Rich Johnston, an Atlanta father of two school-age kids, thought AOL Instant Messenger was bad enough. “Away messages mess with people’s brains,” Johnston said recently, and they’re stressing him out. A self-identified older millennial, he also loves the deluge of information on X, the old Twitter of old, and, yes, he finds it weird.
“Now we have Snapchat and TikTok and Instagram, and it’s going to be even worse in 10 years,” he said. “That’s the scary thing about raising kids in this environment.”
He’s not alone in feeling this way. There’s currently a fairly frantic national effort to keep smartphones out of the hands of kids and teens off social media, pointing to a correlation between young people spending more time online and an increase in mental health problems. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy also called for warning labels on social media platforms earlier this year.
This week, that panic reached a tipping point.
Wednesday’s Assembly One step closer Passage of the Children’s Online Safety and Privacy Act (KOSPA) is looming as tech companies scramble to get ahead of what will likely be the most significant internet regulation in decades.
And just one day before the bill was scheduled to be debated in the House of Representatives, Instagram has announced a revamp The new initiative, called Teen Accounts, will make accounts private by default for users under 18, limit nighttime notifications, and give parents the option to monitor their kids. It won’t take Instagram away from teens entirely, but it could dramatically change how they use it. It’s the latest move by social media companies to make their platforms a little less scary for parents. YouTube and Snapchat made a similar announcement this month.
Whether these developments are actually good for children remains an open question.
This is because seven states Passed a ban in schools14 more countries are considering banning it. Anxious Generation, Encouraging parents to cooperate “To swim against the current of ever-increasing screen time,” one of his collaborators, psychologist Jean Twenge, wrote in a 2017 essay for The Atlantic.Did the smartphone destroy a generation?“
To be clear, researchers like Haidt and Twenge aren’t suggesting that we should simply ban kids from touching smartphones or scrolling through their social media feeds. We don’t actually know how such bans or policy changes would affect young people’s mental health. On the other hand, banning cell phones in schools is It is sweeping the nation It doesn’t regulate what parents do at home, but the phrase “no cell phones” is being used a lot more than it used to.
“Talk of a ban sounds like a cry of despair that we have lost control.” Sonia Livingstone“We have lost control over our corporate feeds, and by accepting commercial infrastructure (as part of a Faustian bargain), we have lost control over our education, our health, and our family life,” said David Gregg, a professor of social psychology at the London School of Economics who has studied children and technology for decades.
In other words, we’re letting the tech companies win.
Companies like Meta make money by getting users to engage with their products, so they can collect data about them and sell targeted ads accordingly. Instagram’s new teen accounts may give parents a little more control over how their kids engage with these transactions, but the product remains what kids are interested in.
But KOSPA targets the business model of social media platforms. Combining the Child Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children and Youth Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0), the law would ban targeted advertising to minors, allow users to turn off algorithmic sorting of their feeds, and raise the minimum age requirement for online accounts from 13 to 17. It would also impose a so-called “duty of care” on social media companies, making them liable for harmful content on their platforms. Definition of Harmful Content The bill’s wording is still being finalized..
The fate of KOSPA remains unclear. Its predecessor, KOSA, passed the Senate in July by a 93-3 vote. I have been against itThose who advocate freedom of speech Opening the door to censorshipCombined with how social media platforms self-regulate, such sweeping legislation may ease some of the horrors of raising children in an increasingly digital world, but it won’t guarantee an end to the youth mental health crisis.
Your kids can develop healthy media habits. So can you.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has A portal dedicated to kids and technologyA good starting point is The 5 Cs of Media Use Indicators such as child satisfaction, calming, crowding out, and communication can help assess a child’s specific needs. AAP Point out While safety standards for children’s products are commonplace, no such regulations exist for tech products, “which means kids are using platforms and apps that are supposed to be safe.” Designed According to the AAP, “It is intended for adults, not children, who are at different developmental stages.”
Parents should also follow Basic guidelines for healthy digital media useTurn off notifications, avoid looking at screens before bed, limit your social media use, put your phone away every once in a while, etc. You spend more time without your phone than you think.
To do this, Livingstone told me, research needs to look at the causes of mental health problems in young people, rather than focusing on the effects of screen time. Linda CharmaineThe founder and director of the Youth, Media and Wellbeing Institute at Wellesley College, she said the Surgeon General’s call for warnings on social media platforms was a sign of “a little bit of hysterical panic” and that solving mental health issues requires more than just cracking down on smartphone use.
“People are hoping for something that will stop the rise in mental illness, as if this is a magic bullet,” Charmalaman says, “and I think it may actually distract people from other underlying causes of mental illness.”
After all, it’s not just kids who are struggling to navigate online. Issued recommendations regarding parental mental health and wellbeingand with it, concerns about kids and technology. It starts to become like an ouroboros of anxiety.. in New York Times essay Regarding this recommendation, Murthy pointed to “the impact of social media on the mental health of young people” as a cause of parents’ mental health problems.
“Stress, loneliness, and fatigue can easily impact people’s mental health and well-being,” Murthy wrote, “and we know that parents’ mental health directly impacts their children’s mental health.”
No wonder everyone is panicking. As Congress bands together to take aim at kids’ online safety, giving parents more control over what their kids see and do online, parents are caught in a feedback loop. They’re stressed out over a child care crisis Congress has yet to solve. They’re struggling with an epidemic of loneliness that shows no end in sight. A 2022 Harvard University study Twenty percent of mothers and 15% of fathers reported anxiety, compared with 18% of teenagers, and almost 40% of teenagers said they were “somewhat worried” about their parents’ mental health.
It remains to be seen what impact changing how social media works for kids will have on their mental health. Turning off algorithmic feeds could reduce exposure to harmful content. Getting rid of targeted ads could certainly have a positive impact. Greater privacy could protect kids from online strangers. At the very least, we’re starting to talk more about how these platforms work and how they can work better — and how we can help them feel better, online and offline.
“We can’t protect our kids forever,” said Johnston, the Atlanta father, “so we have to teach them how to use it as wisely, safely and in a way that doesn’t cause panic as possible.”
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