I am linked, therefore I am*
The U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, has issued a fresh warning on the dangers of social media to teenagers, saying that social media use is the "main contributor to teenage depression and anxiety." With the vast majority of teens between the ages of 13 and 17 saying they use a social media platform, this is a widespread problem. According to the report, about a third of those teenagers say they scroll or post "almost constantly."
The report advises parents to create "tech-free" zones at home and talk with their kids about "how social media use makes them feel." But the recommendations are not aimed solely at parents, with technology companies being asked to step up. Getting rid of the pesky like button would be a start, but given that keeping eyes on their app is the revenue model for these platforms, some serious overhauling will be needed.
Speaking of the dangers of social media... This is not just about mental health. Tiktok-ers are a menace to society and a danger to themselves. A 17 year-old boy died after fallingwhile climbing a Los Angeles bridge, apparently to make a post for his social media account. An 18 year-old British man has been growing his Tiktok following by stealing people's hats (and dogs) and entering people's homes for a lark. One 23 year-old man is facing 20 years in prison for deliberately crashing his plane, to draw attention to his social media account.
Though TikTok is advertising itself and "sparking good", the platform is particularly notorious for life-threatening "challenges" that parents need to be aware of. Doing stupid or dangerous things for the amusement of your peers is not something new but in the internet age, the audience is faceless strangers who do not care about you, only whether you are entertaining. The peer group is everyone.
Social media can be a force for good. But it also acts as a problem magnifier for a lot of people because it warps the way we see the world, especially young people whose brains are still maturing. In addition, for a lot of Americans, more time on social media correlated with less empathy for other people. In that light, menacing people in public or in their homes just for clicks makes a kind of twisted sense – other people are just NPCs in the game of your life.
For ourselves, for our kids, for our communities, we need to be mindful of what these things do to us. As the Fisks were discussing on Stop the White Noise last week, we must master these digital tools, not be mastered by them. In the case of some, it might be better to discard them altogether.
*From Kenneth Gergen’s 1991 book, The Saturated Self