What Social Media Provides to Protect Teens: A Brief Analysis of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram after the Facebook Papers

The hearings prompted companies to promise to change after disclosures in what became known as the Facebook Papers. The four social networks have since introduced more tools and parental control options aimed at better protecting younger users. Default teens have made changes to their algorithms, including seeing less sensitive content and increasing their moderation efforts. Some people think the new solutions are limited and more needs to be done.

The head of a digital security firm agreed that social media platforms are not offering a lot of substance to counter the ills their platforms incur. She said that the solutions put on the onus on the guardian to use various parental controls, which include blocking access, and more passive options, such as monitoring and surveillance tools that run in the background.

The company recently refreshed the Safety Center, where parents can find information on how to turn on safety settings, and how to talk with teens about online safety. Some existing parental control tools include an option to prohibit a minor from receiving a friend request or a direct message from someone they don’t know.

After it was revealed that the leaked documents were legit, Meta-ownedInstagram stopped its plan to release a version of its service for children under the age of 13 and focused on making its main service safer for young users.

The popular short form video app currently offers a Family Pairing hub, which allows parents and teens to customize their safety settings. A parent can also link their TikTok account to their teen’s app and set parental controls, including how long they can spend on the app each day; restrict exposure to certain content; decide if teens can search for videos, hashtags, or Live content; and whether their account is private or public. TikTok has a guide that outlines how parents can best protect their kids on the platform.

Another feature will suggest to users to take a break from the app such as taking a deep breathe, writing something down, checking a to-do list or listening to a song. If teens have been interested in any one topic for a while, they will be pushed toward more relevant topics, such as architecture and travel destinations.

In August, Snapchat introduced a parent guide and hub aimed at giving guardians more insight into how their teens use the app, including who they’ve been talking to within the last week (without divulging the content of those conversations). To use the feature, parents must create their own Snapchat account, and teens have to opt-in and give permission.

TikTok: Safe Behavioral Resources to Protect Teens from Sexual Explosives and Other Violations of The Fourth Amendment in Social Media

The company told CNN Business it will continue to build on its safety features and consider feedback from the community, policymakers, safety and mental health advocates, and other experts to improve the tools over time.

In July, TikTok announced new ways to filter out mature or “potentially problematic” videos. The new safeguards allocated a “maturity score” to videos detected as potentially containing mature or complex themes. It has a tool that helps people decide how much time they want to spend on TikToks. There is a tool that allows users to set regular screen time breaks and there is a dashboard that shows a breakdown of daytime and nighttime usage.

In addition to parental controls, the app restricts access to some features to younger users, such as Live and direct messaging. Teenagers under the age of 16 are being asked to choose who can watch their first video, when a pop-up also surfaces. There is a curb on Push Notifications for account users after 9 p.m.

Discord did not appear before the Senate last year but the popular messaging platform has faced criticism over difficulty reporting problematic content and the ability of strangers to get in touch with young users.

Still, it’s possible for minors to connect with strangers on public servers or in private chats if the person was invited by someone else in the room or if the channel link is dropped into a public group that the user accessed. By default, all users — including users ages 13 to 17 — can receive friend invitations from anyone in the same server, which then opens up the ability for them to send private messages.

Chasing Life with Rich: How Technology Makes Our Brains More Smart – A Conversation with the Experts in My Basement Studio Studio

Rich doesn’t think technology is to blame for his patients’ problems, but it makes them worse. And he has a counterintuitive approach to helping his young patients, who are often coping with other issues – like anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder or just plain old stress. They learned how to make a better relationship with their electronics by weaning themselves off their devices.

In the new season of Chasing Life, I explore how technology affects brains, and what we can or should do about it. I’m talking to experts and doing something I’ve never really done on my podcast before: I’m speaking to each of my kids – the real experts.

A couple of statistics jumped out at me: About two years ago, roughly 85% of US adults reported being online at least daily, with 31% saying they were online “almost constantly.” According to the research center, as of last spring, 98% of teens were online every day, and many reported that they were online almost constantly.

That is not surprising, as those numbers are worrying. We’re obliged to do so much on our screens for work and school. But we also do things for fun, like killing time on TikTok or doom-scrolling the news. Add to that constant communication; we text, Snap and Slack throughout the day. You get the digital idea: It’s easy to be on our screens a lot.

I started this journey by talking with each of my daughters, all proud digital natives and Gen Zers: Sage, 17, Sky, 15, and Soleil, 13 – in my tiny basement studio. (Even if you don’t host a podcast, I highly recommend sitting down with loved ones and having uninterrupted, face-to-face conversations on any important topic. You will learn so much!)

I am no exception, and most parents think their kids are smart. I liked our conversations to be thoughtful and have good insights. They didn’t hold back.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/14/health/screens-technology-brain-chasing-life-gupta/index.html

How much time do you spend on social media? Asking your daughters about screens, a conversation with Skyreef Keatonen

It is worthwhile to detach from social media and technology, but I do not believe that one could still keep up with everything going on in the world. She estimates that, of the time she spends on her smartphone, 40% is devoted to consuming content, like Instagram reels, and 60% to communicating, mostly on Snapchat.

Sky told me she’s happy with how she manages her time: spending about three hours a day on social media, texting and playing games. I was a bit surprised that she let it get in the way of her homework on the weekends but she assured me she doesn’t allow it to interfere with her sleep.

When I asked my youngest if it was good or bad to have all this technology, she said it was a thing. I do not think it is a good or bad thing. … There is not much people can do about it. It’s just a thing.” She also reminded me that this was the world handed to her, not the one she would’ve chosen.

My daughters would have preferred a generation with cell phones and not social media. These platforms, they tell me, create an obligation to engage, more than a desire. “I don’t want to let my friends down,” Soleil told me.

My daughters think teens and people of the future will need to figure out how to control themselves, just as people do around temptations like food and drink.

I learned what they thought about my and my wife Rebecca making parenting decisions around screens. The Gupta House Rules have us making the kids wait until after middle school to get a phone. We have the ability to set time limits on their social media accounts. We try to have family dinners at home because we all cook and everyone’s phone is thrown away.

After talking to my daughters and other experts, I question whether we provided the correct guardrails. I would never toss my car keys to a 16-year-old with only a learner’s permit and say, “You’re on your own!” But I wonder if I did the digital equivalent.

Talking about limits and screens makes me feel vulnerable. I’m constantly wondering if I’m doing the right thing. Am I being a good dad? Am I too strict or too much of a pushover?

This is one area in which I don’t have the answers and data to back up my beliefs, despite being a doctor. These are uncharted waters for me, and for parents (and people) everywhere. There is no guide to best practices. Because this is all so new, the studies haven’t been done, and in fact many of the questions haven’t been formulated yet. When we get a handle on a single question, there are five new ones. It’s like a hydra, the mythical water serpent that grows two new heads for each one cut off.

On the one hand, I worry about imposing my values, derived from US culture in the 1970s and ’80s, on my kids and their current situation, much like my parents did to my brother and me with their 1940s Indian culture. To us, it felt like their antiquated beliefs were woefully out of step.

But on the other hand, as a parent, it unnerves me that I can’t rely on that very thing: my own experience. If we choose to follow in parents’ footsteps or do the opposite, we always have reference points to guide us. When I was a boy, there was nothing like the way I see things today on screens.

How much is too much? A case study of a freshman whose social media usage turned physical to mental when he realized he wasn’t worth enough

How much is too much? Sometimes it’s hard to know. Sometimes the answer is more obvious. It was for someone else. He was a college freshman when he noticed that his use of social media, specifically TikTok, had become problematic.

“It just kind of started to really wear on me physically first, I think, because that was when I was just scrolling for hours, not going to sleep – it was taking hours out of my day. I wasn’t really doing much else in my free time,” he explained.

He decided to stop when he realized the toll was shifting from physical to mental, making him feel less worth. It was no easy feat to do it cold turkey.

Yankey is far from alone. Among teens, the survey shows that 70% of them use TikTok, while 16% use it almost constantly. That number is even higher among the 95% of teens who use YouTube, with 19% using it “almost constantly.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/24/health/screen-time-gupta-podcast-wellness/index.html

Digital Addiction: How much screen time is needed to be considered a mental health disorder? Dr. Michael Rich, a pediatrician for interactive media disorders, admits that the internet addiction is physically harmful

internet addiction is not an official diagnosis at the moment. There are still questions about whether it should be considered a mental health condition or if it is just a mental health disorder. There are questions about how to test it, what to do with it, and how to treat it.

Most experts do agree, though, that regardless of whether it is a true “addiction” or something else, too much screen time can have bad effects, especially for kids.

That is where Dr. Michael Rich comes in. Rich works in the Clinic for Interactive Media Disorders at Boston Children’s Hospital, and he treats patients with problematic media use.

When their day-to-day functions are impaired, the problem comes in. they are not getting enough sleep. They are overeating. They are missing school or falling asleep in school. They are withdrawing from their friends.”

We as a society do not like using the term addiction. We think of addiction as a weakness and treat it as something to be punished rather than healed, he said.

What Do Parents Know about Their Kids? How Do They Know What They’re Reading and What They Can Don’t Know About Their Families?

My first cell phone was a brick-shaped Nokia with a couple hundred minutes loaded onto it. My parents gave it to me when I got my first car, on the understanding that, whenever I drove somewhere that wasn’t school, I’d call them as soon as I arrived so they’d know I was safe. Given how many times it took me to pass my driver’s test, I was willing to agree with the rule. Even still, I almost never remembered to do it. I remember forgetting to call when I was at the theater in the middle of the movie. I’d sprint out to the car—where I kept the phone itself—and have a brief, harried conversation with my worried and deeply irritated parents. They were aware that I was likely fine. It is difficult to not know what your kids are doing.

For working families, kids start to live out of view from when they are old enough to go to school. These times are a source of mystery for parents. You try to trust their teachers, their caregivers, the institutions in which they learn, the communities through which they move, but that trust is largely blind. My picture of what goes on between drop-off and pick-up is foggy, but I have two girls who are very friendly and happy to tell us about their days at school. My first grader walks out of school with a bag of Fritos and a stack of graphic novels, talking about how her friend is going to have a herd of dyed-pink ponies at her birthday party, and I have to just figure out the rest.

Social media is a key part of this unregulated, invisible time. Parents see their children staring at screens, and they know that worlds exist inside those rectangles that are unreachable to them, even if they are just curled up in an armchair 10 feet away. These worlds are full of specialized languages, secret social codes and networks of references that take weeks of study to comprehend. Time is the only way for parents to understand what their children are being exposed to, what world they are a part of, and how they can help build online.