Non-Profit research and resource organization, Common Sense Media, released their six year study of teenager’s use of social media. The survey based study polled more than a thousand teenagers from ages 13-17 and from all walks of life. Some of the results were surprising while most were exactly what you’d expect.
In the video above, I walk through some of their findings and my thoughts on them but I’ll list some of the highlights below:
Teens use social media now more than ever before.
Put this down in the not surprising category. The study found that there was a large increase in the number of teens who say they use social media in 2018 compared to 2012. Also, Facebook isn’t as commonly used by teens as it was six years ago with Snapchat and Instagram being the favorite of most of those surveyed.
Social media is very important to most teenagers.
Also not surprising is that many teens aren’t too good at self regulating their device usage and that many prefer social media interaction above face to face.
Social media plays a critical role in the lives of most of those polled in this study. They agree that there are positive and negative affects but most feel that there are more benefits to their social media use than negative impacts. Those who were considered to have a low “social-emotional well being” were found to have more negative impacts from social media and most of those impacts were from bullying, racism, and sexism. Also not surprising is that many teens aren’t too good at self regulating their device usage and that many prefer social media interaction above face to face.
Teenagers are wise to tech companies’ attempts to manipulate their users.
A large majority of teens say that they believe tech companies manipulate their customers to encourage more device use. They admit that, sometimes because of this, they are often distracted by their devices when they should be doing something else. Many say that digital obsession is a problem for their parents as well. Also, quite an eye opening find.
What Parents Should Know.
Social media isn’t a phase and it is not something that you can keep your kids from forever. The most important thing is that when they begin to log in to social media accounts, they have an idea of what it means to do so safely. Model healthy social media and technology use for your children and try not to be hypocritical about your screen time limits. Talk to your kids about the time they spend online and let them know that they can come to you when something inappropriate or dangerous happens.
Know your child and if they seem to be the type who would be affected negatively by the use of social media then you shouldn’t allow them to use it. Encourage more face to face interaction with their friends and facilitate that with rides and your schedule. Finally, know that social media is a serious topic for your teen, a negative attitude that lacks any empathy to that fact will cause your advice to fall on deaf ears. Speak to your kids about healthy tech use and let them know this is a partnership, not a dictatorship where what you say goes and they’ll have to obey because you said so.
