Episode 101: Safeguarding Our Children's Future in the Social Media Landscape

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Welcome to another episode of K12 Education Untangled. My name is Dr. Kim J. Fields, former corporate manager turned education researcher and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into this space after dealing with some frustrating interactions with school educators and and administrators, as well as experiencing the microaggressions that I faced as an African American mom raising my two kids who were in the public school system. I really wanted to understand how teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. Once I gained the information and the insights that I needed, I was then equipped with to be able to successfully support my children in their educational progress. This podcast is at the intersection between education research and parental actions. If you're looking to find out more about the current trends, issues and themes in education that could affect you or your children, and you want to know the specific actions you can take to support and advocate for your children, then you're in the right place. Thanks for tuning in today. I know that staying informed about K12 education topics is important to you, so keep listening. On this episode, I'll be discussing the effects and impact of social media on your child's mental well being. The impact of social media on your child's mental well being is a topic that is getting constant attention, especially since the pandemic student mental health issues are on the rise and schools are taking the brunt of this burden, which is costing them additional spending for educators and school leadership training as well as the need for mental health counselors. A number of elementary school principals are now quite concerned about the rising number of students with emotional problems as well as mental health needs. Fifteen years ago, students social emotional needs didn't even rank among the top 10 student issues for the majority of principals. Principals today, though, are also concerned about the safety and security of students, bullying through social media, emotional bullying, and student homelessness. I delve into the topic of social media's impact on a student's mental health and provide you with actionable steps that you can take to address this critical issue. Let's untangle this. One of the key issues that comes up regarding use of social media is the lack of discernment by teenagers and adolescents of the information being presented to them. This misinformation and disinformation can lead some children to believe conspiracy fantasies are true. Believing in these types of things can lead to distorted perceptions of reality. Misinformation can typically include honest mistakes, while disinformation involves an intention to mislead. Both of these have had a growing impact on students over the last 10 to 20 years. It turns out that children are ripe targets for fake news. Around the age of 14, children often start believing in unproven conspiracies, According to a 2021 study in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology. Teenagers also have trouble determining and analyzing the credibility of online information. An example of this would be from a study that revealed that 80% of middle school children children believed an advertisement labeled as sponsored content was actually a news story. The researchers also found that less than 20% of high school students seriously questioned false claims on social media. Disinformation campaigns often target young users, steering them toward misleading content. You're probably aware that YouTube's recommendation algorithm offers personalized suggestions about what users should watch next, and it's skewed to recommend videos that are more extreme and far fetched than what the viewers started with. Some academics have gone so far as to say that YouTube is one of the most powerful, radicalizing instruments of the 21st century. There's a tool that schools can use to deal with this problem. The tool is called the Media Literacy Education, and the idea is to teach children how to evaluate and think critically about the messages they receive and to recognize falsehoods masquerading as truth. Unfortunately, very few American children are receiving this instruction. In 2021, Illinois became the first state to require all high school students to take a media literacy class. Thirteen other states have laws that touch on media literacy, but the requirements are general, soft even. For example, one requirement is just putting a list of resources on an Education Department website. Some form of media literacy is taught in college, but that's a little late to start this type of instruction. Media literacy and news literacy education faces challenges like how to expand these programs so they reach children in lower income school districts who are much less likely to receive any news literacy instruction at all. Senator Amy Klobacher of Minnesota introduced the Digital Citizenship and Media Literacy act into the U.S. senate in 2019. This legislation would authorize $20 million to create a grant program at the Department of Education Education to help states develop and fund media literacy education initiatives at the K12 Public Education School level. This type of investment is critical if America's young people are going to learn how to navigate the constantly evolving media landscape. The training will transform the way that public school students process and share information. It's clear that social media negatively impacts social emotional skills in children. These skills include how students communicate, how they treat others, how isolated they feel, or how they perceive themselves. 65% of educators think that they should be responsible for helping students learn to use social media in responsible ways that support their mental health and well being. Students have also indicated that at least one teacher in their high school has spoken to them about the use of technology and its impact on their mental health. One example of a school district that takes technology's impact on social emotional skills in children seriously is Washoe County School District in Nevada. Recognizing that social emotional learning skills such as responsible decision making, self awareness, and social awareness and relationship skills are important, these skills can help students learn to use technology in positive ways. SEL in this district is taught through explicit instruction, some of which targets social media use, especially in middle and high schools. SEL is also embedded into what teachers do regularly in the classroom at all grade levels, things such as having an inclusive welcome sequence at the beginning of every class and and an intentional close at the end of class. The district also holds parent university classes where they teach parents how to control their children's screen time, how to monitor social media use, how to navigate certain apps, how to understand the lingo used by young people, and how to set technology use boundaries. Another example of a school district that takes technology's impact on social media seriously is in Powakee School District in Wisconsin. This 2900 student district has had Digital Citizenship curriculum in place for years. It combines the work they do around SEL and Digital Citizenship to ensure that their students have the strategies they need to navigate the stressors in their lives, whether that's online or or in person. The district is focusing extensively on lateral reading, which is the practice of verifying what you are reading by searching for other articles on the same topic by other writers. Students also learn about responsible social media use during lessons about building healthy, positive relationships. Other examples of school districts that use a combination of of SEL curriculum and responsible technology use include Hermiston School District in Oregon and San Ramon Valley Unified School District in California, where educators have specific dialogues with students as well as make meaningful connections with parents. To ensure that students have the social emotional skills they need to navigate the digital world. The San Ramon Valley School District has instituted a Parent Information Night where parents can bring their questions about technology use and social media, and the district provides speakers or lessons to address those questions. Now, it might be worthwhile for you to investigate whether your child's school district has a parent, university or a parent information night so that you can learn more about the impact of social media on on a child's mental well being.

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SEL Skills of self regulation, impulse control, and self awareness can help students better manage their cell phone use. Self regulation includes developing better impulse control with better self awareness skills. Teenagers can think about and reflect on the role that cell phones play in their lives and how the use of these devices makes them feel. Another important SEL skill that students can learn to use is to reframe what they might at first see as a negative situation or interaction on social media and turn it into a more positive interaction. For teenagers and adolescents. It's all about connecting with peers, whether that's in real world situations or or online. Creating alternative activities for children to build that important social status for them through something other than apps on a cell phone can be done through clubs, sports, and leadership programs. These types of opportunities will help students gain status and respect in real world without having to go to their cell phones for affirmation. Many school districts are strictly limiting students cell phone use as a way to address their mental health, behavior and lack of engagement issues. This is happening in schools across the country from Florida to Pennsylvania to Colorado and everywhere in between. A statewide policy in Florida prohibits students use of cell phones during instructional time. This type of policy seems to have a positive impact on students mental health, at least from an anecdotal perspective. Students stress and anxiety levels were also reduced. Students tended to interact more with each other and there were fewer discipline problems and violent behaviors exhibited. The cell phone use restriction can have a variety of forms. Some schools limit students use of cell phones only during class time, while other schools prohibit cell phone use all day. Some schools use technological solutions like Yonder's electronic pouches that lock until students tap them against a magnetic device on their way out the door, while other schools leave it up to the teachers to utilize creative ways to meet the cell phone restrictions. Some teachers have done this by having students leave their backpacks at the front of the room during class or by using over the door shoe holders in classrooms so students can place their cell phones in one of the pockets on the shoe holder as they enter the classroom. About 76.9% of schools prohibited non academic use of cell phones or smartphones during school hours during the 2019-2020 school year, according to recent data from the national center for Educational Statistics. The Surgeon General of the United States, Vivek Murthy in 2023 stated that children younger than 14 should not use social media and he later issued a public health advisory that highlighted social media's potential harms to young people's mental health. This was supported based on a growing number of studies that have linked children's use of smartphones and social media to their deteriorating mental health. A Systematic Review of 50 research articles published in 2023 found that screen time was associated with problems in teenagers mental well being and that social media was linked to an increased risk of depression in girls. It's important for districts who are planning to implement no phone policies to get input from students, parents, school staff and others. Many parents won't be able to contact their children at any time, so to deal with this, districts can assure parents that they could message their children through the student information system or by contacting the school's front office like parents used to do before the 21st century technological age. There's a push by Seattle Public Schools, which educates over 50,000 students, to use the courts to collect damages from social media companies like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Snap. The school district has filed a lawsuit claiming that these companies social media platforms are a major driving force in the deterioration of students social, emotional and mental health. This move is similar to another recent push by several school districts to use the courts to collect damages from manufacturers of e cigarettes. In those cases, the district sued to recover the cost of counseling, treatment and prevention programs for teenagers. The superintendent of Seattle schools indicated that young people in their district and across the country face unprecedented learning and life struggles that are amplified by the negative effects of increased screen time, unfiltered content and potentially addictive properties of social media. The superintendent hopes that the lawsuit is one step toward reversing this trend for for their students. Snap, which owns Snapchat, and Alphabets, which owns Google and YouTube, are both named as defendants in the lawsuit, as well as Meta, which owns Facebook. Each of these defendants has indicated that they have taken many steps to protect children and teens on their platforms. But here's my take on this. Suing these companies is one way to address the issue of mental health and emotional well being for children. But parents also play a role. Social media companies have been under increasing scrutiny lately for not only the data they collect, but also the effects that their products and services have on people's mental health. The time that teens and adolescents spend on social media exploded during the pandemic, according to to a 2022 report by Common Sense Media. According to their data, children between the ages of 8 and 12 spent a total of about 5 and a half hours a day on social media, and for teenagers the total spent on social media was over eight and a half hours a day. Since social media is not going away, it's important that schools teach students how to use it responsibly. My question is, is it a lot to ask schools to be in charge of fixing or preventing all the real problems that are brought on by social media? Maybe, perhaps trying something like a law school may be a proactive step. Social media isn't the only technology related issue in schools to be concerned about. There are also general concerns about the effects that rising levels of technology use and screen time have on children's well being. There's also the whole data privacy issue to deal with. Some schools and school districts use Facebook to share student photos and names in ways that could compromise students privacy on a large scale. What started out as a single lawsuit filed by Seattle public schools in 2023 has now morphed to into more than 200 school districts that have sued the major social media companies over youth mental health and well being crisis. The plaintiffs in these lawsuits are school districts from California to Pennsylvania, united by their position that the mental health crisis by young people is largely driven by by social media. They feel that social media companies should not only be held accountable, but they should also provide support to schools for the harms their products have caused. Research indicates that social media is making students more anxious and depressed and causing them to act out, which ends up being a significant drain on school resources. Although there are other issues weighing down students mental health, most mental health counselors in schools see social media as a constant in the complex equation of factors that affect an adolescent's mental well being? So far, 41 states got together in October 2023 for the purpose of suing Meta, the social media company that owns Facebook and Instagram. The complaint, which was filed in federal court, outlined how the company appeared to be cultivating compulsive use of its apps to boost profit at the expense of children's well being. Legislation for regulating social media so that it prioritizes children's well being may take some time to come into effect in the United States. In the Meantime, teachers can start addressing their students needs in the classroom right away. One step that can be taken toward this end is discussing digital well being and its fit within existing social and emotional teaching and learning efforts. Lawmakers are proposing legislation to regulate young social media users. Bills filed in at least nine states and at the federal level generally have three primary one to compel social media companies to verify users ages 2 to bar social media companies from using algorithms to recommend content to young users and three to restrict minors from using social media either through age requirements, parental permission requirements or curfew and time limits. Legislation recently signed into law in Utah and Arkansas required social media companies to verify all users ages and get parental consent for minors before they can set up an account. What I like about the Utah law is that it also requires social media companies block minors from accessing their platforms from 10:30pm to 6:30am Grant parental access to minors accounts, and limit the data that can be collected on minors. This will hopefully get the parents to be more actively engaged in monitoring their children's social media use. One bill proposed in the US Congress would bar all children younger than 13 from even having social media accounts. Although some social media companies already have this policy, these bills may have bipartisan support, but that doesn't mean that they're going to be heartily approved and supported. Also, there is some skepticism as to whether these new measures will have much effect on improving the mental health of teens and children. The bigger question is who's tracking how successful these bills will be. Another real issue with the proposal of these various pieces of legislation is that today's children are very good at finding loopholes in new technologies. Resourceful teens and young children who want to use social media to typically have very little trouble getting past already existing age limits and parental consent requirements. So how does what I've just been discussing apply to you? Here are the action steps you can take regarding this topic. There are five actionable ways you can start building your child's digital agency and support their digital well being.

1.

Understand the design tricks that companies use to exploit attention it's important to know that the technology that we use every day is strategically designed to capture and hold our attention. Learning about features like autoplay and notifications can empower your children to take back control of their experience with technology and and pave the way for developing more digital agency. Agency in this case is a belief that actions can influence what happens and that an outcome can be shaped through behavior. Digital agency pertains to actions and outcomes associated with technology use. 2 Talk to your children about how technology can amplify feelings of anxiety and depression. Research indicates that a decline in the child's mental health coincides with a steep increase in social media use. This is especially true for teenagers. Whether in social comparison, the struggle to untether from devices, or an influx of harmful content, many teens experience ways that technology amplifies feelings of anxiety as well as stress. This doesn't mean, however, that all tech is bad or that technology is wholly responsible for causing a mental health crisis. But young people and teenagers are struggling and these issues are exacerbated by social media. 3. Bring to your children's awareness the idea of thinking traps Teenagers and some adults indicate that social media can spark a feeling that all my friends have better lives than me. In addition, design features like read receipts can lead teenagers to stress about why their friends haven't replied to their messages. When they know their messages have been seen, your teenager may think that their friends are mad at them or that they said the wrong thing. These types of thinking traps or cognitive distortions are unhelpful and can lead to feelings of anxiety and depression. Cognitive behavioral therapy is a well researched collection of evidence based practices that you can use to help your children, especially tweens teens, to understand thinking traps like all or nothing thinking when things are either all good or all bad, labeling for instance, putting a negative label on yourself and mind reading, which is basically assuming you know what the other person is thinking or why they acted in a certain way. 4. Make sure that the conversation you have with your children about the healthy use of technology isn't adversarial, judgmental, or a cause for further disconnection. You can also share that you're in pursuit of digital well being, so learning about things like design tricks, thinking traps, etc. Is relevant for you and your children. It's also important for you to be aware of your cell phone use while your children are present. Even very young children recognize when their parents are distracted by screens. Here are this episode's takeaways. It's clear that social media negatively impacts social media social emotional skills in children. These skills include how students communicate, how they treat others, how isolated they feel, or how they perceive themselves. 65% of educators think that they should be responsible for helping students learn to use social media in responsible ways that support their mental health and well being. SEL skills of self regulation, impulse control, and self awareness can help students better manage their self use. Self regulation includes developing better impulse control. With better self awareness skills, teenagers can think about and reflect on the role that cell phones play in their lives and how the use of these devices makes them feel. Research indicates that social media is making students more anxious and depressed and causing them to to act out, which ends up being a significant drain on school resources. Although there are other issues weighing down students Mental Health Most mental health counselors in schools see social media as a constant in the complex equation of factors that affect an adolescent's mental well being. One of the key issues that comes up regarding the use of social media is the lack of discernment by teenagers and adolescents of the information being presented to them. This misinformation and disinformation can lead some children to believe conspiracy fantasies are true. Believing in these types of things can lead to a distorted perception of reality. Misinformation can typically include honest mistakes, while disinformation involves an intention to mislead. Both of these have had a growing impact on on students over the last 10 to 20 years. If this is the type of subject matter and discussion that resonates with you, please follow my podcast on whatever service you're listening to this if you like this podcast, click Follow on your podcast player of choice to subscribe and get the latest episodes and share this episode with anyone that you think will find it valuable. Be sure to tell your friends, family and community about my podcast. Thanks for listening today. I hope you'll come back for more K12 educational discussions with even more exciting topics to untangle. Be sure to stay tuned on the next episode. I'll be discussing how to get the most out of a parent teacher conference. Until next time, aim to learn something new every day.

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