Social media creates opportunities for bullying, doom scrolling, and misinformation. And with smartphones, the hours of use are basically unlimited. Recent parenting advice articles are filled with tips for keeping your children away from screens.
The warnings we hear are dire. And experts are quick to pin any decline in teenagers’ mental health to the rise in smartphone use. But there’s another side to this technology.
For teenagers, phones can be an important link. They offer a way to connect with their support network when they need it. And an opportunity to provide that network for others.
For most teenagers, there’s a lot of overlap between their online and offline social circle. And many of their conversations involve sharing joy, providing support, and staying connected.
Clinical psychologist Joseph Tan, PhD, shared his advice for how parents can help promote the positives of digital networks for their children and teenagers.
Are social connections and support found online as impactful as offline communities?
For youths, their online lives often connect to their offline lives, with each influencing each other. For example, a conversation at school about a shared interest in drawing can turn into a collaborative drawing session online. So, I would caution against seeing these worlds as completely separate realms of interactions.
In a survey, teenagers shared that social media:
–Pew Research Center
Made them feel more connected to friends: 80%
Gave them a place to be creative: 71%
Created a support network for hard times: 67%
Online connections can be impactful when they add to offline connections. And a conversation can start through social media and then continue face to face.
Online connections can also be impactful when they compensate for a lack of access to support in a person’s community.
For example, youth who have marginalized identities can find support online from others who share their identities. Accessing that support can be safer and less cumbersome compared to finding support in person.
Are there ways parents can frame expectations and set limits, so their child is more likely to have a healthy relationship with social media?
Caregivers have a role in setting up their children for healthy social media use that promotes growth and exploration. But also in establishing guardrails to protect kids from harm.
Parents can lead a discussion about how some aspects of social media interaction don’t help people form healthy relationships. This includes:
- A focus on follower counts, likes, or views
- Comparing yourself to what others share online that might not be fully accurate
Parents can set limits by reducing access to specific content that is harmful (e.g. self-harm, eating-disordered behavior, discriminatory behavior). And also, by ensuring that social media use doesn’t interfere with healthy living habits, like getting enough sleep and physical activity.
Overall, I think caregivers should look for an opportunity to define healthy social media use for their children and to encourage them engaging in those uses. This way, your child will see you as someone they can have a nonjudgmental conversation with about social media use.
In an effort to protect their children online, many parents set up monitoring systems and look in on their child’s online activities. Is this healthy?
It depends on how the caregivers do it. Adult monitoring is typical and helpful in the early adolescence stage (10-14 years old) as youths’ capabilities are developing. But it is also healthy for youths’ autonomy to gradually increase as they get older and develop more competencies around navigating social interactions both offline and online.
But that monitoring is probably more successful when there’s some degree of transparency. For example, a caregiver discussing with their child what kind of monitoring they’ll do and why they’re doing it. It’s also better when it connects to coaching and promoting social skill development, rather than just being punitive or restrictive.
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How can parents let go safely?
It comes down to the caregivers’ assessment of their children’s skill development and competencies. Just like with any new skill a child might be learning, it makes sense to put them in a situation where they can succeed and not be overwhelmed.
But just like with other skills, the child needs to have some opportunities to be able to try it out and learn from it, with some support.
Do you think the absence of free spaces where teens can physically hang out has contributed to the need for social media?
It’s hard for me to quantify the impact, and certainly people with better access to spaces to hang out still use social media. But it’s reasonable to think that social media may have filled some structural gaps in settings for social interactions. But like I mentioned before, online vs. offline isn’t an either-or; those two worlds are interconnected.
Many professionals blame smartphone and social media access for young people’s lack of focus or inability to connect with people around them. Is that something you’re seeing?
I certainly understand where that concern comes from. And I think it’s possible to use social media in a way that makes focus problems worse or makes it harder to connect with others.
But I don’t think this is necessarily inherent to smartphones and social media. It might be more about an individuals’ pre-existing vulnerabilities. People who feel sad might listen to more melancholy music. But we wouldn’t then say that the music is causing their sadness.
Are there ways to experience the pros of social media without the cons?
Experiencing more of the pros vs. the cons of social media comes down to using it in specific ways. Positive ways for all of us include:
- Connecting to others on a deeper level
- Finding support when feeling isolated
- Building a sense of community
These are a lot of the same things that define positive offline interactions.
How It’s Used Matters
Despite the scary headlines, how social media affects you depends a lot on the choices you make. If you’re following outlets that offer productivity tips, inspiring artwork, kind statements, or cute animals, you’re unlikely to be pulled into negativity. Like a mirror, the devices we use show us what we choose to hold up for reflection.
But like Tan points out, as adults, we can help guide kids towards good habits with technology that will grow with them.