How the Use of Social Media Affects Teenagers
Experts say that children are growing up with more anxiety and less self esteem.
Many parents and teachers are concerned about how exposure to technology might affect young children developmentally. We know that our preschoolers are acquiring new social and cognitive skills at an impressive rate, and we don’t want hours glued to an electronic device to hold them back.
But adolescence is an equally important and rapidly developing period, yet very few of us are paying attention to how our teens’ use of technology (which is much more intense and intimate than a 3-year-old’s use) playing with dad’s cell phone) is affecting them. In fact, experts worry that social media and texting, which have become so essential to teenage life, are promoting anxiety and lowering self-esteem.
Young people report that there may be good reason to worry. In a survey carried out by the Royal Society of Public Health, young people between the ages of 14 and 24 in Great Britain were asked how social media platforms impacted their health and well-being. The survey results found that Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram increased feelings of depression, anxiety, poor body image, and loneliness.
Indirect communication
Teens are experts at keeping busy for hours after school and long after bedtime. When they’re not doing their homework (and when they do) they’re online and on their phones, texting, sharing, teasing, scrolling, you name it.
Of course, before everyone had an Instagram account, teens kept busy too, but they were more likely to talk on the phone or in person when they went out to the mall. Although it may have seemed like a lot of pointless meetings, what they were doing was experimenting, testing skills, succeeding and failing in hundreds of little real-time interactions that kids today are missing out on. For their part, modern teens are learning to communicate mostly while looking at a screen, not another person.
There is no question that children are missing out on critical social skills.
“As a species we are very attuned to reading social cues,” says Dr. Catherine Steiner-Adair, a clinical psychologist and author of The Big Disconnect. “There is no question that children are losing very critical social skills. Somehow, texting and communicating online doesn’t cause a nonverbal learning disability, but it does put everyone in a context of nonverbal disability, where body language, facial expression, and even the smallest kinds of reactions vowels become invisible.
Reduce risks
Certainly speaking indirectly creates a barrier to clear communication, but that’s not all. Learning how to make friends is an important part of growing up, and friendship requires, to some extent, taking risks.
This is true for making a new friend and it is also true for maintaining friendships. When there are issues to be faced, big or small, it takes the courage to be honest about your feelings and then listen to what the other person has to say. Learning to effectively cross these bridges is part of what makes friendship fun, exciting, and also terrifying. “Part of healthy self-esteem is knowing how to say what you think and feel, even when you disagree with other people or feel emotionally risky,” says Dr. Steiner-Adair.
But when friendship takes place online and through text, kids do so in a context stripped of many of the more personal, and sometimes intimidating, aspects of communication. It’s easier to keep defense up when you’re texting, so the stakes are lower. You are not listening or seeing the effect that your words are having on the other person.
Because the conversation is not happening in real time, each party may take more time to consider a response. No wonder kids say calling someone on the phone is “too intense”; it requires more direct communication and if you’re not used to that, it can be scary.
If children don’t get enough practice interacting with other people and meeting their needs in person and in real time, many of them will become adults anxious about our species’ primary means of communication: talking. And of course, social negotiations only get riskier as people get older and begin to navigate romantic relationships and employment.
Cyber bullying and impostor syndrome
The other big danger that comes from children communicating more indirectly is that it has become easier to be cruel. “Kids send all kinds of messages that they wouldn’t even think of telling anyone to their face,” says Dr. Donna Wick, a developmental and clinical psychologist who runs Mind to Mind Parent. She points out that this seems to be especially true of girls, who generally don’t like to disagree with their “real life” friends.
“You hope to teach them that they can disagree without jeopardizing the relationship, but what social media is teaching them to do is disagree in more extreme ways that jeopardize the relationship. It’s exactly what you don’t want to happen,” she says.
Dr. Steiner-Adair agrees that girls are at particular risk. “Girls are socialized more to compare themselves to other people, particularly other girls, to develop their identities, so it makes them more vulnerable to disadvantage from all of this.” She cautions that a lack of solid self-esteem is often to blame. “We forget that relational aggression comes from insecurity and feeling bad about yourself, and the desire to tear other people down to make yourself feel better.”
Peer acceptance is important to teens, and many of them care about their image just as much as a politician running for office can feel so serious to them. Add to that the fact that kids today are getting real survey data on how much people like them or how they look, through things like “likes”. It’s enough for someone not to look. Who wouldn’t want to look “better” if they can? So kids can spend hours pruning their identities online, trying to project an idealized image. Teenage girls sort through hundreds of photos, agonizing over which ones to post online. Guys compete for attention by trying to outdo each other, pushing as hard as they can in the already uninhibited online atmosphere. The children make gangs against each other.
Teenagers have always been doing this, but with the advent of social media they are faced with more opportunities and more pitfalls than ever before. When kids scroll through your social media walls and see how great everyone looks, it only adds to the pressure. We’re used to worrying about the impractical ideals digitally airbrushed magazine models give our kids, but what happens when the boy next door is airbrushed too? Even more confusing, what happens when your own profile doesn’t really represent the person you feel you are on the inside?
“Adolescence, and particularly the early 20s, are the years when you are very aware of the contrasts between who you appear to be and who you think you are,” says Dr. Wick. “It is similar to the ‘impostor syndrome’ in psychology. As you get older and more proficient, you start to realize that you’re actually good at some things and then you feel that gap, hopefully narrowing. But imagine that your deepest, scariest fear is that it’s not as good as it seems, and then imagine that you need to look this good all the time! It is exhausting”.
As Dr. Steiner-Adair explains, “Self-esteem comes from establishing who you are.” The more identities you have, and the more time you spend pretending to be someone you’re not, the harder it is to feel good about yourself.
Stalk (and be ignored)
Another big change that has come with new technology, and especially smartphones, is that we are never really alone. Kids update their statuses, share what they’re watching, listening to, and reading, and have apps that let their friends know their specific location on a map at all times. Even if a person isn’t trying to keep his friends up to date, he’ll never be out of text message range. The result is that children feel hyper-connected to each other. The conversation should never stop and it seems like something new is always happening.
“Regardless of what we think about ‘relationships’ maintained and in some cases initiated on social media, children never get a break from it,” says Dr. Wick. “And that, in itself, can cause anxiety. Everyone needs a respite from the demands for intimacy and connection; time alone to reorganize, replenish or just relax. When you don’t have that, it’s easy to become emotionally drained and fertile ground for anxiety to breed.”
Likewise, it’s surprisingly easy to feel alone in the midst of all that hyperconnection. For one, kids now know with depressing certainty when they’re being ignored. We all have phones and we all respond to things pretty quickly, so when you’re waiting for an answer that doesn’t come, the silence can be deafening. The silent treatment can be a strategic insult or just the unfortunate side effect of an online teen relationship that starts out hot, but then fizzles out.
“In the old days, when a boy was going to break up with you, he had to have a conversation with you. Or at least he had to call,” says Dr. Wick. “These days, it could just disappear from your screen and you might never get to have the conversation about…what did I do?” Children are often left imagining the worst of themselves. But even when the conversation isn’t over, being on constant alert can trigger anxiety. We can feel like we’re being left out and ourselves left out by others, and our human need to communicate is also effectively delegated in that way.
What should parents, guardians and teachers do?
Both experts interviewed for this article agreed that the best thing parents can do to minimize the risks associated with technology is to first reduce their own use. It’s up to parents to set a good example of what healthy computer use looks like. Most of us check our phones or email very frequently, either out of real interest or out of nervous habit.
Children should be used to seeing our faces, not our heads bent over a screen. Set up tech-free zones in the house and tech-free hours, when no one uses the phone, including mom and dad. “Don’t walk in the door after work in the middle of a conversation,” advises Dr. Steiner-Adair. “Don’t walk out the door after work, say ‘hello’ quickly and then ‘just check your email.’ In the morning, get up half an hour before your kids and check your email at that time. Give them your full attention until they’re out the door. And neither of you should be using phones in the car to or from school because that’s an important time to talk.”
Limiting the amount of time spent plugged into computers not only provides a healthy counterpoint to the tech-obsessed world, but also strengthens the parent-child bond and makes children feel more secure. Children need to know that you are available to help them with their problems, talk about their day, or give them a realistic perspective.
“It’s the mini moments of disconnection, when parents are too focused on their own devices and screens, that dilute the parent-child relationship,” warns Dr. Steiner-Adair. And when kids start turning to the internet for help or to process what’s going on throughout the day, they may not like what’s going on. “Technology can give your kids more information than you can, and it doesn’t have your values,” says Dr. Steiner-Adair. “He won’t be sensitive to your child’s personality and won’t answer his questions in a developmentally appropriate way.”
Additionally, Dr. Wick advises delaying the age of first use as much as possible. “I use the same advice here that I use when talking about children and alcohol: try to get as far as possible with nothing.” If your son is on Facebook, Dr. Wick says you should be her son’s friend and monitor her page. But she advises against checking text messages unless