Ahmed Othman is not on TikTok and he doesn’t want to be there.
He and his little sister got iPhones when they were in eighth and seventh grade, respectively, but no social media, just iMessage. Their parents, who are both computer scientists, spent the next year teaching them how to use social media, bombarding them with research on its impact on teenagers’ mental health.
“They really tried to emphasize that social media is a tool, but it can also be your worst enemy if you do that,” Othman said.
Now 17, Othman is grateful to his parents for what he calls a “healthy relationship” with his phone. This includes staying away from TikTok.
“The algorithm is so powerful that I feel like TikTok might not be beneficial for me,” he said.
Othman, who is originally from Libya and lives in Massachusetts, stands out among his peers, nearly two-thirds of whom use TikTok either with or without parental permission, according to the Pew Research Center.
Othman’s parents have taken a middle-of-the-road approach that a growing number of experts say is the most realistic and effective way to teach kids how to use social media: Instead of outright banning or giving free reign, they recommend slow, deliberate habituation that gives kids the tools. and the information they need to navigate a world that is nearly impossible to escape from places like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat.
“You can’t just expect kids to jump into the world of social media and learn to swim on their own,” said Natalie Bazarova, a communications professor and director of the Cornell Social Media Lab. “They need instructions. They need to practice how to behave on social media. They need to have an understanding of risks and opportunities. And they also need to learn it in an age-appropriate way.”
Few fences
The harm social media causes to children has been well documented in the two decades since the launch of Facebook ushered in a new era of communication in the world. Children who spend more time on social media, especially teenagers or teens, are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety, according to research. numerous studies — although it is not yet clear whether there is a cause-and-effect relationship.
Many are exposed to age-inappropriate content, including pornography and violence. They also face bullying, sexual harassment, and unwanted advances from their peers as well as adult strangers. Because their brains are not fully developed, teenagers are also more susceptible to social comparisons than adults, so even happy messages from friends can send them into a negative spiral.
Lawmakers took notice and held several congressional hearings. last time in January — about the safety of children on the Internet. However, the last federal law aimed at protecting children online was passed in 1998, six years before Facebook was founded.
Last May US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued a warning, saying there is not enough evidence that social media is safe for children, and called on policymakers to address the harms of social media in the same way they regulate things like car seats, baby formula, medications and other products used by children. Parents, he emphasized, cannot do it all, although some, like Osman, try.
Othman initially wanted a phone “with everything you need, without restrictions.”
“But just like now, many years later, I really understand and appreciate what they did,” he said.
When it’s not enough
Of course, the Ottoman approach may not suit every family. Most parents aren’t computer scientists, and many don’t have the time or experience to create a crash course in social media for their children.
But even if parents are vigilant, this is not a guarantee that their children will not fall victim to the pitfalls of social media.
Nivin Radwan thought she had done everything right when she gave her children phones: restricting their accounts, gaining access to their passwords, taking their phones away at night, keeping everything private.
“I made sure everything was very, very airtight,” said Radwan, who has worked in information technology for 20 years.
Her daughter didn’t have a phone until she was 13 years old. She started using social media in eighth grade. When she was 16, she was diagnosed with anorexia.
“We were at the very beginning (of the COVID lockdown) and things moved very quickly because we were at home and she was on social media quite a lot at the time,” Radwan recalls.
An avid athlete, the teenager started looking for workouts and ways to stay healthy on Instagram. However, the algorithm soon began showing her challenges on social media, such as “how to stay under 500 calories a day” and “if you want to stay thin, you need to be able to fit on a baby swing.” Two or three months later, Radwan said her daughter was admitted to hospital.
Today, Radwan is speaking out about the harms of social media on teens and has joined a lawsuit against Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta Platforms Inc., which seeks to hold the tech giant accountable for the harm its platforms have caused children and teens. Her daughter has recovered and is studying in college.
Are schools the answer?
While parents are certainly part of the equation, most teens and experts interviewed by The Associated Press pointed to schools as a key place where all children can learn about “digital citizenship” — an umbrella term that includes media literacy, cyberbullying, social balance networks, and now even artificial intelligence literacy.
“We have sex education. We don’t have things like online security,” said Bao Le, an 18-year-old freshman at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. “And a lot of kids die from suicide, you know, from extortion by text messages. So I think it’s very important that they teach this in school.”
But while some schools offer digital literacy or online safety programs, they remain few. Teachers already face pressure to teach the regular curriculum while also facing staffing shortages and funding issues. Not only that, but children are often encouraged to use social media if they want to participate in extracurricular activities and other school programs.
Some schools are choosing to ban phones altogether, but, as in the case of parental prohibitions, children often find a way out. For example, in schools where children’s gadgets are taken away in the morning, students say they get around the problem by turning in fake phones. To get around parental restrictions, they create social media accounts on friends’ phones and computers, or buy burner phones to continue using after they give up their official phone.
“Hope is not a strategy. And pretending (social media) doesn’t exist isn’t a strategy either, because we have to deal with real life,” said Merve Lapus, vice president of education at the nonprofit Common Sense Media, whose digital citizenship curriculum used in over 90,000 schools in the US “Our kids are exposed to this in one form or another. They learn about it from their friends. The need to feel connected has not changed. I mean, it’s all the pressure we felt growing up.”
The best way to truly connect with kids, he says, is to gain a deeper understanding of the pressures they face when it comes to social media and make sure they’re real pressures.
“I think one of the problems now is that it only becomes a focus when it’s problematic,” Lapus said. “And so we very easily and very quickly identify these tools as problematic tools, and our kids will say, ‘You just don’t understand this, I can’t talk to you about these things because you don’t understand.’
Nonprofits take a step forward
Over the past decade or so, nonprofits and advocacy groups have emerged, many led by young people who have come out of their own struggles with social media, to offer help.
Larissa May stumbled upon social media ten years ago when she was in high school, “without any plan” about its dangers or how to use it. May said she suffers from depression and anxiety, which is made worse by social media. In college, she became “obsessed” with social media and digital marketing, running a fashion blog where she posted every day.
“I got to the point where I was spending 12-plus hours a day on my phone in my room, focusing more on my digital self than on the world around me, my mental health, my physical health, my sleep,” May recalled. She almost committed suicide.
The turning point came when May began seeing a psychiatrist almost every day with clear instructions about what she needed to do: take antidepressants, start moving her body to sleep, and start socializing.
“However, I spent all day on my phone, which they never talked about, and being on the phone prevented me from doing all these things,” May said. “And so it went on until one night at midnight I thought: why can’t I be healed? And it happened because I didn’t fix my relationship with technology.”
So she shut down her fashion blog and launched HalfTheStory in 2015 with the intention of collecting the stories of young people like Othman to understand how social media affects them.
“And I discovered that I am not alone in my struggle,” she said.
Today, HalfTheStory works with young people to build better relationships with technology on their own terms, starting in middle school, before some kids even have a device.
According to May, abstinence is not the answer to teens’ problems with social media.
“What I hear from each of our teens is that they wish their parents had more boundaries for them,” she said. “And I think there’s a lot of fear among parents because, frankly, there’s a lot of violence and conflict around devices.”