Just a few months into this school year, it’s become all too clear that the impacts of excessive screen time and social media use are profoundly affecting every aspect of our children’s lives.
We’ve heard from parents like Kathleen Spence, who is suing social media companies on the grounds that they pushed eating disorder, self-harm, and suicide-related content to her 11-year-old daughter. Spence calls social media “the silent killer of our youth.”
We’ve heard from educators who are watching their students struggle with anxiety, focus and depression. In a survey of thousands of New York educators, 78 percent reported that cell phone and social media use by students has negatively affected their students’ mental health.
And we’re seeing health experts and public officials around the globe grapple with how to mitigate the effects of hours of scrolling as data about its harms emerges.
In a May health advisory, the U.S. Surgeon General reported that 64 percent of adolescents are regularly exposed to hate-based content on social media platforms and nearly half said social media made them feel badly about their bodies. Still, at least one-third of adolescent girls said they are “addicted” to certain platforms and more than 50 percent said it would be hard to give up.
Some countries, including the United Kingdom, have recently taken sweeping measures that include requiring, or strongly recommending, full bans on cell phones in schools to “tackle disruptive behavior and online bullying while boosting attention during lessons.”
Here in the United States, leaders are approaching it from the other side by pressuring social media companies to own up to making products that are intentionally addictive.
In October, more than half of the country’s attorneys general — including New York Attorney General Tish James — banded together to sue Meta Platforms Inc. for harnessing “powerful and unprecedented technologies to entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare youth and teens.”
In New York specifically, James is working with the governor and state legislators to push legislation that would rein in social media platforms from targeting kids with their algorithms and from mining their online data.
These kinds of bills came at the urging of parents and educators as we fight to keep our learning environments supportive places where both students and educators can thrive.
More oversight for these companies would curb the addictive aspects of platforms and games like Instagram, SnapChat, TikTok and even Roblox that can prohibit creativity, collaboration and engagement in our classrooms. And they would provide safeguards against predatory data collection practices that take advantage of kids’ online curiosity.
But state legislation is just one piece in the ever-evolving conversation about the role of technology in our students’ lives. This problem is global in scale, and we must all come together to tackle it.
In a summer report, UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, determined that smartphones should only be allowed in school when they clearly support learning. The report cited widespread negative effects on learning outcomes and attention spans in classrooms from dozens of countries.
The report’s findings also promoted a powerful premise that in classrooms, “technology should serve people and that technology in education should put learners and teachers at the center.” Just because something can be advanced further does not mean it should be, the authors said.
Social media and the phones that carry these platforms are a part of our world and will continue to shape our students’ daily lives and even their future jobs. But it is all of our jobs — educators, parents, elected officials and advocates — to ensure these influences remain in their proper places, and our students enter the world equipped, first and foremost, with the powerful skills formed through human connection.
Melinda Person is president of the nearly 700,000-member New York State United Teachers.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.