What your child really needs on social media

Please help us, American Psychological Association

Hi! I’m Jacqueline Nesi, a psychologist and professor at Brown University, co-founder of Tech Without Stress, and mom of two young kids. Here at Techno Sapiens, I share the latest research and practical tips on psychology, technology, and parenting. Subscribe to join 20,000+ readers, and if you like it, please share Techno Sapiens with a friend!

Today’s post brought to you by a new way to teach kids how to handle tough stuff.

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6 min read.

For most of my adult life, I’ve considered myself a pretty active person—running, yoga, strength training, etc. I’d often find myself deep in the weeds of a given workout, asking questions like: should I do regular squats or wide-leg squats? How many seconds should I try to shave off this mile? Should I put this treadmill on a 0.5 or 1.0 incline?

In the months since my last pregnancy—and the accompanying devastation of abdominal muscles¹—things look a little different. I’m focused on the basics: Correct posture. Bending with knees, instead of back. Exercises that, according to my physical therapy app, look like this²:

I’m returning to the fundamentals. 

Remind me how this relates to teens and social media?

Okay, yes, it’s a stretch, but bear with me. Questions about what to do when it comes to teens and social media have reached a fever pitch, at least in my world. We are in the weeds. We’re discussing specific platform tweaks, exact dialogue to use with teens, statistical effect sizes in the research. These are all extremely important considerations. Ultimately, though, there is value in returning to the fundamentals.

What, at the most basic level, do teens need when it comes to social media? What recommendations can we actually make, based on the science?

Enter: the American Psychological Association. A few months ago, they convened an expert panel to answer these exact questions, in their “Health advisory on social media use in adolescence.” They make 10 official recommendations, intended for a general audience. There’s something in here for everyone: parents, tech companies, educators, policy-makers, and more.

Let’s walk through these recommendations, along with my own brief translation of each. 

[Note: I was on the expert panel that developed these recommendations. However, as is probably obvious from the above discussion of my personal abdominal health, what I’m writing here are my own opinions and do not necessarily represent the APA’s official views.]

APA Top 10 Recommendations for Social Media

1. Youth using social media should be encouraged to use functions that create opportunities for social support, online companionship, and emotional intimacy that can promote healthy socialization.

Translation: When used in certain ways, social media can actually be good! It can be social! This is a good thing! In particular, kids who are struggling—whether with their mental health, or because they’re isolated with a pandemic, or with aspects of their identity that may cause them to be marginalized or left out offline—can use social media to connect and get support.

2. Social media use, functionality, and permissions/consenting should be tailored to youths’ developmental capabilities; designs created for adults may not be appropriate for children.

Translation: Some of the ways that social media platforms are designed are not exactly made for kids. Should platforms be recommending inappropriate content that’s so tempting for kids to watch they can’t look away, even though it’s bad for them? Nope. They shouldn’t. Should they be getting notices of changes to privacy policies written such that only a lawyer with specialized training in online privacy could understand? Also, nope.

3. In early adolescence (i.e., typically 10–14 years), adult monitoring (i.e., ongoing review, discussion, and coaching around social media content) is advised for most youths’ social media use…monitoring should be balanced with youths’ appropriate needs for privacy.

Translation: A good rule of thumb for parents is to do a combination of: 1) ongoing conversations about social media use, 2) some amount of monitoring of what’s happening on social media, and 3) setting some limits, rules, and/or boundaries around use. Younger teens need more oversight; it makes sense to loosen the reins for older teens. [Reminder: I have a parenting course that goes into great detail on how to do these things!]

4. To reduce the risks of psychological harm, adolescents’ exposure to content on social media that depicts illegal or psychologically maladaptive behavior, including content that instructs or encourages youth to engage in health-risk behaviors, such as self-harm (e.g., cutting, suicide), harm to others, or those that encourage eating-disordered behavior (e.g., restrictive eating, purging, excessive exercise) should be minimized, reported, and removed; moreover, technology should not drive users to this content.

Translation: Stop showing kids dangerous content! Stop recommending it to them!

5. To minimize psychological harm, adolescents’ exposure to “cyberhate” including online discrimination, prejudice, hate, or cyberbullying especially directed toward a marginalized group (e.g., racial, ethnic, gender, sexual, religious, ability status), or toward an individual because of their identity or allyship with a marginalized group should be minimized.

Translation: Showing kids racist content and hate speech is very harmful. So is cyberbullying and harassment. We need to minimize this.

6. Adolescents should be routinely screened for signs of “problematic social media use” that can impair their ability to engage in daily roles and routines, and may present risk for more serious psychological harms over time.

Translation: Many teens use social media a lot, but we should be on the lookout for times when it gets to be too much. If their use of social media is starting to seriously interfere with their functioning—disrupting relationships with friends or family, academics, extracurricular activities, or other important in-person experiences—this may indicate that it’s becoming a problem.

7. The use of social media should be limited so as to not interfere with adolescents’ sleep and physical activity.

Translation: Sleep is essential to physical and mental health. Teens should be getting roughly 8 hours per night. Don’t let social media get in the way. 

8. Adolescents should limit use of social media for social comparison, particularly around beauty- or appearance-related content.

Translation: There’s evidence that when teens use social media to compare their physical appearance and bodies to others’, this can contribute to worse body image. Avoiding this entirely may be impossible, but trying to limit it is important. 

9. Adolescents’ social media use should be preceded by training in social media literacy.

Translation: When you turned 16, did someone simply give you the keys to a car and wish you luck? Probably not. Think of social media use like driving: we need to learn how to do it safely and effectively. “Social media literacy” training is the equivalent of Driver’s Ed.³⁴⁵⁶⁷ Kids could learn how to build healthy online relationships, limit problematic amounts of use, recognize misinformation and online racism, and more.

10. Substantial resources should be provided for continued scientific examination of the positive and negative effects of social media on adolescent development.

Translation: Research is expensive. If we really want to understand how social media impacts teens, we need to fund it.

You can find the APA’s full health advisory here.

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You know how old I was when I learned this expression? 24. While getting a PhD. In retrospect, would have been nice to know a bit sooner…

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A quick survey

What did you think of this week’s Techno Sapiens? Your feedback helps me make this better. Thanks!

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1. Re: “devastation of abdominal muscles”: I’m told the medical term for this is diastasis recti, and it occurs when the abdominal muscles separate—as in, partially or fully rip apart—during pregnancy. It occurs in roughly 60% of pregnancies (for those doing the math, that’s the majority of pregnancies), and by 6 months postpartum, it still has not resolved for 40% of people who have it. I know this is a totally crazy idea, but maybe doctors should, you know, mention this to pregnant women? Rather than letting a physical therapist discover it when they stumble in with (clearly related) pelvic and lower back pain?

2. Worth pointing out that the image here is actually a screenshot of a video in the app my PT provided. The video involves the depicted man walking slowly over to the mat, lying down on his stomach, laying there for 10 seconds, and then standing back up. The exercise involves flexing the abdominal muscles (I think?), and maybe I’m just nitpicking, but I feel like there might have been a better way to represent that?

3. I remember almost nothing from Driver’s Ed, but I can sing on command No Zone, a 90s hip-hop-inspired track about avoiding trucks’ blind spots. Anyone else? Luckily, someone thought to upload the original educational video on YouTube, where it lives forever. I just watched it again, and now I must know: what happened to these actors? Were they even real actors, or just some mid-20s safe-driving enthusiasts who someone thought could pass for teens? What are they doing now? Do they ever get recognized?

4. UPDATE: After scouring the YouTube comments, a certain @leekathyw claims she is ONE OF THE ACTORS in No Zone. Her comment: “Omg im in this video! We made it in 1994! I had no idea anyone would still be watching this!!!!” Could it be? Is it really you, Kathy?

5. Do you think Kathy will see this?

6. Do you think Kathy makes any royalties from her No Zones performance?

7. Do you think Kathy has kids between the ages of 4 and 16 and wants to teach them how to manage their negative thoughts? Kathy: if you’re out there, you can do this using tapouts. And you can get a whole month free with code TECHNO100. [Also, are your kids good drivers?]