A mother in California battled to get her 15-year-old son out of bed after he refused to go to school for weeks due to his severe anxiety. A Massachusetts dad struggled with his 14-year-old daughter, who was addicted to vaping and self harming. A Georgia couple attended the funeral of their 17-year-old daughter who committed suicide 18 months after transitioning and suffering from depression.
These types of stories have become increasingly common, and mental health issues in youth have exploded in the last decade. There is no single cause and countless factors contribute to someone’s mental health; but research has been growing around what seems to be the concurrent rise in social media and smartphone use by children at younger ages. In fact, U.S. surgeon general Dr. Vivek H. Murthy on Tuesday issued an advisory warning of the risks social media poses to youth’s mental health. But there are steps parents can take to protect their children from those risks.
Murthy’s advisory is the latest of many reports linking increased usage of social media with a heightened risk of mental health issues. A February Centers for Disease Control report found that 57% of adolescent girls felt seriously sad or hopeless in 2021, a 60% increase from a decade earlier. About 29% of boys had these feelings. And strikingly, suicide thoughts have also risen significantly, with 22% of high school students surveyed by the CDC in 2021 reporting that they had seriously considered suicide within the past year.
Meanwhile, social media use has similarly spiked. An August 2022 Pew Research Center internet survey found that more than 35% of teens are on social media constantly, one-third feel they use it too much and more than 50% feel they would have a difficult time giving it up.
The age of initial smartphone use seems to matter. A study from Sapien Labs earlier this month of more than 27,000 youth found that mental health issues were related to the age they began using smartphones. Those who started at a younger age were far more likely to have mental health issues reported via a standardized mental health questionnaire.
The mechanism behind this is seems to be a rewiring of the preadolescent and teen brain. “Social media platforms drive surges of dopamine to the brain to keep consumers coming back over and over again. The shares, likes and comments on these platforms trigger the brain’s reward center, resulting in a high similar to the one people feel when gambling or using drugs,” states Nancy DeAngelis, director of behavioral health at Jefferson Health in Abington, Pennsylvania.
How Parents Can Help
Social media and smartphones have become an integral part of teens’ and kids’ lives, but waiting to give access to these platforms is one way to help a child’s brain become somewhat more mature. The younger the brain, the greater the mental health risk.
Many advocate for waiting until eighth grade, or when a child is at least 12 or 13. In fact, a nationwide movement, Wait Until 8th, started by Austin, Texas mother of three Brooke Shannon has had increasing traction lately. The organization created a pledge that parents can sign, committing to wait until their children are in at least eighth grade before giving them smartphones. Celebrities such as Kate Winslet and Jennifer Garner have fueled this movement, speaking about the harms of early usage and early exposure to social media.
Some parents are now making a change to a different type of phone. They are opting for “dumb” phones as opposed to smartphones, which in a way is smarter, or at the very least more protective of a child’s mental wellness. A Mapleton, Utah dad of six, Lance Black, is a founder and investor in this type of phone. Gabb Wireless allows the basics—there are features for texting, calling and a GPS tracker, and that’s it.
Policies have also started changing at the state level. Montana has outlawed TikTok, and Utah has passed restrictive laws requiring parental consent before youths can access certain social media platforms. California has passed strong laws set to go into effect next year around privacy for youth under 18. Other states are considering a variety of policy changes around social media exposure as well as data sharing.
Getting buy-in from friends and family to limit social media and smartphone use can create organic peer pressure for everyone to stay on track with these initiatives. Are there parents whose kids play soccer with yours or attend your church who will team up with you? Parents can reach out to each other and form an agreement about when their kids will get a phone and when they can access social media.
Another way parents can help reduce use is to model it. Adults Check their phones on average 144 times a day and reach for their phones within 10 minutes of waking up. Could a parent put the phone in a different room, especially during dinner or family game night? Could parents or caregivers have a rule of not using the phone during carpool from school? These are simple ways to incorporate healthy behaviors around phones.
Changes in the home are essential for those children and teens who already have phones. These include guidelines such as times when phones are put away, including meal times, bedtime and homework hours, allowing face-to-face connection and conversation to happen.
Lastly, it is key to make sure that there is time for the important aspects of physical, emotional and mental health. This means not only daily exercise, diet and good sleep hygiene but practicing the preventative pillars of mental wellbeing, including making the time and the space for connection and communication with others.
As the surgeon general recently stated, there is a “loneliness epidemic.” Loneliness can result from lack of face-to-face human connection and can lead to an increased risk of mental health issues. Making the time to have conversations with family, kids and friends has become increasingly important to battle some of the untoward effects and brain rewiring caused by too much time on devices and social media.
For the most part, we have the same brains and bodies as our ancestors from 100—even 1,000—years ago. Technology may have changed, but our biology is largely the same. Like our ancestors, we need the basics for our health—and that is connectedness to each other.