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A brief history of social media. Includes lots of graphs, charts, and statistics.

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Social media sites are used by more than two-thirds of internet users. How has social media grown over time?

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Social Media and The Teenage Brain (VIDEO)

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Social Media and The Teenage Brain (VIDEO)

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Provides a general overview of teen social media use for 2023, including several charts and graphs.

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YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram remain the most widely used online platforms among U.S. teens. And teens are less likely to be using Facebook and Twitter (recently renamed X) than they were a decade ago.

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Teen's Social Media Habits and Experiences

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Teen's Social Media Habits and Experiences

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Includes both the positive and negative effects that social media has on teen's social lives.

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

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

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Overview of the effect of smartphones and social media on teens and kids. Includes numbers and statistics.

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If this generation is going to be named after anything, the iPhone just might be it: according to a fall 2015 marketing survey, two out of three US teens owned an iPhone, about as complete a market saturation as possible for a product. The complete dominance of the smartphone among teens has had ripple effects across every area of their lives, from their social interactions to their mental health

Jean M. Twenge

Teenagers and young adults - ages 16 to 24 - are the most intense users of social media. Benefits of social media use include enhancing friendships and decreasing loneliness. But there is also evidence that overuse has a negative impact on self-esteem and satisfaction with their lives. And this social media use is also linked to an increase in mental health problems, including anxiety, depression and suicidality.

Nearly 90% of 16-24 year olds use the internet for social networking¹

Social media's popularity among adolescents isn't surprising, since it has been shown to affect the reward centers that are so active in teen brains.

An imaging study has shown that these regions are activated when participants viewed images with a lot of "Likes".

The response is strongest when Likes are on images posted by participant

When viewing photographs of risky behaviors ostensibly taken and posted by peers, activation in the cognitive control network decreased²

Increased time on social media has had dramatic effects on teen behavior, including fewer risky social activities and more mental health symptoms. "Displacement" may account for these effects. If social media replaces negative activities or isolation, it can be positive. If it replaces face-to-face interaction or exercise, it can be negative. ³

The good:

12th-graders in 2015 were going out less often than 8th-graders did in 2009.

Drinking, illicit drug use, and car accidents are down.

Ninth-graders now are 40% less sexually active and the teen birth rate is down 67 percent since 1991.

Less than an hour of gaming a day may have positive mental health effects.⁴

The bad:

Eighth-graders who spend 10 or more hours a week on social media are 56% more likely to report being unhappy than those who spend less time.

Heavy users of social media increase their risk of depression by 27 percent.⁵

YouTube is widely viewed by teens as a positive force, but teens report Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram increase feelings of anxiety.⁶

Girls are disproportionately affected by the negative aspects of social media.

More than twice as many girls as boys said they had been cyberbullied in the last year (22% vs. 10%).⁷
More than twice as many girls as boys report being cyberbullied

Boys' depression increased by 21% between 2012 and 2015, and girls' increased by 50%.⁸

There may be a hidden casualty of the constant social media onslaught: sleep.

Teens who spent three or more hours a day on electronic devices were 28% more likely to get less than seven hours of sleep, and teens who visited social media sites every day were 19% more likely not to get adequate sleep.⁹

Lack of sleep can negatively affect teens' mood, ability to think, to react, to regulate their emotions, to learn and to get along with adults. It's a vicious cycle-lack of sleep affects mood, and depression can lead to lack of sleep. And multiple studies have found that severe sleep debt is linked to suicidal ideation.

Teens who don't sleep enough are more than twice as likely to report higher levels of depressive symptoms (31% vs 12%).

Teens who sleep less than seven hours a night are also 68% more likely to have at least one risk factor for suicide.¹⁰

[1] Lenhart, A. (2015). Teens, Social Media Technology Overview. Pew Internet and American Life Project. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/04/09/teens-social-media-technology-2015/

[2] Sherman, L. E., Payton, A. A., Hernandez, L. M., Greenfield, P. M., & Dapretto, M. (2016). The power of the "like" in adolescence. Psychological Science, 27(7), 1027-1035. http://doi.org/10.1177/0956797616645673

[3] Szwedo, D. E., Mikami, A. Y., & Allen, J. P. (2012). Social Networking Site Use Predicts Changes in Young Adults' Psychological Adjustment. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 22(3), 453-466. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-7795.2012.00788.x

[4] Przybylski, A.K. (2014). Electronic gaming and psychosocial adjustment. Journal of Research on Adolescence and Pediatrics, 134 (3). doi: 10.1542/peds.2013-4021

[5] Twenge, J. M. (2017). iGen: Why today's super-connected kids are growing up less rebellious, more tolerant, less happy- and completely unprepared for adulthood (and what this means for the rest of us).

[6] Royal Society for Public Health (2017). Status of Mind: Social media and young people's mental health. Retrieved from https://www.rsph.org.uk/asset/AAFB7DC1-35CE-4097-B26321C1667B5333.2D2662B7-A714-4ACB-A94A63BA544A8267/

[7] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2015. Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data. Available at: cdc.gov/yrbs.

[8] Twenge (2017).

[10] Johnston, L. D., O'Malley, P. M., Miech, R. A., Bachman, J. G., & Schulenberg, J. E. (2016). Monitoring the Future national survey results on drug use, 1975-2015: Overview, key findings on adolescent drug use. Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research, The University of Michigan.

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Smartphones and Social Media - Child Mind Institute

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Teenagers and young adults - ages 16 to 24 - are the most intense users of social media. Benefits of social media use include enhancing friendships and decreasing loneliness. But there is also evidence that overuse has a negative impact on self-esteem and satisfaction with their lives.

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Provides a comprehensive overview to some of the positive and negative aspects of social media. Includes definitions and key terms.

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Social media can help teens connect with friends and family. Sometimes, however, it may leave them feeling depressed or isolated.

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Are Social Media Algorithms Controlling You?

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Are Social Media Algorithms Controlling You?

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This video provides a great overview of how the algorithms for social media work. It could provide very useful background for almost any subtopic you choose to explore.

SOURCE: "How Much Do Social Media Algorithms Control You?" Above the Noise - PBS Learning Media

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Social media brings benefits and risks to teens. Psychology can help identify a path forward

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New psychological research exposes the harms and positive outcomes of social media. APA’s recommendations aim to add science-backed balance to the discussion.

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Explores the science behind the "like" and other media engagement on our brains and bodies!

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Like it or love it, social media is a major part of life. Teens spend more than half of their waking hours online. You use some of that time to post pictures and to create profiles on social media accounts. But most of what you do is read and respond to posts by friends and family.

Clicking on a thumbs-up or a heart icon is an easy way to stay in touch. But those "likes" can have power that goes beyond a simple connection. Some social media sites use those likes to determine how many people eventually see a post. One with many likes is more likely to be seen - and to get even more likes.

What's more, viewing posts with a lot of likes activates the reward system in our brain. It also can lower a viewer's self-control. And posts related to alcohol may encourage teens to drink. That means that what you like online has the power to influence not just what others like, but even what they do.

Popularity on the brain

It's no surprise that feedback from peers affects how we behave. And not always in a good way.

For example, in one 2011 study, teens doing a driving task in a lab took more risks when their friends were around. Researchers also looked at the teens' brains during this task. They saw activity in a part of the brain that's involved in rewards. This area is known as the nucleus accumbens. That suggests these teens were changing their behavior to try to get social approval, explains Lauren Sherman. She's a cognitive neuroscientist at Temple University in Philadelphia, Penn. Cognitive neuroscientists are researchers who study the brain.

Sherman wanted to know whether teens make similar changes to their behavior when they use social media. To find out, she and her team recruited 32 teens for a study, last year. All submitted photos from their personal Instagram accounts.

The researchers mixed the teens' photos with other pictures from public Instagram accounts. Then they randomly gave half of the images many likes (between 23 and 45; most had more than 30). They gave the other half no more than 22 likes (most had fewer than 15). The participant's own pictures were evenly divided between getting many or few likes.

The researchers told the participants that about 50 other teens had already viewed and rated the photos. That let the teens know how big the audience was. It also gave them a feel for how popular the pictures were.

The researchers wanted to see how the participants' brains were responding to the different images. To find out, they had the volunteers view the photos while they were inside a magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, machine. It uses a strong magnet to record blood flow in the brain. When brain cells are active, they use up oxygen and nutrients. MRI scans show where blood flow has increased because of this activity. When people perform some task while in the MRI machine, this test is now known as functional MRI, or fMRI.

While the teens were in the machine, researchers asked them to either like an image or skip to the next one. Teens were much more likely to like images that seemed popular - those that had more than 23 likes, Sherman's team found. The kids tended to skip pictures with few likes. And the brain's reward pathways became especially active when the teens viewed their own photos with many likes.
Story continues below image.
Likes can have a subtle but significant effect on how teens interact with friends online, these data suggest. "The little number appearing below a picture affects the way [people] perceive that picture," Sherman reports. "It can even affect their tendency to click 'like' themselves."

A like is a social cue, Sherman explains. Teens "use this cue to learn how to navigate their social world." Positive responses to their own photos (in the form of many likes) tell teens that their friends appreciate what they're posting. A brain responds by turning on its reward center.

But seeing someone else's popular photo didn't necessarily turn on that reward center. Sometimes looking at the picture instead affected behavioral attitudes. For instance, cognitive control helps people maintain self-control. It also helps them think about plans and goals. The brain region linked to cognitive control tended to become less active when looking at some photos - no matter how many likes they might have. What kinds of pictures turned off this brain control region? They were photos showing risky behaviors, such as smoking or drinking.

Viewing pictures like these could make teens let down their guard when it comes to experimenting with drugs and alcohol, Sherman worries. "Repeated exposure to risky pictures posted by peers could make teens more likely to try those behaviors."

Small act, big impact

Clicking "like" is a simple act that can have complex results. In fact, a single like can have a big impact on a post's popularity and reach, say Maria Glenski and Tim Weninger. These computer scientists work at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

Glenski and Weninger studied the social news site Reddit. Its users can respond to headlines by clicking an arrow that points up or down. An up arrow, or "upvote," is similar to a like. The researchers created a computer program that scanned Reddit every two minutes for six months. During each scan, the program recorded the most recent post on the site. Then it randomly upvoted the post, downvoted it or did nothing. By the end of the study, the program had upvoted 30,998 posts and downvoted 30,796. It left alone another 31,225 posts.

Glenski and Weninger watched to see how popular each post was four days after their program had interacted with it. The final score they used was the number of upvotes minus the downvotes. The researchers considered posts with a score of more than 500 to be very popular.

Posts that their program had upvoted did better. These posts were eight percent more likely to have a final score of at least 1,000, compared to posts the program had ignored. And upvoted posts were almost 25 percent more likely to reach a final score of 2,000 - making them extremely popular. In contrast, posts that the program downvoted ended up with scores five percent lower, on average, than were posts that the program had ignored.

"Early up-ratings or likes can have a large impact on the ultimate popularity of a post," Glenski concludes. "People tend to follow the behavior of the group." If other people have liked a post, new viewers will be more likely to like it too. And that popularity can feed on itself.

Many social media sites share more of the higher-ranked - or more popular - posts. As a result, "people are more likely to see what others have positively rated," Glenski says. So the posts that get the most likes tend to spread even more widely.

Teens should keep in mind, Glenski cautions, that just because a post is popular doesn't mean it is a quality post. Similarly, she adds, people should pay careful attention to what they like, share or comment on. "Your actions influence what other people see and hear in the media."

Risky business

Popular photos might signal to teens that what's in those photos is socially acceptable. If those images show alcohol use or other risky behaviors, this could lead teens to make bad choices. That's what Sarah Boyle concluded from a study she ran last year.

Boyle is a psychologist at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, Calif. Her team recruited first-year college students to see if - and how - social media posts might affect underage drinking. Their participants included 412 incoming students. All were under 21 (the legal drinking age).

Students completed two surveys. They took the first between September and October. This was 25 to 50 days into the first half of the school year. They filled out a survey again between February and March, well into the second half of the school year. Each survey asked how much alcohol someone drank, and how often. It also asked why that person drank and what role they felt drinking plays in the college experience.

Each survey also asked students how frequently they checked Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. And when they did go on social media, had they seen alcohol-related posts? The researchers then compared responses from the first and second surveys.

Students who saw alcohol-related posts during the first six weeks of school were more likely to drink alcohol by the second survey, the data show. Men increased their drinking more than women did. Seeing alcohol-related posts on social media increased how much they thought other male students were drinking, Boyle says. Those posts made the young men see drinking as an important part of their college experience. "These things, in turn, led them to drink more themselves," Boyle says.

Women saw alcohol-related posts also began to view drinking as part of the college experience. They, too, increased their drinking, just not as much as the men did. However, the posts didn't change their idea of how often other women drank. That's probably because male students made the most alcohol-related posts, Boyle observes.

A difference also emerged between social media sites. More posts about alcohol appeared on Instagram and Snapchat than on Facebook. Boyle suspects this is because fewer parents, professors and other older adults use Instagram and Snapchat. Instagram's filters also may allow people to glamorize photos, making alcohol more attractive, she adds. Similarly, people may post photos of alcohol to Snapchat because they know their posts will disappear.

The important take-home message here, Boyle says, is that what students see on social media can influence their attitudes about drinking, Boyle says. "The problem with social media is that posts can distort reality." Social media users see only highlights from the party. These are the posts that others like. People rarely, however, post pictures of their hangovers, poor grades or drinking-related injuries and accidents, she notes.

Neuroscientist Sherman hopes that all tech users will become thoughtful about their use of social media. Our online experiences are shaped by others' opinions. Going along with the crowd isn't necessarily bad, she says. But teens need "to be aware that peer influence is a constant factor whenever they use social media."

Glenski, the computer scientist, agrees. Social media "shapes how we perceive the world around us," she says. Your online ratings have a big influence on what others see and hear. So it's important that you read carefully. Think about what you like and upvote, she says. And keep in mind that "Your digital votes matter."

Check out part 1: Social media: What's not to like?

Power Words
More About Power Words

behavior The way something, often a person or other organism, acts towards others, or conducts itself.

cell The smallest structural and functional unit of an organism. Typically too small to see with the unaided eye, it consists of a watery fluid surrounded by a membrane or wall. Depending on their size, animals are made of anywhere from thousands to trillions of cells. Most organisms, such as yeasts, molds, bacteria and some algae, are composed of only one cell.

cognitive A term that relates to mental activities, such as thinking, learning, remembering and solving puzzles.

computer program A set of instructions that a computer uses to perform some analysis or computation. The writing of these instructions is known as computer programming.

control A part of an experiment where there is no change from normal conditions. The control is essential to scientific experiments. It shows that any new effect is likely due only to the part of the test that a researcher has altered. For example, if scientists were testing different types of fertilizer in a garden, they would want one section of it to remain unfertilized, as the control. Its area would show how plants in this garden grow under normal conditions. And that gives scientists something against which they can compare their experimental data.

digital (in computer science and engineering) An adjective indicating that something has been developed numerically on a computer or on some other electronic device, based on a binary system (where all numbers are displayed using a series of only zeros and ones).

distort (n. distortion) To change the shape or image of something in a way that makes it hard to recognize, or to change the perception or characterization of something (as to mislead).

factor Something that plays a role in a particular condition or event; a contributor.

feedback A process or combination of processes that propel or exaggerate a change in some direction. For instance, as the cover of Arctic ice disappears with global warming, less of the sun's warming energy will be reflected back into space. This will serve to increase the rate of Earth's warming. That warming might trigger some feedback (like sea-ice melting) that fosters additional warming.

filter (in chemistry and environmental science) A device or system that allows some materials to pass through but not others, based on their size or some other feature. (in physics) A screen, plate or layer of a substance that absorbs light or other radiation or selectively prevents the transmission of some of its components.

icon (adj. iconic) Something that represents another thing, often as an ideal version of it.

magnetic resonance The vibration of two magnetic waves in synchrony, allowing one of them to strengthen.

functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) A special type of medical scanning technology for studying brain activity. It uses a strong magnetic field to monitor blood flow in the brain as an individual is performing some task (from reading or viewing pictures to thinking about various spoken words). Tracking areas of elevated blood flow can tell researchers which brain regions are especially active during those activities.

media (in the social sciences) A term for the ways information is delivered and shared within a society. It encompasses not only the traditional media - newspapers, magazines, radio and television - but also Internet- and smartphone-based outlets, such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook and more. The newer, digital media are sometimes referred to as social media. The singular form of this term is medium.

navigate To find one's way through a landscape using visual cues, sensory information (like scents), magnetic information (like an internal compass) or other techniques.

neuroscientist Someone who studies the structure or function of the brain and other parts of the nervous system.

nucleus accumbens An area deep within the front part of the brain that is linked to pleasure and motivation.

nutrient A vitamin, mineral, fat, carbohydrate or protein that a plant, animal or other organism requires as part of its food in order to survive.

online (n.) On the internet. (adj.) A term for what can be found or accessed on the internet.

oxygen A gas that makes up about 21 percent of Earth's atmosphere. All animals and many microorganisms need oxygen to fuel their growth (and metabolism).

peer (noun) Someone who is an equal, based on age, education, status, training or some other features.

psychologist A scientist or mental-health professional who studies the human mind, especially in relation to actions and behaviors.

reward system (Also reward center) A region of the brain that processes the pleasant reactions we get when we get smiles, gifts, pleasurable stimuli (including food) or compliments.

risk The chance or mathematical likelihood that some bad thing might happen. For instance, exposure to radiation poses a risk of cancer. Or the hazard - or peril - itself. (For instance: Among cancer risks that the people faced were radiation and drinking water tainted with arsenic.)

social media Internet-based media, such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, that allow people to connect with each other (often anonymously) and to share information.

subtle Some feature that may be important, but can be hard to see or describe. For instance, the first cellular changes that signal the start of a cancer may be visible but subtle - small and hard to distinguish from nearby healthy tissues.

survey (v.) To ask questions that glean data on the opinions, practices (such as dining or sleeping habits), knowledge or skills of a broad range of people. Researchers select the number and types of people questioned in hopes that the answers these individuals give will be representative of others who are their age, belong to the same ethnic group or live in the same region. (n.) The list of questions that will be offered to glean those data.

Alison Pearce Stevens is a former biologist and forever science geek who writes about science and nature for kids. She lives with her husband, their two kids and a small menagerie of cuddly (and not-so cuddly) critters.

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Like it or love it, social media is a major part of life. Teens spend more than half of their waking hours online. You use some of that time to post pictures and to create profiles on social media accounts. But most of what you do is read and respond to posts by friends and family.

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Explores link between social media and addiction.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Teens would rather text than talk to you, survey finds

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

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Is My Teen Really Addicted to Social Media?

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Is My Teen Really Addicted to Social Media?

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There isn't a part of adolescence that isn't affected by social media and gaming these days-so what are parents to do before it's too late?
" ADHD study links teens' symptoms with digital media use" was the headline on CNN last week.

I, for one, was not surprised. Like any addictive behavior, there is always bound to be a correlation between that and mental health issues. Cause and effect; effect and cause. Between the brain connection to a behavior or substance and the brain to itself.

As humans, we are wired to adapt, and as teens currently "in development," the brain is actually growing and adapting in response to behaviors and outside stimuli in real-time.
Nothing New
It was supposed to be the end of civilization-everyone was nose-deep in a newspaper or book, and riding the train or sitting in a cafe became more about me-time than interacting with your fellow neighbor. Sound familiar?

This was one of the legitimate fears from the 19th and 20th century (as far back as 1860): that as people become more reliant on literary and technological devices, they will be more stressed out as well as ignore each other on the trolleys, buses, and trains. The fear was that we would become less social because of reading-or because of the telegraph, phonograph, radio, 8-Track, cassette tape, computer, or... you get the point.

This means that we have a new type of person in society: one who gets daily satisfaction solely from online successes. This new aspect of real-life society is targeted and cultivated by our teenagers.
How Can Parents Tell?
The telltale signs of addiction to the internet and social media are within the range of compulsive-impulsive spectrum disorders. The earlier that the brain rewards itself for social and "personal best" achievements on computers and apps, the longer we will depend upon devices to get those rewards. There is a mental and emotional release when getting a top score or achieving likes and shares beyond normal.

But today's "device in hand" society seems a bit more insidious and harmful, especially for your teen, who is learning behaviors that may guide them for life.
It Starts Younger Than You Think
If your child grew up in the 2000s, chances are that they didn't grow up watching you on your smartphone all the time. Your parents probably put you in front of the television or VCR too much during your formative years, but today is a bit different.

The mass purchasing of smartphone and MP3 devices has been popular for not even 20 years, meaning that our fears and even our medical advice on how young children should see the screen has changed with the times. At some point, even the least among us, age 3 to 93, has had a device or was being put in front of one while the family ate out.

And then, all of a sudden, every parent bought a tablet or smartphone for junior, because the more you see a product, and the more acceptable it becomes (and cheaper), the better you feel as a parent in letting it happen to your family.

Suffice it to say, if your kids are under 20, then they have grown up seeing you and everyone in society holding, reading, and constantly posting on their devices.
Yes, Your Teen Likely Has a Secret Account
From birth, we learn to be secretive, to lie, or to create narratives that justify behavior that might be thought unacceptable. When it comes to online activity, parents can't monitor their kids all the time, especially at school or when they're with friends. Even monitoring apps and device-time parental controls can fail, or parents don't use them properly.

So if you suspect that your teen, tween, or pre-teen is using a secret phone or account, take the time to address what you feel is behavior worthy of losing your trust or harming them. Or level with them about what they're actually doing online that would cause them to be secretive.

There are plenty of people, games, and apps that will target your child in harmful ways, so if there is secrecy surrounding their online usage, then you have to be in control of how much time they spend and what apps and sites they visit.
Yes, Teens Are Spending Too Much Time Online
For a relatively new invention, the smartphone has taken over our lives. This means that your child, once "plugged in," will begin to think about their accounts and games all the time. The internet is like anything in life in this: Once a person is invested, they will allow it certain control over their thinking.

Staying online past bedtime, interacting with their smartphone as soon as they wake up, and using their smartphone at least once an hour are all signs that the device has become an indispensable way of life for the teen.

Assume the best of your child, but limit their time as best and as much as you can. Remind them that they can't really experience life through that device-they have to "look up" more from their hand or lap.
Yes, Teens Are Distracted at Home, School, and Work
If your child's grades have dipped, or they seem despondent at home, and you suspect it's because of the behavior and fallout from too much device time, you have your "yes."

Social apps aren't just one or two sites anymore. All of the internet is social. From comment boxes to chatting on the newest site or messenger, we are all forever connected on almost every site, whether it's meant to be social in nature or not. And companies are creating plenty of "kid chat" and kid-friendly internet platforms to share the wealth.

This translates to and has taken over all of our familiar social environments and levels of parenting -from kids checking their phones during halftime to them jumping to the screen every time there is a buzz, ring, ding, or pop.

BBQs, Sunday drives, school functions, family dinner-every place is now a hub for spending those non-WiFi data minutes, even though we really are invested (somewhat) in the real-life social scene.
Yes, Teens Know Way More Than Adults About the Whole Social Media Thing
Whether it's the newest post-Facebook, post-Twitter, advanced-Instagram app that you won't know about until it's not cool anymore, your kid is hipper than you at knowing exactly what the device is selling or offering at "freemium" (apps that start free and then offer in-app purchases).

They are also the first generation to grow up with smartphones and the stress and anxiety that come with them. Never in human history have we acclimated to a device this quickly and widely, except maybe the pencil. And it is because of the new social norm of being device-ready citizens that we have normalized new behavior, which your kids will emulate whether or not you do.
Yes, Have an Intervention for Your Teen If You Need To
The bottom line is that your child may become addicted to social media apps, video games, or online presence. The earlier you intervene, the better.

If your pre-teen is talking about pressures and topics that you think might be wrong for their age group, set limits, and be honest about what they're actually doing online. If your teenager is showing signs of fatigue from late-night gaming or posting and texting, then limit or suspend online activity until they understand how serious you are about their mental health and addictive characteristics.

Like all parenting and stages of teenage development, there is a learning and a social curve, as well as the reality that whatever we do, we are creating our own path with our children. We do this all at the same time and continuously as we age.

So, like anything, we need to be open and honest with our children about our fears and the reality of online life. Because if we don't, we are ignoring what is often the biggest part of their life-that is, life online.

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Is My Teen Really Addicted to Social Media?

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Teen gaming and social media addiction is no longer virtual.

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Plastic Surgery, Teens, and Social Media

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Plastic Surgery, Teens, and Social Media

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More than 200,000 teens had plastic surgery last year, and social media had a lot to do with it

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The American Society of Plastic Surgeons released new guidance for cosmetic procedures on teens.

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Surgeon General Issues Advisory About Effects of Social Media on Youth Mental Health

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Surgeon General Issues Advisory About Effects of Social Media on Youth Mental Health

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This article from the US Department of Health provides a good summary of the research conducted over several years. A link to the FULL PDF published is also linked.

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US Department of Health and Human Services

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Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH)

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Surgeon General Issues New Advisory About Effects Social Media Use Has on Youth Mental Health

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Surgeon General Urges Action to Ensure Social Media Environments are Healthy and Safe, as Previously-Advised National Youth Mental Health Crisis Continues

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/ MoneyWatch

When it comes to children's mental health and privacy, their loss translates into massive gains for social media companies: $11 billion, to be exact.

That's according to a new Harvard study that shows social media platforms last year generated $11 billion in revenue from advertising directed at children and teenagers, including nearly $2 billion in ad profits derived from users age 12 and under.

Snaphat, TikTok and Youtube reaped the highest share of those billions, approximately 30% - 40% combined, according to the findings.

"Although social media platforms may claim that they can self-regulate their practices to reduce the harms to young people, they have yet to do so, and our study suggests they have overwhelming financial incentives to continue to delay taking meaningful steps to protect children," said S. Bryn Austin, one of the authors of the study and a professor of social and behavioral sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Youtube, Instagram and Facebook brought in hundreds of millions of dollars last year in profits from advertising targeting children who use the platforms, generating $959.1 million, $801.1 million and $137.2 million respectively, Harvard researchers found. That same year, Instagram, Tiktok and Youtube generated a whopping $4 billion, $2 billion and $1.2 billion respectively in revenue from ads aimed at users in their teens.

The study, which draws from public survey and market research data from 2021 and 2022, focuses on two age groups within the U.S.: children 12 years old and younger and adolescents ranging from 13 to 17 years old. Researchers examined advertising activities of both groups across six popular social media platforms: Youtube, X, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat.

Mounting pressure for child protections

Social media platforms have increasingly come under fire as health officials express concern over the potential harmful effects of apps like Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok on young peoples' mental health.

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy in May called for stronger guidelines for social media use among children and teens, pointing to a growing body of research that the platforms may pose what he described as a "profound risk" to young people's mental health.

As reported by CBS' 60 Minutes in June the number of families pursuing lawsuits has grown to over 2,000 since last December. More than 350 lawsuits are expected to move forward this year against TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Roblox and Meta - the parent company to Instagram and Facebook.

More recently, attorneys general in 33 states filed a federal lawsuit against Meta in October, claiming that the company harmed young users on its Facebook and Instagram platforms through the use of highly manipulative tactics to attract and sustain engagement, as it illegally collected personal information from children without parental consent.

Also in October, New York lawmakers proposed legislation to prohibit minors from accessing what they described as "addictive feeds" without parental consent.

More from CBS News

Elizabeth Napolitano

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Social media apps made $11 billion from children and teens in 2022

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Snaphat, TikTok, Youtube and others generated billions in profits last year from advertising targeting young users, a Harvard study shows.

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

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

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

The short answer is: It's complicated.

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

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

A Link Between Social Media and Mental Health Concerns

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

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

Teenage Challenges and Stressors, Exacerbated

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

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

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

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

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

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

What's Triggering about Social Media?

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

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

Feeling pressure to post positive and attractive content about yourself

Feeling pressure to get comments and likes on your posts

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

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

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

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

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

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

For Parents, Strategies on Mitigating Anxiety - Without Overreacting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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By William Kim

Snapchat announced new safeguards on its app Thursday to protect teens against unwanted contact and malicious online interactions. The measures aim to provide a more appropriate user experience for youth in the 13 to 17-year-old range as more teens use social media.

"What we're really hoping to do ... is to empower parents to be able to have conversations about online safety with their teens, to better understand Snapchat and to make the decisions that are right for them and their families as it relates to online safety," says Nona Yadegar, director of Design, Strategy and Operations at Snap Inc.

The changes include in-app warnings that pop up when a teen receives a friend request from someone with no mutual contacts and stronger friending protections, which require 13 to 17-year-olds to have multiple mutual friends before showing up in each other's online searches and friend suggestions.

Snapchat's new safety features in action.

"We're really focused here today on making it harder for strangers to talk to teens," says Yadegar. "Just like my parents talk[ed] to me about staying safe when going to the mall with friends, it's really important for parents to talk to their kids about staying safe online and what that means."

Snapchat will also implement a new strike system for taking down accounts promoting age-inappropriate content, where users can report suspect content and repeat offenders' accounts will be banned. New in-app education content also explains certain online risks to minors and parents and shares resources to help hotlines.

"Knowing that we have a deep responsibility to teen safety, to their mental health motivates me every single day to make sure that we're constantly pushing forward," says Yadegar.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services -- up to 95% of kids between 13 and 17 years old have reported using social media. With an uptick in social media usage, the industry has come under increased attention related to pitfalls in safeguarding youth interactions and mental health on the app, but parental advisers see this as a step forward for a safer online environment.

Snapchat's safety resource section on their website.

"This is important. Kids are going to have to work a lot harder to share their location and to connect with people that they don't know. So this is progress," says Rachel Simmons, a parenting expert.

Many say, though, that any software changes won't diminish the importance of good parenting and its impact in helping kids grow up safely in a digital age.

"These changes to the apps are never going to be a substitute for parents checking in with their kids. Parents have to ask questions. They have to set time limits, and they have to sometimes be strict and not take their kids' no for an answer," says Simmons. "Kids make it just as hard for us to say no to them as the apps make it hard for kids to say no. So we all have to set boundaries with teenagers and make sure that they know our rules."

The opinion that apps alone won't solve everything is shared by Yadegar, who says that a one-size-fits-all solution doesn't exist for an issue as complex as this.

"There's no silver bullet to online safety. Online safety is constantly evolving. And so for us, we're constantly learning and constantly seeking to make improvements because the safety of our community is paramount, and we're always going to be doing more," Yadegar said.

The new resources for parents launched today and can be found at https://parents.snapchat.com/.

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Snapchat releases new safety measures for teens

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Snapchat announced new safeguards on its app Thursday to protect teens against unwanted contact and malicious online interactions.

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Washington - Teens and young adults who reduced their social media use by 50% for just a few weeks saw significant improvement in how they felt about both their weight and their overall appearance compared with peers who maintained consistent levels of social media use, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

"Adolescence is a vulnerable period for the development of body image issues, eating disorders and mental illness," said lead author Gary Goldfield, PhD, of Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute. "Youth are spending, on average, between six to eight hours per day on screens, much of it on social media. Social media can expose users to hundreds or even thousands of images and photos every day, including those of celebrities and fashion or fitness models, which we know leads to an internalization of beauty ideals that are unattainable for almost everyone, resulting in greater dissatisfaction with body weight and shape."

However, much of the psychological research on social media, body image and mental health is correlational, according to Goldfield, so it is uncertain whether people with body image and mental health issues spend more time on social media or if social media use leads to greater body image and mental health issues.

To better understand the causal effects of reducing social media use on body image, Goldfield and his colleagues previously conducted a pilot study with 38 undergraduate students with elevated levels of anxiety and/or depression. Some of the participants were asked to limit their social media use to no more than 60 minutes per day, while others were allowed unrestricted access. Compared with participants who had unlimited access, participants who restricted their use showed improvements in how they regarded their overall appearance (but not their weight) after three weeks. Due to the small sample size, though, the researchers were unable to conduct a meaningful analysis of the effect of gender.

The current experiment, involving 220 undergraduate students aged 17-25 (76% female, 23% male, 1% other) and published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media, sought to expand the pilot study and address the gender limitation. In order to qualify, participants had to be regular social media users (at least two hours per day on their smartphones) and exhibit symptoms of depression or anxiety.

For the first week of the experiment, all participants were instructed to use their social media as they normally would. Social media use was measured using a screentime tracking program to which participants provided a daily screenshot. After the first week, half the participants were instructed to reduce their social media use to no more than 60 minutes per day. At the start of the experiment, participants also responded to a series of statements about their overall appearance (e.g., "I'm pretty happy about the way I look") and weight (e.g., "I am satisfied with my weight") on a 5-point scale, with 1 indicating "never" and 5 "always." Participants completed a similar questionnaire at the end of the experiment.

For the next three weeks, participants who were instructed to restrict their social media use reduced it by approximately 50% to an average of 78 minutes per day versus the control group, which averaged 188 minutes of social media use per day.

Participants who reduced their social media use had a significant improvement in how they regarded both their overall appearance and body weight after the three-week intervention, compared with the control group, who saw no significant change. Gender did not appear to make any difference in the effects.

"Our brief, four-week intervention using screentime trackers showed that reducing social media use yielded significant improvements in appearance and weight esteem in distressed youth with heavy social media use," said Goldfield. "Reducing social media use is a feasible method of producing a short-term positive effect on body image among a vulnerable population of users and should be evaluated as a potential component in the treatment of body-image-related disturbances."

While the current study was conducted as a proof of concept, Goldfield and his colleagues are in the process of conducting a larger study to see if reduction in social media use can be maintained for longer periods and whether that reduction can lead to even greater psychological benefits.

Article: "Reducing Social Media Use Improves Appearance and Weight Esteem in Youth with Emotional Distress," by Helen Thai, BA, McGill University; Christopher Davis, PhD, Wardah Mahboob, MA, Sabrina Perry, BA, and Alex Adams, BA, Carleton University; and Gary Goldfield, PhD, Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario. Psychology of Popular Media, published online Feb. 23, 2023.

Gary Goldfield, PhD, can be contacted via email.

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Reducing social media use significantly improves body image in teens, young adults

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Teens and young adults who reduced their social media use by 50% for just a few weeks saw significant improvement in how they felt about both their weight and their overall appearance compared with peers who maintained consistent levels of social media use.

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A declining share of adults, and few teens, support a U.S. TikTok ban

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38% of U.S. adults say they would support the U.S. government banning TikTok, compared with 18% of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17.

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Growing Up on Social Media: Influencer Parents and Their Kids

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Growing Up on Social Media: Influencer Parents and Their Kids

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"Nothing they do now is going to take back the years of work I had to put in."

Search Claire's name online and this is some of what you will find: photos of her as a child, merchandise with her face on it available for sale, and a YouTube channel with millions of subscribers and hundreds of videos featuring Claire and members of her family. In the videos, Claire grows from a toddler to a teenager. On Instagram, fans comment they miss videos from the old days. In public, people sometimes recognize her and ask for photos. Altogether, the family's YouTube channel has over a billion views but if it were up to Claire, none of the videos would exist.

For Gen-Z, social media has always been a given. Many consider the first social networking site launched in 1997, the same year that Pew Research marks as the beginning of Generation Z. It's commonplace for young people of this generation to have their triumphs and travails documented on the Internet, with a digital footprint that follows them from platform to platform over the years. But for some young people, their parents shared more than evidence of an elementary school Spelling Bee win or a smiling photo of their first day in college. Instead, the intimate details of their lives, from videos of them as crying children to footage of a parent disciplining them - are shared and sometimes monetized without their explicit consent.

Claire, whose name has been changed to protect her privacy, has never known a life that doesn't include a camera being pointed in her direction. The first time she went viral, she was a toddler. When the family's channel started to rake in the views, Claire says both her parents left their jobs because the revenue from the YouTube channel was enough to support the family and to land them a nicer house and new car. "That's not fair that I have to support everyone," she said. "I try not to be resentful but I kind of [am]." Once, she told her dad she didn't want to do YouTube videos anymore and he told her they would have to move out of their house and her parents would have to go back to work, leaving no money for "nice things."

When the family is together, the YouTube channel is what they talk about. Claire says her father has told her he may be her father, but he's also her boss. "It's a lot of pressure," she said. When Claire turns 18 and can move out on her own, she's considering going no-contact with her parents. Once she doesn't live with them anymore, she plans to speak out publicly about being the star of a YouTube channel. She'll even use her real name. Claire wants people to know how her childhood was overshadowed by social media stardom that she didn't choose. And she wants her parents to know: "nothing they do now is going to take back the years of work I had to put in."

Though Claire's parents tell her they're saving part of the money for her college, she doesn't know how much and there is no law protecting the earnings of children who are influencers. The lack of labor laws for child influencers is an example of the law lagging behind the culture. Activists and lawmakers are pushing for protections for the privacy and earnings of children of influencers in states like Washington, where a proposed bill that is currently stalled in the Washington State House would ensure similar protections that California's Coogan Law gives child actors. Under the Coogan Law, 15% of minors' earnings must be set aside by the employer in a blocked trust but there are no similar protections for child influencers.

Bobbi Althoff is a 25-year-old mom of two with a following of over 3.6 million on TikTok. You could call her a mom-influencer, but that wouldn't quite describe her. She posts earnest reflections on motherhood, yes, but much of her content is satirical, poking fun at the trends of the moment through purposefully awkward performances with her husband. One stark difference between Althoff and many other mom influencers: you won't see her children on her page. She refers to her daughters as Richard and Concrete, and takes care to hide their identities by editing her videos to make sure no one is saying their actual names in the background. It wasn't always like this: with her oldest daughter, Richard, who is 2 years old, she used to post everything. Among her deleted posts: Richard's actual name, her birth date, her first and middle name, the hospital she was born in, and photos of her.

But a little over a year ago, Althoff made a split-second decision based on maternal instinct. She had posted a satirical video about how Richard was a genius who had learned to speak at six months old and the comments came flooding in: people called Richard ugly and stupid and Althoff was frustrated. What would happen when Richard grew up and could read these comments? "I have a hard time reading mean comments about myself and I'm an adult who chooses to put myself on the Internet," Althoff said. Suddenly, she couldn't stand leaving her daughter open to that. That night, she deleted every identifying detail, photo, and video of Richard. Though the decision was quick, Althoff is glad she made it. "Richard is not always going to be my little girl. She's going to be a person," Althoff said. "I want her to have the opportunity to write her own story. I've decided to make it my job to entertain people but it's not my kids' job and I don't want to make it their job."

Richard and Concrete's safety is also a factor in Althoff hiding their identities: she doesn't want anyone to be able to recognize them in public. She wants them to have a blank slate to become who they want to be, not a digital footprint of their lives since birth. Sometimes, Althoff said, people forget their kids aren't going to be kids forever. They're going to grow up and she wants them to be able to have an identity outside of being a TikToker's child. And, Althoff said, limiting her kids' appearances on her social media channels helped her find an identity outside of being a mom. "It helped me not make my children my only personality [trait]," she said. For young moms like Althoff, sharing on social media can be a reflex - many of them have been doing it since middle school so when they become moms, it can feel only natural to share that too. But as they get older and grow into motherhood, they may change their minds.

When Althoff decided to take her children off social media, the choice was an uncommon one but it's seemingly been gaining popularity recently. Maia Knight, a young mom who skyrocketed to TikTok fame and now has 8.5 million followers tuning in to see videos of her twin daughters Violet and Scout, doesn't show her children's faces anymore as of December 2022 (though she sometimes posts throwback videos showing their faces when they were younger). She films them from behind or puts her hand or an emoji in front of their faces. In the first videos where Maia hides the twins' faces, commenters are split: some say they respect her decision to protect her kids and others say they're distraught to not be able to see the babies anymore. In a video, Maia defends her decision: "they're toddlers now. I have decided not to show them anymore... I'm making a choice for my daughters to protect them." In March, Laura Fritz, a mom influencer with 2.7 million followers, announced she was ending her TikTok journey. In an Instagram post, Laura wrote "it's going to be hard to give [TikTok] up... but this is what's best for our family. I want my kids to have a regular life growing up, without the pressures of social media."

Though TikTok is the latest iteration, sharing about children online isn't new. Cam, 24, goes by softscorpio on TikTok, shares videos on the need for protection to her 160,000 followers. As a child, Cam says their mother posted personal information about them to around 10,000 Facebook followers. Once, when Cam was 12, they say they got home from riding bikes and got a message from a man who informed them he had seen them out with their friend. Cam started experiencing anxiety at the thought of leaving the house - what if someone else saw them who knew them from their mom's Facebook page? To Cam, nothing seemed to be off limits. "It's easier to tell you what my mom didn't post," Cam said. It got to the point where Cam didn't want to tell their mom anything about their life because they knew it would be turned into content. When they met new people, they wondered if they had looked online at their entire life history. In high school, kids would text them "embarrassing photos" from their mom's Facebook page. They no longer go by their legal name because they didn't want people to be able to track their digital footprint. They recently testified in favor of Washington state's HB 1627 which would aim to protect children of influencers, including granting them the right to, as NBC News reports, "request permanent deletion of their likenesses, names, or photos." In their video testimony, Cam's voice cracked with emotion as they implored the House members to pass the bill. "I plead [with] you to be the voice of this generation of children because I know firsthand what it's like to not have a choice in which a digital footprint you didn't create follows you around for the rest of your life."

The seeming tide change toward protecting the privacy of children is a welcome shift to Sarah of the TikTok account "mom.uncharted". Sarah has amassed over 208,000 followers with her account dedicated to "Exploring Generation Shared & Calling Out Child Exploitation on [Social Media]." When Sarah became a mom herself, she started following mom blogs and mom influencers to chart a map through the haze of early motherhood. When the birth of her second child coincided with the pandemic, which brought millions of new users to TikTok and an explosion in motherhood content, Sarah started to feel strange about the amount of information being shared about children. In response, she downloaded TikTok and started talking about it. Her videos are stern - she talks straight to the camera, waving her hands as she expounds on the harm of oversharing children online. Now, people tag her in videos, urging her to comment on instances of what they see as oversharing at best and exploitation at worst. "It almost feels like exploiting your children has become a career choice," she said. "If you have a baby now, you have a new career opportunity."

Caroline, the 28-year-old behind a popular TikTok account where she posts satirical skits, found herself dropping the comedic tone when the child of a family vlogger sent her a letter and asked Caroline to share it with her 2.3 million followers. "To any parents that are considering starting a family vlog or monetizing your children's lives on the public internet, here is my advice: you shouldn't do it," the letter read. "Any money you get will be greatly overshadowed by years of suffering... your child will never be normal... I never consented to being online."

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Influencer Parents and The Kids Who Had Their Childhood Made Into Content

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"Nothing they do now is going to take back the years of work I had to put in."

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TikTok Time Limit: Is it enough? (Article and Audio)

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TikTok Time Limit: Is it enough? (Article and Audio)

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Jelena Kecmanovic isapsychologist who works with teenagers struggling with their mental health. "Almost every one of our sessions starts with what happened on TikTok or Instagram," she says.

Kecmanovic also heads a practice group of other mental health professionals who work with adolescents. So when TikTok announced last week that it would roll out new usage limits for users under 18 in the United States, she and her colleagues looked closely at the new safeguards.

Those safeguards include default settings for users under 13 that require parental permission to continue using the app after 60 minutes on TikTok in one day. Users between the ages of 13 and 17 will be asked to enter their own passcode to continue using TikTok after 60 minutes of daily use. Users under 18 will be asked to set their own usage limits if they opt out of the default setting.

When Kecmanovic dug into the details of TikTok's new policies, she was disappointed. "It's not enough," she told NPR's A Martinez.

She compared teens on TikTok to adults who gamble on slot machines: "Maybe you're winning. You're on a good streak and it's middle of the night and your defenses are down. And then something shows up in front of the slot machine saying, 'you've been on too long, it's middle of the night. Maybe you should reconsider.' How many people would stop?"

Kecmanovic says teens' excessive use of TikTok isn't necessarily a reflection of their poor impulse control.

"I really don't think this is that much about teens not having self-control. I think it's about the design of social media that's basically like slot machines."

TikTok's parent company ByteDance already has much stricter usage limits for kids who use its apps in China because of the Chinese government's efforts to regulate teenagers' use of technology. In 2021 ByteDance moved to cut off access to Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, for users under age 14 after 40 minutes of daily use. Kids are also blocked from accessing the app every night between 10pm and 6am.

Kecmanovic told NPR's A Martinez that ByteDance's policies for adolescent users in China are much closer to the type of policies she and her colleagues recommend to families who are struggling with the negative effects of kids' social media use.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Some of the excerpts include some quotes from the interview that were not aired in the broadcast version.
Interview excerpts
On how the teenagers she works with perceive their own use of apps like TikTok
I would say majority of our teens are aware that this is not helping. And yet they say 'I can't help it. There's FOMO, I don't like it. I know it puts me in a worse mood. I feel really yucky in the morning, especially if I'm doing it until middle of the night and it's replacing my sleep or during the day. It's replacing any other activities that might be actually purposeful and meaningful and joyful. I feel terrible. And yet, what am I missing? Everybody else is using it. I have to be on it.' So they have this compulsion on one hand, and also the sense that if I'm not doing it, I'll really be left out. But on the other hand, there is a sense this is not helping me.
On how kids can spend a healthy amount of time on social media
In any given sitting, not more than 15 minutes. We know that going down these very unhelpful and hurtful rabbit holes is particularly pernicious. So being on any given social media for past 15 minutes, you get into worse and worse and worse psychological state. And we know that it's much more helpful, actually, to be on it twice a day for 15 minutes than being on it in one sitting for half an hour.

For all social media, the longer you stay on it, some research has shown you tend to get more extreme content. And you end up in this space where you really feel compulsive.
On the added burden TikTok's new features could place on parents
We work with kids who have parents that are very involved and have more time than a lot of other parents. And even they say 'I just can't deal with this. It's too much, I trust that I raised my kids well enough that they will figure out what's appropriate.' But we don't have option because the data show that this is really, really, really deleterious for kids health.

What parents really can do is to create family spaces and times when everybody's off. We call it a family media plan. Because we are also the biggest models for kids and we use our phones too much. We're on screens too much, we use social media too much. We are distracted all the time. So creating really important conversations around the dinner table and with family, that everybody at 10:00 pm, let's say, logs off. No usage of social media privately in your room or bathroom. When we go on a hike trip, nobody nobody's on it. At the dinner table, all of us are off it. I think that's where there's a space for parents to start modeling these kinds of more helpful behaviors and relating to technology in a different way.
On what else apps like TikTok should be doing to reduce the harm their product does to teen users in the United States
The idea that [the app] shuts off during certain periods [for teen users], I think that absolutely should be the case. Access to social media in the bedroom of teens or tweens until the wee hours of the morning is incredibly, incredibly harmful.

We have some really interesting studies that show that even if you turn off notifications, just a phone laying in front of you if you have two people eating dinner together, their level of connection as they reported later is going to suffer. I mean, just having that phone right there, you're being aware of it. So I would love to see contexts, times of day, times of night in which it would automatically shut off.

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TikTok to limit the time teens can be on the app. Will safeguards help protect them?

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Jelena Kecmanovic isapsychologist who works with teenagers struggling with their mental health. "Almost every one of our sessions starts with what happened on TikTok or Instagram," she says. Kecmanovic also heads a practice group of other mental health professionals who work with adolescents.

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Meta Sued for Causing Harm to Children and Teens

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Meta Sued for Causing Harm to Children and Teens

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Illinois 1st State to Regular Kid Influencers

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Illinois 1st State to Regular Kid Influencers

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During the coronavirus pandemic, Shreya Nallamothu, now 16, said she, like so many others, began to spend more time on social media, where she saw countless parents who documented their own lives and their kids' lives on different platforms.

"The more I fell down that rabbit hole, I kept seeing cases of exploitation," Shreya, a high school junior from Normal, Illinois, told " Good Morning America," adding that she specifically was struck by seeing kids who she thought were not old enough to know the full ramifications of their online presence.

"Especially for very young children who maybe don't understand what talking to a camera means and they're not able to conceptualize what a million people looks like, they don't understand what they're putting out into the internet for profit and that it's not going to be able to go away and that their parents are making money off of it," she added.

On Friday, Shreya's home state of Illinois became the first state into the country to enact a law ensuring that children who are shown on social media are paid for their work.

Shreya Nallamothu poses for a photo in Bloomington, Ill., May 9, 2023. Illinois lawmakers aim to make their state what they say will be the first in the country to create protections for child social media influencers. Nallamothu, 15, raised her concerns to Illinois state Sen. David Koehler of Peoria, who then set the legislation in motion.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law S.B. 1782, legislation that "creates a private right of action for child influencers against their parents that featured them in videos and did not properly compensate them," according to the governor's website.

The bill was sponsored by state Sen. David Koehler of Peoria, who credits Shreya with bringing him the idea for the legislation.

Shreya said she reached out to Koehler's office last year after realizing no states at the time had any legislation protecting kid influencers.

"When I went into it, I wasn't 100% sure what I was doing. I didn't go into it expecting to pass a bill within a year," she said. "I'm very grateful for Sen. Koehler and his team for paying attention to a constituent."

The new law, which goes into effect Jan. 1, 2024, adds kids on social media to the state's Child Labor Law. It requires that children age 16 and under be compensated if, within a 30-day period, they are in at least 30% of a video or online content for which the adult, whether a parent or caregiver, is being paid. The person making the videos in which the child appears is responsible for setting aside gross earnings in a trust account for the child to receive at age 18.

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The law does not include an enforcement mechanism by the state, but instead relies on the parent or caregiver to set aside the earnings for their child and gives the child an avenue for legal action, if necessary, upon becoming an adult.

"This new digital age has given us tremendous opportunities to connect with one another, but it's also presented legal issues that have never existed before," Koehler said in a statement. "We need to work with our children to see the problems they face and tackle them head-on before any further harm is done."

Jessica Maddox, a University of Alabama professor of digital media who studies social media platforms and culture, including influencers, called the legislation in Illinois "long overdue."

"I am extremely pleased that Illinois has become the first state to pass child influencer protections. This is long overdue in the United States," Maddox told "GMA." "I hope other states follow suit very soon ... and I hope that gaining legislation isn't the end, but truly the beginning of the conversation."

Maddox noted that she hopes future legislation passed by Illinois or other states includes additional provisions, like allowing a person at age 18 to petition to have content of themselves removed from social media platforms.

"If we are going to make meaningful change around children of influencers and child influencers in this country, platforms need to be part of the conversation as well, to make sure they are not inadvertently harming or profiting off children of influencers as well," she said, adding, "I think it's just a matter of where platforms are willing to put their resources and willing to put their attention."

According to Maddox, the work of social media influencers and vloggers -- or video bloggers -- is as of now a "gray area" in the U.S. that has not provided much protection to date.

"These are actual jobs, possible ways of earning income, that need protection," she said. "Since there aren't unions, there isn't systemic protection in terms of laws, that is why Illinois law is super important for setting the precedent that this type of labor needs to be protected, especially for minors."

The types of "sharenting" content that have emerged as a lucrative business online over the past decade include everything from "family vlogs" that document a family's day-to-day life to branded campaigns that feature kids advertising a particular brand of clothing, for example.

Maddox said she is "optimistic" that the new law in Illinois will lead to changes in content creation.

"I commend it for being the first, and the Illinois state legislature for championing this issue and pushing it through," she said. "I am hopeful that this does lead to not just meaningful change, but also self-reflection for people that do make content online, whether they are a minor or an adult, or what they're doing and how they can be smart and responsible and ethical in their content creation."

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Illinois becomes 1st state to regulate kid influencers: What to know about the law

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The new law was inspired by a teenager watching social media content.

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Should Social Media be Held Responsible?

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Should Social Media be Held Responsible?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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How Online Social Movements Translate to Offline Results

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How Online Social Movements Translate to Offline Results

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How online social movements translate to offline results

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Source: "Can Performative Activism Actually Make a Difference?" | Above the Noise - PBS Learning Media

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Not Exactly News: Young People More Likely To Trust What They Read On Social Media

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Not Exactly News: Young People More Likely To Trust What They Read On Social Media

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Young people are increasing receiving most of their news via social media
getty

Even on social media, it is still largely only possible to fool some of the people all of the time - but unfortunately, as more people continue to utilize the platforms as their primary source of news, that could change for the worse.

A new study conducted earlier this month by BBC Education found that nearly half of young people aged between 11 and 16 tend to believe the news they see on social media - often regardless of the source. The trends in the UK are similar to what has been seen for years in the United States, where users of all ages often tend to trust almost anything a friend, relative and/or colleague shares with them.

Moreover, as a Gallup survey from last year also found, young people are increasingly receiving most of their news via social media. Though many question the creditability of what they read, too many are accepting it as fact.

"Considering the fact that those born between 2005-2010 have never experienced a world without social media and its dominance of modern culture, it's hardly surprising to learn that such a large percentage of the age category have come to believe that the news being shared across their timelines, homepages and for your pages are a credible source of information relating to the wider world," explained Sam O'Brien, chief marketing officer of partnership marketing platform Affise.

One factor said O'Brien was that social media influencers can often be of the same age of many of the platforms' users - and as a result the young audiences are more inclined to believe and trust those opinions.

"While some social media outlets will of course be crediting trustworthy news sites for their information, a large number could be sharing unreliable, misleading and inaccurate sources, which may result in suggestible young audiences taking distorted or even fictitious stories and news as fact," added O'Brien. "The BBC Education study revealed that social media is the most popular source of news, ahead of more traditional outlets like television and radio, news websites, and even parents."

Where this can certainly be a problem is that so much content shared on social media can be misleading and biased, and already misinformation and even disinformation spread easily on the platforms.

"It is concerning that so many people, children or adults, use social media as their primary source for news. I realize modern media takes a variety of forms and utilizes a variety of platforms, but all readers and viewers must be discriminating of some types of news feeds or information that calls itself news," said Professor Roy Gutterman, director of the Tully Center for Free Speech and associate professor of communications at the Newhouse School of Public Communication at Syracuse University.
Is It Even News?
Social media also makes it all too easy to set filters and only receive information about particular likes or interests, which means that much of the actual "news" of the day could be missing. More worrisome is what actually passes for news in the age of misinformation.

"Modern media not only allows users to tailor their news feeds to fit their interests or beliefs, but people have to distinguish between real news and hoaxes or misinformation," Gutterman continued. "News literacy is important, but likely not something fully explored in schools. News itself has also become so politicized that some people don't believe anything they read."

As with TV, video games and other content in our digital age, it could be left to parents to ensure that they monitor what their children are seeing - and even posting.

"This shows how the adults have left the room. It's our job to be helping 16 year olds discern what is trustworthy and credible online and what isn't through day-to-day conversations," said Professor Amy Bonebright of the Digital Media and Journalism Department at Liberty University.

"For example, when news of Roe's reversal broke, I told my three kids - ages 11, 13, 14 - what the facts were (simplified and age appropriate, of course), and told them they would probably see people talking about it on social channels," added Bonebright. "I wanted them to know the facts before they came across a video of some TikTokker spouting propaganda and emotion. And therefore, they should have some tools in their toolbox of critical thinking to help with all the information overload chaos."
Will The Platforms Do Anything?
The social platforms have already shown that they've been unable to stop the flow of misinformation to the masses, so unfortunately there is little reason to suggest that they'd be able to ensure that such content doesn't reach impressionable young minds. For those reasons, it could be all the more important to educate those not to believe everything that is on the Internet.

"If content is bot-generated, some platforms might be able to block some types of content," Gutterman suggested. "Beyond encouraging people to view trusted sources, legally speaking I don't think social media platforms have much responsibility in this arena."

In fact, the spotlight that was cast on Facebook last year only suggests that it could be in the platforms' interest to let the content flow. In other words, social media could create a world where you can fool all of the people all of the time.

"There might even be an incentive for social media platforms to not do anything in this arena because there's an economic incentive for social media because they generate revenue from clicks and the crazier the content, the more people click on it," warned Gutterman.

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Not Exactly News - Younger People More Likely To Trust What They Read On Social Media

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Social media could create a world where you can fool all of the people all of the time.

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In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, posts and videos promoting natural remedies for the virus-everything from steam inhalation to ginger- proliferated online. What explains the storm of likes and shares that propels online misinformation through a social media network?

It's not that people are lazy or don't want to know the truth. The platforms' reward systems are wrong.

Some scholars suggest that people share falsehoods out of bias, while others argue that failures of critical thinking or media literacy are to blame. But new research from Gizem Ceylan, a postdoctoral scholar at Yale SOM, suggests that these explanations miss something important. In a new study co-authored by Ian Anderson and Wendy Wood of the University of Southern California, Ceylan found that the reward systems of social media platforms are inadvertently encouraging users to spread misinformation.

By constantly reinforcing sharing-any sharing-with likes and comments, platforms have created habitual users who are largely unconcerned with the content they post. And these habitual users, the research shows, spread a disproportionate share of misinformation.

"It's not that people are lazy or don't want to know the truth," Ceylan says. "The platforms' reward systems are wrong."

The researchers conducted several experiments to test how different kinds of social media users interact with true and false headlines. In the first, they asked participants to review eight true and eight false headlines and decide whether to share them to a simulated Facebook feed. They also asked several questions designed to assess how habitually participants used Facebook-that is, how much time they spent on the platform and how automatically they shared content.

The results showed that, overall, participants shared many more true headlines than false ones. However, the patterns were markedly different for the most habitual Facebook users. These participants not only shared more headlines overall, but also shared a roughly equal percentage of true (43%) and false (38%) ones. Less frequent users, by contrast, shared 15% of true and just 6% of false headlines.

Ceylan and her co-authors calculated that the 15% most habitual Facebook users were responsible for 37% of the false headlines shared in the study, suggesting that a relatively small number of people can have an outsized impact on the information ecosystem.

But why do the heaviest users share the most misinformation? Is it because the misinformation is in line with their beliefs? Not so, a subsequent experiment found. Habitual users will even share misinformation that goes against their political beliefs, the researchers discovered.

In this experiment, Ceylan and her colleagues asked participants to consider headlines that reflected partisan bias. Then, they examined concordant sharing (that is, liberals sharing liberal headlines or conservatives sharing conservative headlines) and discordant sharing (Iiberals sharing conservative headlines and vice-versa) among both habitual Facebook users and less frequent ones.

Interestingly, while less frequent users showed a stark preference for sharing concordant as compared to discordant headlines (that is, reflecting the partisan bias found in prior research), the pattern was less marked among the heaviest users. These habitual users shared more overall and also showed a less strong preference for concordant as compared to discordant information-another indication that habit was driving their behavior.

To Ceylan, this does not suggest that heavy Facebook users are not ideologically motivated or lazy in their processing when they spread misinformation. Instead, when users' sharing habits are activated with cues from the social platform, the content they are sharing-its accuracy and partisan slant-is largely irrelevant to them. They post simply because the platform rewards posting with engagement in the form of likes, comments, and re-shares.

"This was kind of a shocker for the misinformation research community," she says. "What we showed is that, if people are habitual sharers, they'll share any type of information, because they don't care [about the content]. All they care about is likes and attention. The content that gets attention become part of habitual users' mental representations. Over time, they just share content that fits this mental representation. Thus, rewards on a social platform are critical in shaping people's habits and what they are attuned to share with others."

It's a system issue, not an individual issue. We need to create better environments on social media platforms to help people make better decisions.

The study also suggests a potential way out of this trap. In their last experiment, the researchers simulated a new structure that rewarded participants for accuracy. When they share accurate information, participants were awarded points that were redeemable for an Amazon gift card.

"In this simulation, everyone shared lots of true headlines and few false headlines. Their previous social media habits did not matter," Ceylan explains. "What this means is that, when you reward people for accuracy, people learn the type of content that gets rewards and build habits for sharing that content (i.e., accuracy in this case)." What's more, surprisingly, the users continued to share accurate headlines even after the researchers removed the reward for accuracy. These results show that users can be incentivized to develop a new habit: accuracy.

To Ceylan, the research demonstrates how powerfully social media has shaped our habits. Platforms aim for more profit and engagement -i.e., more users spending longer hours using them. By rewarding and amplifying any type of engagement regardless of its quality or accuracy, platforms have created users who will share indiscriminately. "It's a system issue, not an individual issue. We need to create better environments on social media platforms to help people make better decisions. We cannot keep on blaming users for showing political biases or being lazy for the misinformation problem. We have to change the reward structure on these platforms."

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A majority of false stories are spread by a small number of frequent users, suggests a new study co-authored by Yale SOM's Gizem Ceylan. But they can be taught to change their ways.

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Black Activism on Twitter | Amiri Tulloch | TEDxPhillipsAcademyAndover

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Source: "Deepfakes: Can You Spot a Phony Video?" | Above the Noise - PBS Learning Media

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Political Bots, Social Media, and Influencing Elections (VIDEO)

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Political Bots, Social Media, and Influencing Elections (VIDEO)

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Social media influencer Kai Cenat is facing charges of inciting a riot and promoting an unlawful gathering in New York City, after the online streamer drew thousands of his followers, many of them teenagers, to a giveaway event at Union Square.