Why are we hurtling blindly into a situation where we give children and teenagers the tools to do real harm to themselves? Under pressure from our kids, we are letting them have access to smartphones and social media at younger and younger ages, despite the research evidence pointing to the real dangers that social media in particular poses.
esearchers have found that social media can be harmful because it encourages constant comparison and limits in-person communication, often leading to increased feelings of depression, anxiety, poor body image, insecurity, and loneliness. Influencers are often selling unrealistic and unattainable ideals, using filters and software within the social media apps to transform their ordinary faces or bodies into something extraordinary. No wonder young teenagers feel inadequate and unattractive.
Social media can also affect behaviour negatively by depriving kids of important social cues they would usually learn through in-person communication. This can create an emotional distance and lack of empathy that could be a fertile ground for cyber-bullying, where they are often more callous than they would ever be if the person was present in front of them.
I find it ironic that social media giants, like TikTok, bring forward their own software to help families manage their children’s time on the app. This is akin to the cigarette industry self-regulating by choosing the opening times of shops. It looks like it is child/teenager centred, but is doing nothing to address the content that children are consuming, which in my view is ultimately consuming them.
A 60 Minutes documentary in the US at the end of 2022 claimed that there was a difference in the TikTok content that is put forward to kids in China and in the West. In China, the algorithms push educational content, like science experiments kids can do at home, whereas in the West the content is popular culture and is like the visual equivalent of opium. Lots of experts point to the little hits of dopamine every 15 to 30 seconds that scrolling through endless reels and TikToks can deliver to the brain.
Research shows that post-pandemic, the levels of screen time, and the consequent harm caused to children and teenagers, are both up. It makes sense given how reliant we became on social media to stay in any way connected to friends and family. But it seems the habits that children and teenagers built up over that time have stayed at problematic levels.
All of which begs the question, what can we do about it?
Individual parents often feel an overwhelming pressure from the pre-teen son or daughter to be allowed access to social media apps like TikTok or Snapchat, even if the child doesn’t have a phone. The most usual argument is that “everyone” else has the app and is using it and consequently your child is losing out socially and may, as they will argue, get left out entirely and be a social outcast.
No parent wants that. So, it is often parents’ anxiety about their child’s social exclusion/inclusion that leads them to override their better judgement. Those parents too, probably feel a bit isolated and feel that their desire to prohibit the social media apps makes them a lone voice in the wilderness.
If there was greater communal support for parents to push against the insidious infiltration of social media into the lives of our children, never mind our teenagers, I think many more parents would hold firm and stick to their beliefs that unfiltered access to the internet, and social media apps in particular, are bad.
If every parent knew that every other parent in the class, for example, was holding the same firm line, saying no to social media, then we could have greater confidence in our wise restriction of these apps.
But, while there are some parents out there, as I said in the opening, blindly letting their children wander into the social media world, it creates a precedence that eventually becomes overwhelming even for the most determined of parents.
We can’t legislate for everything, but we could legislate against children having smart phones before the age of 13. It wouldn’t be a panacea, as tablets and other devices can access the internet and social media, but it would be a start. Government engagement with the tech giants about the content they push would also help.
Once we properly recognised the dangers of smoking, we came to grips with advertising and access to cigarettes for children, making it far more difficult for them to start smoking. I think the time is right to recognise the very real and immediate dangers of social media for our children.