Last year, the American Psychological Association (APA) issued a health advisory on the use of social media by adolescents. This was based on mounting scientific evidence that social media has both benefits and risks for teens, and that parents and guardians needed better advice on how to balance the two. Social media platforms have yet to make meaningful changes in order to reduce the risks to the youth. The scientific evidence, on the other hand, has coalesced around various observations of what risks young people face when they use social media. 

The Economics of Social Media Platforms

Social media platforms are components of the attention economy, and are two-sided, bringing users on the one hand, with advertisers on the other hand. A company like Meta Platform derives most of its revenues from advertising, and advertising dollars are won by bringing as many people onto a platform and getting and keeping them engaged. The economics of social media platforms drives them, in an age of algorithmically surfaced content, toward promoting content that generates the most emotional response. 

This makes it a challenging space for young people, because they are more vulnerable and lack the emotional skills to deal with the risks of social media use. The problem is compounded when those young people have psychological, physical, intellectual, mental health, or other developmental challenges. 

Young People Are Very Sensitive to Social Media Feedback

Scientific evidence shows that between the ages of 10-13 and the mid-twenties, brain development is tied to a desire for social rewards, including attention and peer approval. It is at around that time, at 11.6 years of age, that parents give their children smartphones. As social rewards become more satisfying, with receptors for the “happy hormones” oxytocin, and dopamine multiplying in the ventral striatum, preteens also become hypersensitive to attention and peer approval. Every time these preteens get social rewards, they experience a rush of happy hormones. 

TikTok ushered in an era of algorithmically surfaced content, and, despite criticism, algorithmically surfaced content has been extremely successful, not only for TikTok, but for Instagram and Snapchat. Algorithms are just far better than chronologically-surfaced content at delivering the kind of content that would trigger a rush of happy hormones for preteens. Preteens have no chance at resisting the pull of social media platforms. Consequently, we need social media platforms to become less good at delivering content to preteens, which means, reducing the quality of the data taken from preteens to deliver content to them, or, adjusting the algorithms to prevent them from delivering content that is too emotionally evocative. Another problem is that engagement data such as likes and follower counts encourage preteens to return to platforms and repeat whatever behaviors garner the most positive results, even if that behavior is bad for them. It may be that some engagement data should be hidden from preteens. ENgagement data also promotes a view of relationships which is one-directional and instrumental: the preteen is taught to see themselves as performing a function for others, without regard to the health of that behavior and of any benefits they derive. 

Adolescents Are Not Ready to Judge Content

The thirst for social rewards, impressionability and the hypersensitivity to social rejection, makes adolescence a period in which it is hard to judge harmful content. There is evidence that the Like button makes adolescents more likely to like content with many likes and not to like content with few likes, even if that content is neutral or promotes risky behavior. Content with lots of likes triggers the ventral striatum to flood the brain with happy hormones, and adolescents are motivated to imitate the behavior. When adolescents view content with risky content and lots of likes, the cognitive-control network decreases. In other words, adolescents are susceptible to imitating and promoting harmful content simply because of virtual peer-endorsement.

Young people Struggle with Impulse Control 

Adolescent decision-making is hampered by poorly developed impulse control, at a time in which adolescents are seeking more independence. Researchers Catherine A. Hartley, and Leah H. Somerville, observed that neuroeconomic research has found that adolescents and adults differ in their decision-making processes, in areas such as “reward reactivity, uncertainty-tolerance, delay discounting, and experiential assessments of value and risk. Unique interactions between prefrontal cortical, striatal, and salience processing systems during adolescence both constrain and amplify various component processes of mature decision-making.” As a consequence, adolescents may do harmful things based on short-term rewards, regardless of long-term harms, harms which they will perceive poorly. So, adolescents are unlikely to have the self-control to regulate their own social media use, or to prevent themselves from engaging in harmful behavior that they see on a social media platform. 

So, features such as infinite scroll, the mack of time limits on usage, push notification, the use and retention of youth’s data, can lead to social media clinical dependency, checking out of off-social media social interactions, constant needs to check their social media, and vulnerability to perfectly targeted content. 

What Parents and Caregivers Can Do

Parents and caregivers need to guide young people through the social media world and help them to make better decisions. They need to understand the risks, monitor and discuss social media use, model healthy social media use, and keep watch for unhealthy social media use. Children should always have oversight over their children’s social media accounts, while also helping their children gain independence and autonomy. The goal is not to infantilize your child, but to protect them while allowing them to grow.