We all know that social media is popular with young people, but are some teens and tweens actually addicted to social media? Researchers have studied the behaviors of teens and tweens using social media, as well as the way social media apps are designed, and the results are important for parents to understand.
In one recent study, University of California San Francisco professor and pediatrician Jason Nagata, MD, discovered that some teens’ social media habits “mirror symptoms of addiction to substances,” including withdrawal and impaired functioning.
Dr. Nagata also found that 11- and 12-year-olds with these addictive social media habits were more likely to develop mental health and behavioral issues, including depression, attention problems, suicidal behaviors, sleep disturbances, and experimentation with marijuana, tobacco, and alcohol just one year later.
Other researchers have focused on what it is exactly about social media that makes it harder for kids and teens to use in healthy moderation. Teens “have a hypersensitive, social brain and a very weak prefrontal cortex,” explained Mitch Prinstein, PhD, a psychologist and neuroscientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. That means it’s extra hard, almost impossible, for teens to resist an app that serves up real-time notifications of social approval such as “likes” and “dislikes.”
Dr. Nagata agreed that for the best mental health outcomes, notifications should be limited for kids and teens, especially at bedtime and during school hours. Dr. Prinstein and Dr. Nagata also emphasized the importance of setting limits for privacy and appropriate content when young people use social media. They believe that social media companies can and should do more to design safer products for their young users.
The U.S. doesn’t yet have many regulations around social media companies and kids, but in the meantime, here are some steps parents can take to encourage better mental health:
- Consider whether your child really needs a smartphone yet. Even if they already have one, it’s not too late to make changes to family rules.
- Go through app settings together to limit or turn off notifications.
- Set all apps to the safest possible privacy settings.
- Have kids turn off and hand over phones at least an hour before bedtime.
- Agree on a list of family phone rules, and follow them yourself whenever possible too.
- Set parental controls, such as screen time limits and restrictions on downloading apps, on kids’ devices.
- Check that kids are putting in their real birth year when signing up for social media, so that any kid-safe restrictions that do exist can be implemented.
