A new national survey suggests parents are concerned about teens’ mental health and well-being due to social media use similar to their concerns about classroom technology, according to an article in Education Week.
Parents say social media hurts teens’ sleep (41%), productivity (38%), and mental health (24%), according to a Pew Research Center survey. More parents believe social media helped teens rather than hurt them when it comes to forging and maintaining friendships (22% versus 13%).
What can educators take away from the results since much of the social media use happens outside of school?
“Teachers have concerns about what is or is not happening at home. Parents have concerns about what is or is not happening at school,” says Renee Hobbs, a professor of communication studies at the University of Rhode Island and a researcher focusing on media and digital literacy, including how children use social media and its effects.
A growing number of states are pushing to regulate tech companies to restrict children’s use of social media. New York joined California and Minnesota late last year in passing a law that requires social media warning labels for platforms deemed to have addictive features. The United Kingdom recently announced a ban on social media for under-16s including Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
In a conversation with Education Week, Hobbs discussed how parents’ concerns over social media affect teachers and what resources schools can provide to parents. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How are the survey findings relevant to educators?
Kids spend most of their waking lives connected to media in some form. Educators understand that parents are partners in the learning process, so educators also struggle with their observations about kids’ attention and lack thereof, their motivation to complete schoolwork, the intensity of their social relationships, and the risks that digital media has.
How can schools use this information?
Parents’ ignorance can lead to fear, and so one thing that schools can do is try to create opportunities for dialogue and discussion.
Sitting with a group of parents, where a parent in the group says, “I’m really enjoying the book community on TikTok, and I’ve been getting a lot of great recommendations about things to read,” other parents can look at that and react, “Oh, there are good things on TikTok,” and help reshape people’s stereotypes about tools.
There’s a group of parents who may say, “I don’t know anything about TikTok, I never used it.” Parents should recognize that these platforms have a lot of different content on them.
Part of their job as a parent is to help a student make good choices about how to use, not just whether to use, the device. It’s all about the content students are engaging with.
How prepared are educators to address concerns parents raise about teens’ use of social media?
School leaders in Massachusetts have told me about how the crisis mentality is unfortunate, because it is the only time these topics ever get brought up — it could be in response to a fight in the cafeteria, and it turns out that it was inspired by some gossip and false statements made on social media.
That leads parents to have a lot of fear, and it also leads students to feel like fingers get pointed and they are blamed. If you’re trying to educate kids about social media, blame and shame are not the place to start.
Have educators noticed changes in parents’ concerns over technology and social media in the past few years?
People are frustrated with the inability of the government to regulate social media platforms. They’re frustrated with the social media industry for stepping away from content moderation practices that would have limited access to the more harmful aspects of social media. So, schools and teachers have to step it up, and they did.
Concerns about adolescents and social media have been around for 15 years. I do feel the one new angle is the attention issue. That topic has been in play before the internet. Parents, school psychologists, and media scholars were concerned about the way in which television and visual media were shortening kids’ attention span. In the last 12 to 18 months there has been more parental concern about kids’ attention span being poor.
Attention is a scarce commodity in an information age. Attention is going to be the new problem to be solved through education.
A group of preschool educators in Cambridge wanted to help parents develop healthy habits of using media wisely for learning, co-viewing, communication skill development, and language education. This was a huge “aha” moment for me because it is a real shift away from the “just say no” approach to media use. It’s far more acknowledging of the fact that parents are looking for guidance around what to do.
Education Week
