The dramatic increase in youth depression, anxiety, addiction, eating disorders and suicide attempts over the past year and a half has been unprecedented. Additionally, there’s been an alarming rise in overdose deaths during the pandemic, particularly in individuals under 21 years of age.
Social media plays an outsize role in glamorizing and normalizing the use of drugs and alcohol. Influencers and celebrities routinely post images of themselves high or drunk, with little care for the effect this may have on the young.
COVID-19 robbed young people of a critical part of their young lives: the ability to socialize. Though the internet allowed interaction between friends that would not have been possible in its absence, for many children and teens, engagement online became a new addiction — and further exacerbated underlying depression, anxiety and a low sense of self-worth.
The architecture of social media platforms frequented by children has been brought into stark relief most notably with the groundbreaking testimony of Facebook data scientist Francis Haugen, and most recently with the U.S. surgeon general’s 53-page public advisory, “Protecting Youth Mental Health.”
For at-risk children and teens, and likely for a majority of children and teens, there is a dose-dependent relationship between social media use and mental distress, eating disorders and self-injurious behaviors.
We know that brief, high-intensity bursts of dopamine fuel addiction. In social media use, repeated and successive clicks encourage further clicks, each leading to an increase in the individual user’s dopamine level. If you didn’t understand addiction, this is what it looks like.
Algorithmic amplification and engagement-based ranking multiply exponentially the chances that a teen interested in weight loss, or one who has contemplated suicide, will be pulled into a vortex of inappropriate, dangerous content.
In short, social media seems designed to encourage and expand addictive behaviors in children and teens.
Additionally, social media tends to lead children away from in-person activities to a world that encourages a negative self-image while offering tips on dieting and starvation to correct it. At its most extreme, it can lead to a lifetime of anorexic eating, suicide attempts and death.
Dr. Jean Twenge, in her 2017 book, “iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy — and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood,” noted that teen depression doubled between 2011 and 2018. In those years, she asks, what one thing changed markedly? Her answer? Children’s access to social media and texting via smartphone use. In 2010, Instagram debuted; in 2011, Snapchat; and in 2016, Tik Tok — all accessible day and night to any child or teen with a handheld device.
In my own practice, I see a rise in parental concern regarding their teen’s consistent use, and often near continuous use, of social media. Posting the ever-perfect selfie, and pics “out having fun,” trump actual time spent with friends. The “proof of fun” post has become far more important than having fun.
In therapy, we emphasize the importance of learning to live in the moment, not in some future time or past experience. Yet, instead of living in the moment, we are teaching children and teens to create a false moment, never actually lived in, to pretend perfection every waking minute. Further, once posted, kids experience a dopamine rush each time their post is liked — and a feeling of worthlessness when it isn’t.
From the inception of widespread ownership of televisions in the 1950s through the early 2000s, it was common for parents to limit their children’s time in front of the screen. Involved parents saw the wisdom of this limitation. By doing so, interaction with other children, physical activity, reading and engagement with life was encouraged and thoughtfully balanced with screen time.
Perhaps it’s time to consider that screen attachment might not be the best possible life choice, 24/7. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcick and Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel all strictly limited (or continue to limit) their own children’s access to screen-based devices. For 2022, it might be wise to look more closely at their choices; it’s clear these tech giants saw what that use might yield.
“Big tobacco understood that the younger you got to someone, the easier you could get them addicted to become a lifelong user,” Doug Peterson, Nebraska’s attorney general, said in an interview quoted in the September 27 issue of The New York Times.
If we do not begin to reduce and monitor young people’s engagement with social media and insist upon the kind of regulatory measures adopted by the United Kingdom and European Union (with an update to Section 230), we continue to place the future of young Americans in jeopardy. The end result will be that children already susceptible to addiction, depression and impulse control disorders will face a darker, more isolated future, and those not genetically or environmentally predisposed to these illnesses may become so through repeated engagement with these platforms.
Lisa Wolf, MSW, LCSW holds a Master of Science from Columbia University and Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a practicing psychotherapist with offices in Bridgehampton and Manhattan.
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