report symptoms of depression.
If you were going to give advice for a happy adolescence based on this survey, it would be straightforward: Put down the phone, turn off the laptop, and do something-anything-that does not involve a screen. Of course, these analyses don't unequivocally prove that screen time causes unhappiness; it's possible that unhappy teens spend more time online. But recent research suggests that screen time, in particular social-media use, does indeed cause unhappiness. One study asked college students with a Facebook page to complete short surveys on their phone over the course of two weeks. They'd get a text message with a link five times a day, and report on their mood and how much they'd used Facebook. The more they'd used Facebook, the unhappier they felt, but feeling unhappy did not subsequently lead to more Facebook use.

Social-networking sites like Facebook promise to connect us to friends. But the portrait of iGen teens emerging from the data is one of a lonely, dislocated generation. Teens who visit social-networking sites every day but see their friends in person less frequently are the most likely to agree with the statements "A lot of times I feel lonely," "I often feel left out of things," and "I often wish I had more good friends." Teens' feelings of loneliness spiked in 2013 and have remained high since.

This doesn't always mean that, on an individual level, kids who spend more time online are lonelier than kids who spend less time online. Teens who spend more time on social media also spend more time with their friends in person, on average-highly social teens are more social in both venues, and less social teens are less so. But at the generational level, when teens spend more time on smartphones and less time on in-person social interactions, loneliness is more common.

So is depression. Once again, the effect of screen activities is unmistakable: The more time teens spend looking at screens, the more likely they are to report symptoms of depression. Eighth-graders who are heavy users of social media increase their risk of depression by 27 percent, while those who play sports, go to religious services, or even do homework more than the average teen cut their risk significantly.

Teens who spend three hours a day or more on electronic devices are 35 percent more likely to have a risk factor for suicide, such as making a suicide plan. (That's much more than the risk related to, say, watching TV.) One piece of data that indirectly but stunningly captures kids' growing isolation, for good and for bad: Since 2007, the homicide rate among teens has declined, but the suicide rate has increased. As teens have started spending less time together, they have become less likely to kill one another, and more likely to kill themselves. In 2011, for the first time in 24 years, the teen suicide rate was higher than the teen homicide rate.

Depression and suicide have many causes; too much technology is clearly not the only one. And the teen suicide rate was even higher in the 1990s, long before smartphones existed. Then again, about four times as many Americans now take antidepressants, which are often effective in treating severe depression, the type most strongly linked to suicide.

What's the connection between smartphones and the apparent psychological distress this generation is experiencing? For all their power to link kids day and night, social media also exacerbate the age-old teen concern about being left out. Today's teens may go to fewer parties and spend less time together in person, but when they do congregate, they document their hangouts relentlessly-on Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook. Those not invited to come along are keenly aware of it. Accordingly, the number of teens who feel left out has reached all-time highs across age groups. Like the increase in loneliness, the upswing in feeling left out has been swift and significant.

This trend has been especially steep among girls. Forty-eight percent more girls said they often felt left out in 2015 than in 2010, compared with 27 percent more boys. Girls use social media more often, giving them additional opportunities to feel excluded and lonely when they see their friends or classmates getting together without them. Social media levy a psychic tax on the teen doing the posting as well, as she anxiously awaits the affirmation of comments and likes. When Athena posts pictures to Instagram, she told me, "I'm nervous about what people think and are going to say. It sometimes bugs me when I don't get a certain amount of likes on a picture."

Girls have also borne the brunt of the rise in depressive symptoms among today's teens. Boys' depressive symptoms increased by 21 percent from 2012 to 2015, while girls' increased by 50 percent-more than twice as much. The rise in suicide, too, is more pronounced among girls. Although the rate increased for both sexes, three times as many 12-to-14-year-old girls killed themselves in 2015 as in 2007, compared with twice as many boys. The suicide rate is still higher for boys, in part because they use more-lethal methods, but girls are beginning to close the gap.

These more dire consequences for teenage girls could also be rooted in the fact that they're more likely to experience cyberbullying. Boys tend to bully one another physically, while girls are more likely to do so by undermining a victim's social status or relationships. Social media give middle- and high-school girls a platform on which to carry out the style of aggression they favor, ostracizing and excluding other girls around the clock.

Social-media companies are of course aware of these problems, and to one degree or another have endeavored to prevent cyberbullying. But their various motivations are, to say the least, complex. A recently leaked Facebook document indicated that the company had been touting to advertisers its ability to determine teens' emotional state based on their on-site behavior, and even to pinpoint "moments when young people need a confidence boost." Facebook acknowledged that the document was real, but denied that it offers "tools to target people based on their emotional state."

In July 2014, a 13-year-old girl in North Texas woke to the smell of something burning. Her phone had overheated and melted into the sheets. National news outlets picked up the story, stoking readers' fears that their cellphone might spontaneously combust. To me, however, the flaming cellphone wasn't the only surprising aspect of the story. Why, I wondered, would anyone sleep with her phone beside her in bed? It's not as though you can surf the web while you're sleeping. And who could slumber deeply inches from a buzzing phone?

Curious, I asked my undergraduate students at San Diego State University what they do with their phone while they sleep. Their answers were a profile in obsession. Nearly all slept with their phone, putting it under their pillow, on the mattress, or at the very least within arm's reach of the bed. They checked social media right before they went to sleep, and reached for their phone as soon as they woke up in the morning (they had to-all of them used it as their alarm clock). Their phone was the last thing they saw before they went to sleep and the first thing they saw when they woke up. If they woke in the middle of the night, they often ended up looking at their phone. Some used the language of addiction. "I know I shouldn't, but I just can't help it," one said about looking at her phone while in bed. Others saw their phone as an extension of their body-or even like a lover: "Having my phone closer to me while I'm sleeping is a comfort."

It may be a comfort, but the smartphone is cutting into teens' sleep: Many now sleep less than seven hours most nights. Sleep experts say that teens should get about nine hours of sleep a night; a teen who is getting less than seven hours a night is significantly sleep deprived. Fifty-seven percent more teens were sleep deprived in 2015 than in 1991. In just the four years from 2012 to 2015, 22 percent more teens failed to get seven hours of sleep.

The increase is suspiciously timed, once again starting around when most teens got a smartphone. Two national surveys show that teens who spend three or more hours a day on electronic devices are 28 percent more likely to get less than seven hours of sleep than those who spend fewer than three hours, and teens who visit social-media sites every day are 19 percent more likely to be sleep deprived. A meta-analysis of studies on electronic-device use among children found similar results: Children who use a media device right before bed are more likely to sleep less than they should, more likely to sleep poorly, and more than twice as likely to be sleepy during the day.
I've observed my toddler, barely old enough to walk, confidently swiping her way through an iPad.
Electronic devices and social media seem to have an especially strong ability to disrupt sleep. Teens who read books and magazines more often than the average are actually slightly less likely to be sleep deprived-either reading lulls them to sleep, or they can put the book down at bedtime. Watching TV for several hours a day is only weakly linked to sleeping less. But the allure of the smartphone is often too much to resist.

Sleep deprivation is linked to myriad issues, including compromised thinking and reasoning, susceptibility to illness, weight gain, and high blood pressure. It also affects mood: People who don't sleep enough are prone to depression and anxiety. Again, it's difficult to trace the precise paths of causation. Smartphones could be causing lack of sleep, which leads to depression, or the phones could be causing depression, which leads to lack of sleep. Or some other factor could be causing both depression and sleep deprivation to rise. But the smartphone, its blue light glowing in the dark, is likely playing a nefarious role.

The correlations between depression and smartphone use are strong enough to suggest that more parents should be telling their kids to put down their phone. As the technology writer Nick Bilton has reported, it's a policy some Silicon Valley executives follow. Even Steve Jobs limited his kids' use of the devices he brought into the world.

What's at stake isn't just how kids experience adolescence. The constant presence of smartphones is likely to affect them well into adulthood. Among people who suffer an episode of depression, at least half become depressed again later in life. Adolescence is a key time for developing social skills; as teens spend less time with their friends face-to-face, they have fewer opportunities to practice them. In the next decade, we may see more adults who know just the right emoji for a situation, but not the right facial expression.

I realize that restricting technology might be an unrealistic demand to impose on a generation of kids so accustomed to being wired at all times. My three daughters were born in 2006, 2009, and 2012. They're not yet old enough to display the traits of iGen teens, but I have already witnessed firsthand just how ingrained new media are in their young lives. I've observed my toddler, barely old enough to walk, confidently swiping her way through an iPad. I've experienced my 6-year-old asking for her own cellphone. I've overheard my 9-year-old discussing the latest app to sweep the fourth grade. Prying the phone out of our kids' hands will be difficult, even more so than the quixotic efforts of my parents' generation to get their kids to turn off MTV and get some fresh air. But more seems to be at stake in urging teens to use their phone responsibly, and there are benefits to be gained even if all we instill in our children is the importance of moderation. Significant effects on both mental health and sleep time appear after two or more hours a day on electronic devices. The average teen spends about two and a half hours a day on electronic devices. Some mild boundary-setting could keep kids from falling into harmful habits.

In my conversations with teens, I saw hopeful signs that kids themselves are beginning to link some of their troubles to their ever-present phone. Athena told me that when she does spend time with her friends in person, they are often looking at their device instead of at her. "I'm trying to talk to them about something, and they don't actually look at my face," she said. "They're looking at their phone, or they're looking at their Apple Watch." "What does that feel like, when you're trying to talk to somebody face-to-face and they're not looking at you?," I asked. "It kind of hurts," she said. "It hurts. I know my parents' generation didn't do that. I could be talking about something super important to me, and they wouldn't even be listening."

Once, she told me, she was hanging out with a friend who was texting her boyfriend. "I was trying to talk to her about my family, and what was going on, and she was like, 'Uh-huh, yeah, whatever.' So I took her phone out of her hands and I threw it at my wall."

I couldn't help laughing. "You play volleyball," I said. "Do you have a pretty good arm?" "Yep," she replied.
This article has been adapted from Jean M. Twenge's forthcoming book, iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy-and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood-and What That Means for the Rest of Us.

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