Social Media Confuses, Concerns Parents

Time and again, parents come to Dr. Michael Rich overwhelmed by the role that texting, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media are playing in the lives of their children and adolescents.

“Most parents are coming with no idea or fairly misinformed ideas about what these media are,” said Dr. Rich, director of the center on media and child health at Children's Hospital Boston. “They're either lumping texting, Facebook, and Twitter – all of which behave differently – into one, or they don't want to know about it because they're scared of it. Others say they're so far behind in technology they could never catch up.”

Some report that their daughter is losing sleep and failing in school because she stays up until 2 or 3 a.m. texting her friends.

Others tell him that their son has becoming increasingly violent and disrespectful since playing war games online with friends and perfect strangers.

Still others inform him that their child has been cyberbullied by a classmate and refuses to attend school.

Welcome to the world of social media, a place Dr. Donald Shifrin calls the world's largest cocktail party, where you'll encounter every kind of experience and personality imaginable. It's not inherently good or bad, but rather “a great uncontrolled experiment on our children,” said Dr. Shifrin, a Bellevue, Wash.–based pediatrician who served as the American Academy of Pediatrics' consultant to Microsoft when it developed a family safety setting for Windows XP.

“There's no question that social media can make you a better person because there are various ways for you to send out things and ask, 'What does everybody think about this' and consider those responses in your decision making if indeed you're cognitively able to make a conscious and rational decision. But that's not usually the purview of most tweens and teens, who are messaging and texting as fast as their fingers can fly,” he said.

According to a 2009 survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, young people aged 8–18 years spend an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes each day with TV, video games, or computers, an increase of 1 hour and 17 minutes over the average in 2004. In addition, 66% of these youngsters own a cell phone (on which they text or talk for another 2 hours each day), 76% of them have an iPod or other media player, and 74% of kids in grades 7–12 say they have a profile on a social networking site such as Facebook.

What about the long-term effects of social media on the development and behavior of today's children and adolescents? Experts interviewed for this story say there is no way to tell for sure what kind of impact routine use of social media will have on current children and adolescents as they become adults.

But one thing's for sure, said Dr. Susan Greenfield, a neuroscientist who directs the Institute for the Future of the Mind at the Oxford Martin School, Oxford (England) University: “It's a given that it will affect the brain, because the human brain adapts to whatever environment it's placed in. If you're in an environment as different as the cyberworld is from the real world, I don't think there's any question that we'll adapt to it. The big question is, How will we adapt to it? Is it good or bad? What can we do about it?”

Social media have revolutionized the way children learn about the world and communicate with each other, said Dr. Gwenn Schurgin O'Keeffe, a pediatrician and author of “CyberSafe: Protecting and Empowering Digital Kids in the World of Texting, Gaming, and Social Media” (Elk Grove Village, Ill.: American Academy of Pediatrics, 2010). Even families who struggle to put food on the table “will get their kids a digital device because they want them to be a part of society,” she said.

She describes Facebook as their “neighborhood hangout,” which “they do well if they get online in an age-appropriate way. You don't want a 10-year-old hanging out on Facebook because they don't have the social skills, and there are too many older people on it. But if you help them get online in an age-appropriate way, they learn how to post well. They learn how to interact better online than some adults do. It can be powerful.

“I have a theory that cyberbullying and sexting is partly our fault as adults because we're still catching up to the digital world, and we've never really taught kids how to use it well. It's kind of like putting them in a car without teaching them how to drive. So it's no wonder mistakes have happened.”

Dr. Rich said that Facebook can be used in positive ways by kids who are trying to understand themselves, to understand that they're not alone in their challenges and struggles growing up, “whether it's confronting the fact that their parents aren't perfect, or that the world isn't the way they magically thought it should be, or whether they are confused and conflicted about their sexuality. Social media can be particularly empowering for kids who are marginalized or minority groups of any kind. It is a wonderful environment for connecting with 'people like me,' and feeling that you're not alone. And as a social equalizer, they create a fabulous place for kids to develop a sense of participatory democracy, a place where they have a voice. They start to see how their voice can make a difference in the world.”

Some experts suggest that social media are having a certain benefit on the smarts of youngsters. In his 2005 book “Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Making Us Smarter” (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005), author Steven Johnson notes that IQ scores have improved in several different countries around the world in recent years, likely because youngsters are rehearsing the kind of skills required for IQ tests when they play computer games.

However, Dr. Shifrin pointed out that other research has shown that frequent exposure to videos and other screen-based media slows down language acquisition in toddlers.

Social media also have the potential to unite families in shared activities such as playing chess online, tennis on Nintendo's Wii console, football on the Madden NFL video series, or updating the family Facebook page.

For some families, though, social media eat into quality time together, said Dr. O'Keeffe, who has two teenaged daughters and who authors a syndicated blog called “Dr. Gwenn Is In.” 

A Different Way of Talking

Dr. Rich authors a blog called "Ask the Mediatrician."

Dr. Greenfield is concerned that children and adolescents who spend too much time on social media may be compromising the proper development of certain cognitive skills. “We know that people are getting good at processing information very quickly and efficiently – the kind of skills you have when you're driving,” she said. “What we're talking about is turning yourself into kind of a computer in a way: making efficient and fast responses as appropriate. This is very different from reading a book, which is very linear and slow. That's what the brain needs to understand something usually; you don't want to have it diluted and distracted, because the brain only has so much power. If it's being employed in attending to lots of different things, it's not going to be able to pursue a linear train of thought.”

The result, Dr. Greenfield offered, “could be an infantilizing of the brain, that we are going to create a generation of Peter Pans who live in a world that is a literal one, dominated by sensory content over cognitive significance, a world where what you see is what you get.”

Dr. O'Keeffe acknowledged the potential for an inattentive future generation, “but I think we can reel them in while they're still teenagers and younger kids. Each generation that passes is going to be more digital. So while we still remember what an offline world is, if we can instill in the current teenagers and elementary school kids what it's like to be unplugged, they'll instill it in their kids, and it should pay forward.”

Much of the onus is on parents, Dr. Rich said, to learn how social media work and to help their kids become good citizens of the digital world. “You can't afford to check out because you don't know the digital world. The default is that your children will be raised by whomever and whatever is in the digital domain. We know from 'Lord of the Flies' what happens when the kids are left in charge of society. We have a responsibility to parent in the digital domain, because our kids are spending most of their time there.” Dr. Michael Rich said, “Social media fundamentally alter how we interact with other people. When you see two kids who are sitting at a table together texting each other, it's a very different dynamic than if they were actually talking to each other.”

Time and again, parents come to Dr. Michael Rich overwhelmed by the role that texting, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media are playing in the lives of their children and adolescents.

“Most parents are coming with no idea or fairly misinformed ideas about what these media are,” said Dr. Rich, director of the center on media and child health at Children's Hospital Boston. “They're either lumping texting, Facebook, and Twitter – all of which behave differently – into one, or they don't want to know about it because they're scared of it. Others say they're so far behind in technology they could never catch up.”

Some report that their daughter is losing sleep and failing in school because she stays up until 2 or 3 a.m. texting her friends.

Others tell him that their son has becoming increasingly violent and disrespectful since playing war games online with friends and perfect strangers.

Still others inform him that their child has been cyberbullied by a classmate and refuses to attend school.

Welcome to the world of social media, a place Dr. Donald Shifrin calls the world's largest cocktail party, where you'll encounter every kind of experience and personality imaginable. It's not inherently good or bad, but rather “a great uncontrolled experiment on our children,” said Dr. Shifrin, a Bellevue, Wash.–based pediatrician who served as the American Academy of Pediatrics' consultant to Microsoft when it developed a family safety setting for Windows XP.

“There's no question that social media can make you a better person because there are various ways for you to send out things and ask, 'What does everybody think about this' and consider those responses in your decision making if indeed you're cognitively able to make a conscious and rational decision. But that's not usually the purview of most tweens and teens, who are messaging and texting as fast as their fingers can fly,” he said.

According to a 2009 survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, young people aged 8–18 years spend an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes each day with TV, video games, or computers, an increase of 1 hour and 17 minutes over the average in 2004. In addition, 66% of these youngsters own a cell phone (on which they text or talk for another 2 hours each day), 76% of them have an iPod or other media player, and 74% of kids in grades 7–12 say they have a profile on a social networking site such as Facebook.

What about the long-term effects of social media on the development and behavior of today's children and adolescents? Experts interviewed for this story say there is no way to tell for sure what kind of impact routine use of social media will have on current children and adolescents as they become adults.

But one thing's for sure, said Dr. Susan Greenfield, a neuroscientist who directs the Institute for the Future of the Mind at the Oxford Martin School, Oxford (England) University: “It's a given that it will affect the brain, because the human brain adapts to whatever environment it's placed in. If you're in an environment as different as the cyberworld is from the real world, I don't think there's any question that we'll adapt to it. The big question is, How will we adapt to it? Is it good or bad? What can we do about it?”

Social media have revolutionized the way children learn about the world and communicate with each other, said Dr. Gwenn Schurgin O'Keeffe, a pediatrician and author of “CyberSafe: Protecting and Empowering Digital Kids in the World of Texting, Gaming, and Social Media” (Elk Grove Village, Ill.: American Academy of Pediatrics, 2010). Even families who struggle to put food on the table “will get their kids a digital device because they want them to be a part of society,” she said.

She describes Facebook as their “neighborhood hangout,” which “they do well if they get online in an age-appropriate way. You don't want a 10-year-old hanging out on Facebook because they don't have the social skills, and there are too many older people on it. But if you help them get online in an age-appropriate way, they learn how to post well. They learn how to interact better online than some adults do. It can be powerful.

“I have a theory that cyberbullying and sexting is partly our fault as adults because we're still catching up to the digital world, and we've never really taught kids how to use it well. It's kind of like putting them in a car without teaching them how to drive. So it's no wonder mistakes have happened.”

Dr. Rich said that Facebook can be used in positive ways by kids who are trying to understand themselves, to understand that they're not alone in their challenges and struggles growing up, “whether it's confronting the fact that their parents aren't perfect, or that the world isn't the way they magically thought it should be, or whether they are confused and conflicted about their sexuality. Social media can be particularly empowering for kids who are marginalized or minority groups of any kind. It is a wonderful environment for connecting with 'people like me,' and feeling that you're not alone. And as a social equalizer, they create a fabulous place for kids to develop a sense of participatory democracy, a place where they have a voice. They start to see how their voice can make a difference in the world.”

Some experts suggest that social media are having a certain benefit on the smarts of youngsters. In his 2005 book “Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Making Us Smarter” (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005), author Steven Johnson notes that IQ scores have improved in several different countries around the world in recent years, likely because youngsters are rehearsing the kind of skills required for IQ tests when they play computer games.

However, Dr. Shifrin pointed out that other research has shown that frequent exposure to videos and other screen-based media slows down language acquisition in toddlers.

Social media also have the potential to unite families in shared activities such as playing chess online, tennis on Nintendo's Wii console, football on the Madden NFL video series, or updating the family Facebook page.

For some families, though, social media eat into quality time together, said Dr. O'Keeffe, who has two teenaged daughters and who authors a syndicated blog called “Dr. Gwenn Is In.” 

A Different Way of Talking

Dr. Rich authors a blog called "Ask the Mediatrician."

Dr. Greenfield is concerned that children and adolescents who spend too much time on social media may be compromising the proper development of certain cognitive skills. “We know that people are getting good at processing information very quickly and efficiently – the kind of skills you have when you're driving,” she said. “What we're talking about is turning yourself into kind of a computer in a way: making efficient and fast responses as appropriate. This is very different from reading a book, which is very linear and slow. That's what the brain needs to understand something usually; you don't want to have it diluted and distracted, because the brain only has so much power. If it's being employed in attending to lots of different things, it's not going to be able to pursue a linear train of thought.”

The result, Dr. Greenfield offered, “could be an infantilizing of the brain, that we are going to create a generation of Peter Pans who live in a world that is a literal one, dominated by sensory content over cognitive significance, a world where what you see is what you get.”

Dr. O'Keeffe acknowledged the potential for an inattentive future generation, “but I think we can reel them in while they're still teenagers and younger kids. Each generation that passes is going to be more digital. So while we still remember what an offline world is, if we can instill in the current teenagers and elementary school kids what it's like to be unplugged, they'll instill it in their kids, and it should pay forward.”

Much of the onus is on parents, Dr. Rich said, to learn how social media work and to help their kids become good citizens of the digital world. “You can't afford to check out because you don't know the digital world. The default is that your children will be raised by whomever and whatever is in the digital domain. We know from 'Lord of the Flies' what happens when the kids are left in charge of society. We have a responsibility to parent in the digital domain, because our kids are spending most of their time there.” Dr. Michael Rich said, “Social media fundamentally alter how we interact with other people. When you see two kids who are sitting at a table together texting each other, it's a very different dynamic than if they were actually talking to each other.”

Time and again, parents come to Dr. Michael Rich overwhelmed by the role that texting, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media are playing in the lives of their children and adolescents.

“Most parents are coming with no idea or fairly misinformed ideas about what these media are,” said Dr. Rich, director of the center on media and child health at Children's Hospital Boston. “They're either lumping texting, Facebook, and Twitter – all of which behave differently – into one, or they don't want to know about it because they're scared of it. Others say they're so far behind in technology they could never catch up.”

Some report that their daughter is losing sleep and failing in school because she stays up until 2 or 3 a.m. texting her friends.

Others tell him that their son has becoming increasingly violent and disrespectful since playing war games online with friends and perfect strangers.

Still others inform him that their child has been cyberbullied by a classmate and refuses to attend school.

Welcome to the world of social media, a place Dr. Donald Shifrin calls the world's largest cocktail party, where you'll encounter every kind of experience and personality imaginable. It's not inherently good or bad, but rather “a great uncontrolled experiment on our children,” said Dr. Shifrin, a Bellevue, Wash.–based pediatrician who served as the American Academy of Pediatrics' consultant to Microsoft when it developed a family safety setting for Windows XP.

“There's no question that social media can make you a better person because there are various ways for you to send out things and ask, 'What does everybody think about this' and consider those responses in your decision making if indeed you're cognitively able to make a conscious and rational decision. But that's not usually the purview of most tweens and teens, who are messaging and texting as fast as their fingers can fly,” he said.

According to a 2009 survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, young people aged 8–18 years spend an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes each day with TV, video games, or computers, an increase of 1 hour and 17 minutes over the average in 2004. In addition, 66% of these youngsters own a cell phone (on which they text or talk for another 2 hours each day), 76% of them have an iPod or other media player, and 74% of kids in grades 7–12 say they have a profile on a social networking site such as Facebook.

What about the long-term effects of social media on the development and behavior of today's children and adolescents? Experts interviewed for this story say there is no way to tell for sure what kind of impact routine use of social media will have on current children and adolescents as they become adults.

But one thing's for sure, said Dr. Susan Greenfield, a neuroscientist who directs the Institute for the Future of the Mind at the Oxford Martin School, Oxford (England) University: “It's a given that it will affect the brain, because the human brain adapts to whatever environment it's placed in. If you're in an environment as different as the cyberworld is from the real world, I don't think there's any question that we'll adapt to it. The big question is, How will we adapt to it? Is it good or bad? What can we do about it?”

Social media have revolutionized the way children learn about the world and communicate with each other, said Dr. Gwenn Schurgin O'Keeffe, a pediatrician and author of “CyberSafe: Protecting and Empowering Digital Kids in the World of Texting, Gaming, and Social Media” (Elk Grove Village, Ill.: American Academy of Pediatrics, 2010). Even families who struggle to put food on the table “will get their kids a digital device because they want them to be a part of society,” she said.

She describes Facebook as their “neighborhood hangout,” which “they do well if they get online in an age-appropriate way. You don't want a 10-year-old hanging out on Facebook because they don't have the social skills, and there are too many older people on it. But if you help them get online in an age-appropriate way, they learn how to post well. They learn how to interact better online than some adults do. It can be powerful.

“I have a theory that cyberbullying and sexting is partly our fault as adults because we're still catching up to the digital world, and we've never really taught kids how to use it well. It's kind of like putting them in a car without teaching them how to drive. So it's no wonder mistakes have happened.”

Dr. Rich said that Facebook can be used in positive ways by kids who are trying to understand themselves, to understand that they're not alone in their challenges and struggles growing up, “whether it's confronting the fact that their parents aren't perfect, or that the world isn't the way they magically thought it should be, or whether they are confused and conflicted about their sexuality. Social media can be particularly empowering for kids who are marginalized or minority groups of any kind. It is a wonderful environment for connecting with 'people like me,' and feeling that you're not alone. And as a social equalizer, they create a fabulous place for kids to develop a sense of participatory democracy, a place where they have a voice. They start to see how their voice can make a difference in the world.”

Some experts suggest that social media are having a certain benefit on the smarts of youngsters. In his 2005 book “Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Making Us Smarter” (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005), author Steven Johnson notes that IQ scores have improved in several different countries around the world in recent years, likely because youngsters are rehearsing the kind of skills required for IQ tests when they play computer games.

However, Dr. Shifrin pointed out that other research has shown that frequent exposure to videos and other screen-based media slows down language acquisition in toddlers.

Social media also have the potential to unite families in shared activities such as playing chess online, tennis on Nintendo's Wii console, football on the Madden NFL video series, or updating the family Facebook page.

For some families, though, social media eat into quality time together, said Dr. O'Keeffe, who has two teenaged daughters and who authors a syndicated blog called “Dr. Gwenn Is In.” 

A Different Way of Talking

Dr. Rich authors a blog called "Ask the Mediatrician."

Dr. Greenfield is concerned that children and adolescents who spend too much time on social media may be compromising the proper development of certain cognitive skills. “We know that people are getting good at processing information very quickly and efficiently – the kind of skills you have when you're driving,” she said. “What we're talking about is turning yourself into kind of a computer in a way: making efficient and fast responses as appropriate. This is very different from reading a book, which is very linear and slow. That's what the brain needs to understand something usually; you don't want to have it diluted and distracted, because the brain only has so much power. If it's being employed in attending to lots of different things, it's not going to be able to pursue a linear train of thought.”

The result, Dr. Greenfield offered, “could be an infantilizing of the brain, that we are going to create a generation of Peter Pans who live in a world that is a literal one, dominated by sensory content over cognitive significance, a world where what you see is what you get.”

Dr. O'Keeffe acknowledged the potential for an inattentive future generation, “but I think we can reel them in while they're still teenagers and younger kids. Each generation that passes is going to be more digital. So while we still remember what an offline world is, if we can instill in the current teenagers and elementary school kids what it's like to be unplugged, they'll instill it in their kids, and it should pay forward.”

Much of the onus is on parents, Dr. Rich said, to learn how social media work and to help their kids become good citizens of the digital world. “You can't afford to check out because you don't know the digital world. The default is that your children will be raised by whomever and whatever is in the digital domain. We know from 'Lord of the Flies' what happens when the kids are left in charge of society. We have a responsibility to parent in the digital domain, because our kids are spending most of their time there.” Dr. Michael Rich said, “Social media fundamentally alter how we interact with other people. When you see two kids who are sitting at a table together texting each other, it's a very different dynamic than if they were actually talking to each other.”