Most parents worry about their children’s interactions surrounding social media, and it’s tough to blame them. Generally speaking, scientists agree that 25 is the age at which the average brain finishes development, which means that the debilitating effects of social media have quite a long time to take hold. For example, one 2009 study showed that, if you take multi-tasking into account - texting while scrolling Facebook, for example - kids are engaged in “entertainment media” for between 7 and 11 hours a day. This refers to an effect called “continuous partial attention” and you may be unsurprised to learn that it does not lead to our children being better multi-taskers.

 “Continuous Partial Attention” is only one worrying aspect. A 2015 study titled “Third Culture Kids and Social Media” zeroed in on “identity development” - a person’s personal or cultural sense of belonging - as being at risk. At the risk of gross oversimplification, it is possible for a child to immerse themselves in a social media “bubble” that encourages behavior or thoughts that run against the grain of the physical world around them. This, in turn, can lead to disruptions in a child’s relationship with parents, educators, and peers. After combing through this study, I thought of it as taking a stereotypical teenager and amplifying those “teenage traits”. 

So what can be done about this issue? Experts point out that a parent needs to first identify what they consider to be “social media”. It is easy to point fingers at the usual suspects like Facebook and Instagram, but what about Xbox chat or being active on Reddit? The definition of social media can become muddied, very quickly. For me, I’ll consider my child’s unsupervised on-line interactions to fit that bill. Next comes monitoring on-line interactions. If you are ok with your child interacting on-line, you’ll still probably want to know what they are up to. This can take many forms, from checking a browsing history to using parental controls to limit what content can and cannot be consumed. If you choose to use established parental controls, the option to limit time on-line will likely be available. This method appears to be the most effective in limiting the negative effects of social media, provided off-line time is also filled with interactive experiences and healthy hobbies.
In the end, these studies tend to tell us what most already know: Parents have to parent. Children cannot spend a majority of their time looking at a screen while interacting with strangers.