Kids Online: What Concerns Experts Most

The Challenging Combination of Childhood Curiosity and Internet Access

By Carl E. Pickhardt, Ph.D.

Maybe in your youth, when a young person asked an unwelcome question about an adult experience, she or he might have been told, “Wait until you’re more grown up, and then we’ll talk about it.” Those days are gone. Now young people have immediate 24/7 access to the internet to satisfy curiosity’s call.

Sometimes parents will decide to limit this exposure by monitoring or restricting children’s internet activity, disabling or forbidding the use of devices or of sites where they don’t want a young teenager to go. They may do this to protect their daughter or son from what they consider dangerous exposure to violence, hate, sex, drug use, gambling, adult dating, law-breaking, cults, conspiracy theories, or whatever else they fear.

The internet is an ongoing challenge to traditional parental oversight. Around middle school, when more worldly curiosity often takes wing, discovery now occurs online. Certainly, parents can put restrictions on internet activity consistent with their values and beliefs. At most, however, they have only a measure of local influence since they cannot control a teenager’s access to devices, such as those of their friends, outside the home.

A Better Approach

What’s a parent to do? First, accept the reality of immediate information availability and treat any adolescent searching or experience you find worrisome as an opportunity for discussion and education. Parents can help evaluate what a young person is being electronically told and be open to following wherever that curiosity leads. For example, “While it’s tempting to believe stories and follow advice you find on the internet, it’s best to evaluate them first. Understanding that every site has an agenda to influence your thinking or actions, ask yourself: Why would anyone want to post this information? What am I being asked to believe? What response is wanted from me, and why?”

If you discover that your adolescent is watching something you disapprove of, such as pornography, on their computer, take a step back first to assess your emotional response. If you feel shocked, horrified, disgusted, or furious, remember this one simple rule: Calm before communication. Take a break. Take a breath. Take yourself to a quiet place. Maybe talk first to a friend. Remind yourself what you love about your child. And take time to prepare to listen, learn, and talk. If you let your fears rule, your upset is liable to detract from this opportunity to educate: If you make your feeling offended the focus of your communication, then, instead of finding out what your child experienced or learned, you’ll shut them down.

When a Search Leads to Porn

Young viewers need an adult to help evaluate their internet experience—to see it for what it is, what it isn’t, and what is really intended. Consider exposure to pornography, which is increasingly common by middle school age. As suggested, I believe it’s best to treat an unwanted or disapproved internet exposure as an opportunity for discussion, not punishment. After collecting yourself, simply state, “I want us to be able to share about our days in two ways—about our offline day and about our online day. Existing in two worlds makes life more complicated for all of us, so there is a lot to keep up with. Since you’re old enough to find this kind of site, I’d like you also to act old enough to be willing to discuss it with me. I’m not out to change your mind, just to offer my perspective for you to consider.”

You can reassure your child that sexual curiosity is normal, just as sexual thoughts and feelings are. Pornography shows naked people having sex, so, to that degree, you may point out, it can be visually informative, but it’s really made to be entertainment, not accurate instruction, and so it involves more pretending and distortion than depictions of real life. It portrays sex for pleasure, not for emotional closeness, and it makes any kind of sexual treatment look acceptable. It can make having unprotected sex seem OK. It can make human relationships appear to be about sex and little else. And it can portray harmful activity as consensual. In other words, what may look OK on the screen may not feel OK, or be OK, in the real world. It’s fantasy, not reality.

The internet, virtual reality, social media, and online gaming have sparked an evolutionary burst of creativity, and enthusiastic, educated young people are often at the cutting edge. To the degree that a teen is lagging behind, parents can sometimes feel torn between wanting them to keep up and worrying about the risks of harm.

What could work best is treating an adventurous adolescent as your instructor: “You know so much about this that I don’t. Could you show me what I don’t understand?” Becoming a teacher of ignorant parents can be an esteem-boosting role for a teen, and becoming an adolescent’s student can help parents stay adequately informed.

Carl E. Pickhardt, Ph.D., is a psychologist in private practice in Austin, Texas. His latest book is Holding On While Letting Go: Parenting Your Child Through the Four Freedoms of Adolescence.

Battling TikTok’s Mental Health Misinformation

By Ashvin Sood, M.D.

“If you have inattention and rejection sensitivity, you may have ADHD,” a vlogger tells Clara one evening online.

“When I get anxious, I zone out, and that’s how I know I have ADD,” an influencer asserts in the next video.

In clip after clip, Clara is served up influencers, experts, naturopaths, and everyone in between, all claiming expertise in ADHD symptoms or diagnosis.

As one might imagine, Clara is confused. A 15-year-old with normal identity issues for her age, she was socially isolated during her early adolescence due to the pandemic and is trying to figure out and make sense of who she may be. TikTok has become her main source of information, offering hints and explanations about how she interacts with the world.

Inevitably, Clara tells her mother one day, “Mom, I have ADHD.” Her mother, confused and having no mental-health training, ignores the declaration. This leaves Clara feeling more isolated and continuing to question who she is, hoping that perhaps a diagnosis can finally give her a stable identity.

TikTok has quickly become a social media titan, rivaling Meta and Snapchat with more than 1.5 billion active users—57 percent of whom are female, and 28 percent of whom are under 18. When the pandemic was at its peak, and children and teenagers were socially isolated with severely limited access to outpatient therapy or psychiatry, emergency room visits for suicidal ideation and self-harm skyrocketed, eating disorder incidence rose, and teen depression and anxiety reports reached an apparent all-time high.

It’s no wonder that teens turned to their screens for information as well as connection to peers. Starting in spring 2020, social media use among 15- to 25-year-olds in the U.S. rose as much as 28 percent. TikTok in particular provided teens with content from peers and adults who shared their mental health burdens. The sounding board grew, and so did the number and types of distributors (and sometimes sellers) of mental health information. All flocked to the bazaar.

As mental health became a trending social media topic, content creators found an audience that wanted to name what they were experiencing. To serve them, creators produced flashy videos that were generalizable and relatable, even if also often inaccurate. On the positive side, legitimate medical educators and licensed therapists also joined the fray to offer evidence-based information—and many teens with clinical diagnoses have found or built support networks through TikTok.

Clara viewed content creators dancing to catchy songs, discussing nonspecific symptoms, and suggesting that she might have a mental health condition. Each click on a video, and subsequent engagement in the form of comments and shares, raised its own popularity and the chances that the app would recommend more clips like it to Clara, no matter how accurate the information or who provided it.

Identity formation is an integral part of a teen’s development. With access to a digital world that provides troves of seemingly valid information, they will understandably search for meaning in what they watch. The adults in their lives can help them think more critically.

How Parents Can Help

• Begin with a nonjudgmental approach, expressing curiosity about what a teen may be watching.
• Ask questions like: “Where did you learn about the diagnosis?” “What parts of it do you connect with?” and “Do you know others who may have similar symptoms?”
• Be patient with their responses. They do not have to have an exact answer, but they do need an adult who will listen.
• Ask to view the saved videos in their TikTok profile. Watching together, ask them to point out the parts they most strongly connect with.
• If there are mental health concerns, ask how the symptoms described affect them day to day. Do the symptoms interfere with schoolwork, peer interactions, or home time?
• Ask if there are parts of the videos that don’t resonate with them. Offer observations that may take a different view and allow them to reflect on your thoughts.
• If there are more serious concerns, offer to help them seek out support by setting up a doctor’s appointment or a therapy evaluation.

How Clinicians Can Help

• Offer curiosity and a nonjudgmental approach when asking teens about a self-diagnosis.
• Screen for symptoms of the condition and speak with the parent regarding the history.
• Specify what helps reduce the symptoms and what seems to worsen them.
• Ask why this diagnosis is important to them and what it might mean to them if there were no diagnosis.
• Highlight that diagnoses are helpful but do not define an individual.
• Inquire about traits or personality aspects they like about themselves.
• If treatment is applicable, discuss that it is meant to relieve a symptom and not define a person by their diagnosis.

Ashvin Sood, M.D., is a child and adolescent psychiatrist in Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin, and a member of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry’s media committee.

The Radical Threat of Photo Filters

By Gwendolyn Seidman, Ph.D., and Keith Feigenson, Ph.D.

We are not the first to point to one of Silicon Valley’s favorite tenets—move fast and break things—and say, that’s fine, as long as those broken things aren’t people. Nowhere is this risk more apparent than with TikTok’s Bold Glamour filter. It is a live-action video distortion filter that “beautifies” any person using it, altering facial features and delivering an image with flawless skin. The results are technically impressive; the filter can indeed seem to turn any face “beautiful.” Broadly speaking, there are some arguable benefits to using reality-distortion filters during virtual communication, but widespread everyday adoption of this technology has the potential to be quite harmful, particularly for young people.

What’s Different About Bold Glamour

There are arguments to be made about the biases inherent in designing any facial-modification technique. Previous beauty filters have been identified as not working identically, or effectively, for people of all races, and critics have pointed out that there is no universal standard for beauty, so there’s a risk in a single person or company defining one for the entire population. These are important discussions, but we would argue that they don’t really matter in the context of the harmful effects new filters can have on the way people feel about their appearance.

Regardless of the rules used by a platform’s algorithm, its filter will show people, in real time, what they actually look like compared to what they “should” look like. Apps have done this before, mostly with still shots and, to varying degrees of success, with live action. Instead of smoothing out and touching up minor imperfections, however, Bold Glamour completely alters faces. It is instantaneous. It is powerful. And when people who desire social approval and positive feedback start using it, they will not like what they see—or, rather, they won’t like what they see when they turn the filter off.

Social Comparison and Mental Health

Research has shown that exposure to unrealistically beautiful people, such as those on social media fitness sites, makes “ordinary” people feel less attractive. The contrast effect created when the unrealistically beautiful image is a version of one’s own face could be even more profound, but the contrast is inevitable because the filter forces a direct comparison between oneself and an altered, or “improved,” version of oneself. Research has shown that people are already prone to comparing images of themselves with and without their usual makeup.

Surveys have found that women who extensively photo-edit or use filters on their photos tend to have poorer body image, but experiments designed to test the immediate effects of image-editing have yielded mixed results. One found that photo-editing a selfie led to decreased satisfaction with one’s facial appearance and greater negative mood. Another study on beautifying photo filters found that using them doesn’t lead to immediate dips in self-esteem or body image.

Most professionals who work with children and young adults are aware, at least peripherally, of the increasing rates of negative affect reported by adolescents, particularly girls. A widely discussed recent CDC report found that a disturbingly high number of adolescent girls reported thoughts of suicide and overall negative feelings compared with results from previous years. Social media use is likely just one factor, but it may be an important one. Teens and young adults use photo filters extensively, which is a problem for a cohort already at risk of making upward comparisons and suffering declines in self-esteem. Many schools educate on
internet etiquette and safety, but much of that time is spent on information-sharing and privacy, not the potential emotional effects of reality-distortion filters.

How We Can Prevent Harm

The effects of a technology that creates such realistic and dynamic contrasts is especially likely to lead to dissatisfaction with one’s appearance. Parents and therapists should ask children what they know about these filters, how they use them, and how they feel about their images. You can shout to the sky that appearance has no relationship to self-worth, but young adults will still value being physically attractive. We need to explain to them how this filter applies to its alterations a set of standards that have never been universally agreed upon, are unlikely to be culturally sensitive, and can affect self-esteem.

Research has not kept up with hyper-realistic, dynamic filters, but we would not be surprised if their users experience an increased risk of appearance dissatisfaction, mental health episodes, and even self-harm or suicidal thoughts.

Gwendolyn Seidman, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology and Keith Feigenson, Ph.D., is an associate professor of psychology at Albright College.

7 Reasons to Doubt Social Media Hurts Teen Mental Health

By Dylan Selterman, Ph.D.

Many commentators are convinced that social media usage is to blame for the recent rise in reported mental health concerns among young people, especially
teenage girls. But developmental and clinical psychologists who actually work with adolescents do not uniformly back this hypothesis. Here’s why they, and I, remain skeptical that social media use is responsible for rising distress:

1. Studies show conflicting results. Some researchers find links between social media use and well-being, while others do not, or find mixed results. And some developmental psychologists go as far as to suggest that social media might have positive effects on teen well-being.
2. The studies vary in quality. Some claim that if there are 30 studies published on a topic and 17 report a correlation, then we can be confident that this correlation exists. I don’t buy it. What if those 17 used poor methodology while the other 13 used more reliable techniques? For example, we know that people are not especially accurate in reporting how much time they spend on various activities. So a larger number of studies that have unreliable measures of social media usage shouldn’t outweigh a handful of higher quality studies that use more objective measures.
3. Which came first? Even if there is a link between social media use and mental health, it’s not clear which precedes the other, and while it’s a cliché to say, “Correlation doesn’t equal causation,” few believe that depression causes increased social media use, and not vice versa. But it may not be such a crazy idea: Some psychologists suggest that teens turn to social media to help cope with negative emotions. We saw this during the COVID lockdowns, when physically isolated young people still craved social connection. Some longitudinal studies show that worsening depression predicts more social media usage in teens, but not the other way around.
4. There’s a missing cognitive link. What is it about social media use that would make people feel distressed? Is it social comparison? A more sedentary lifestyle? Sleep disruption? Physical isolation? There’s no consensus, so simply pointing a finger at total screen time doesn’t help clarify things.
5. There is no clinical significance. The studies that show a link between social media use and mental health do not suggest an increased risk for mental illness (e.g., bipolar disorder), so researchers suggest that digital technologies are “unlikely to be of clinical or practical significance.” This is an important distinction. Just because someone feels upset does not mean they have a mental health condition.
6. Social media apps are not a monolith. Does anyone really think Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Reddit all have the same social or psychological properties? Perhaps there was a moment when people on all platforms encountered photos of their friends looking unrealistically happy or beautiful, which caused a type of negative social comparison especially detrimental for teenagers. But this is no longer the norm. On most platforms, masses of people consume content generated by a relatively small group of creators. Plus, most teenagers don’t even use Facebook, the platform that’s been most extensively researched.
7. We aren’t a mentally healthy society, and we haven’t been for a very long time. In North America, depression and distress have been rising for 80 years. This is something even researchers who blame social media as a causal factor acknowledge. Why weren’t people in the 1980s or ’90s asking why adolescent depression was at an all-time high? It’s not clear, but this trend isn’t new, and it’s only going to worsen in the absence of major cultural adjustments.

We should be talking about commonsense reforms of social media apps. But we should refrain from making broader claims or proscriptions in the absence of strong evidence. For example, if we were to restrict young people’s digital technology use until they pass through puberty, is there any evidence to suggest it would have a positive effect on their well-being? I remain skeptical.

I believe that poor mental health in teenagers stems from broader societal problems that must be addressed with creative solutions designed to maximize psychological need fulfillment and self-determination. If we create environments and communities in which teens can flourish, then I don’t see social media having detrimental effects on a mass scale.

Dylan Selterman, Ph.D., is an associate teaching professor at Johns Hopkins University in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and a cohost of the podcast A Bit More Complicated.