Social Media Exposed: Where To Go From Here?

3:07 Colleen Kraft, MD, MBA, FAAP, Pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Professor of Pediatrics at Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, and 2018 Past President of the American Academy of Pediatrics, kicks off the discussion. She invites the panelists to add their insights about the recent Facebook revelations as well as their advice for how parents can best engage with their children on the topic.

4:34 Sharing his perspective as a social media researcher, Mitch Prinstein, PhD, Chief Science Officer at the American Psychological Association, shares cutting-edge research describing what happens when teens view social media posts. Dr. Prinstein takes a deep dive into why social media are so intriguing, highlighting the many layers involved in online experiences for young people, and emphasizing that there are both risks and benefits to social media use. Speaking specifically about social comparison, Dr. Prinstein notes that social media gives young people the illusion that the images and stories that they see on their feeds are reality and are normal. This sort of upward comparison can lead to depressive symptoms, FOMO, maladaptive behaviors, and other negative mental health impacts.

22:42 Turning the conversation to what parents can do to support their children as they navigate social media use, especially cyberbullying, Elizabeth Englander, PhD, Executive Director and Founder of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center, offers tips and conversation starters. Dr. Englander emphasises that parents should not immediately jump to take social media away from their children and explains why kids often do not want to leave social media even after experiencing bullying. Dr. Englander discusses several ways to get the conversation rolling and notes that the best way to help kids work through social media dilemmas is to keep an open dialogue. She also turns the spotlight onto parents, encouraging them to model kindness and compassion online.

42:19 Jimmeka Anderson, MA, Project Manager with New America, asserts that digital literacy education is paramount. Ms. Anderson emphasizes that teachers must be able to teach students how to think critically online in order to combat the spread of misinformation, but they often lack training and resources to add media literacy to their curricula. Ms. Anderson highlights several tips and quick strategies for parents, teachers, and teens to work on together, such as exploring their own confirmation biases, because everyone, including adults, is prone to seeking information that supports what they are already thinking.

1:03:29 The final third of the webinar features a dynamic discussion on everything from whether parents should restrict or ban social media for their children, what parents can do to teach their children to be savvy consumers of information online, and what legislative and regulatory bodies can do to keep kids safe online. Finally, panelists reiterate the importance of teaching and engaging in critical thinking, as well as regularly checking in with children about their social lives both on and off screen.

[Dr. Paul Weigle]: Hello and welcome. I’m Dr. Paul Weigle, a child and adolescent psychiatrist with Hartford Healthcare and Co-Chair of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry’s Media Committee. I am so pleased to host today’s Ask the Experts Webinar on behalf of Children and Screens Institute of Digital Media and Child Development as a member of its National Scientific Advisory Board. Thank you for joining us today for a timely conversation in the wake of revelations from Facebook whistleblower, Francis Haugen, around Instagram’s use of techniques which negatively impact a substantial number of youth, especially teenage girls. We will discuss where we as parents, clinicians, researchers, educators, and legislators should go from here. We have convened an outstanding group of researchers and clinicians to answer all of your burning questions on this issue from which aspects of social media are most potentially harmful, to how to guide our children to avoid destructive social comparisons and bullying, to teaching digital literacy and what the U.S. Congress can do to make the Internet a safer and healthier place for our youth. Many of the questions you’ve already submitted will be answered during the panelist presentations. If you have additional questions during the webinar, feel free to type them into the Q&A box that you can see at the bottom of your screen. When you do, make sure to indicate whether you prefer to ask your own question live on camera or for the moderator to read your question for you. We are recording today’s workshop and we’ll upload a video of it to YouTube in the coming days. All of you will receive a link to Children’s Screens’ YouTube channel, where you will find a library of dozens of videos of previous webinars, which we encourage you to explore. You can win a chance to select a future webinar topic. Just donate a hundred dollars to Children’s Screens by Friday, November 19 and you’ll automatically be entered into a raffle to choose one of our 2022 webinar topics. The funds will help support the institute so that we can continue to provide vital programming like today’s event. Visit childrenscreens.com for details. It is now my pleasure to introduce our moderator, Dr. Colleen Kraft. She is a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, a clinical professor of pediatrics at Keck School of Medicine at UCLA, and the past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Her background includes work in primary care pediatrics, pediatric education, and healthcare financing. She is also a member of the Children’s Screens Scientific Board of Advisors, and she leads the institute’s policy work group. Dr. Colleen Kraft.

 

[Dr. Colleen Kraft]: Thank you so much, Dr. Weigle, and thank you for that kind introduction. We’re going to be discussing the impact of the Facebook files, a series of news reports by The Wall Street Journal in 2021 based on internal documents from Facebook Inc., now rebranded as Meta Platforms, leaked by whistleblower Francis Haugen. Some revelations include reporting of special allowances on posts from high-profile users, subdued responses to information from human traffickers or drug cartels, and an initiative to increase pro-Facebook news within user feeds. This included internal knowledge that Instagram has exacerbated negative self-image among teenage girls. The question we’ll discuss today is what does this mean for teenage and child mental health, our society as a whole, policy, and the clinical implications for moving forward? How do we actually move forward from here? I’d now like to introduce our first panelist, Dr. Mitch Prinstein. He is the Chief Scientific Officer of the American Psychological Association and the John Van Seters Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For over 25 years, Mitch’s research has examined interpersonal models of internalizing symptoms and health risk behaviors among adolescents with a specific focus on the unique role of on and offline peer relationships in the developmental psychopathology of depression and self-injury. Mitch, it’s all yours.

 

[Dr. Mitch Prinstein]: Hello everyone, thank you so much. I’m pleased to be part of this panel and I appreciate everyone’s participation. Today, I thought I’d offer a broad overview of what we know about research on social media and child mental health. We recognize, within the scientific community, that this topic has received much more attention since the release of the Facebook files, but those files, and what they have revealed, are truly just the tip of the iceberg. We have a wealth of emerging information on social media and mental health. However, this understanding has been slow to develop because, as you can imagine, things are changing at a breakneck pace. Just a few years ago, peer interactions among teenagers looked like this, and a few decades later, it might have looked more like this. But today, nearly ubiquitously, teen interaction appears like this. This evolution has dramatically changed the way we conceptualize adolescent peer relationships, which could potentially have significant consequences for wellness and mental health difficulties. First, I’d like to review briefly why social media has incited such a significant change, unlike previous technological innovations. There are several ways in which peer experiences have fundamentally transformed due to extensive online interaction, often via digital or social media platforms. Scholars have proposed that some of these changes relate to the fact that a majority of interactions now occur asynchronously. This means we can communicate, and someone can read that hours or even years later, holding us accountable for what we’ve said. This constant access also changes the way people choose what to say and when. Now, our interactions can be accessed for an extended period, visible to a worldwide audience, which was not previously possible. Teens now engage online and are expected to be available 24/7, causing significant stress for many. Our interactions primarily lack typical social cues, such as nonverbal signals, that help us understand the nature of those interactions. For the first time in human history, we can create quantifiable metrics that provide real-time feedback, not only on what we say but also the opinions we express, our physical appearance, and how much we are liked or popular among others. Some of these platforms emphasize visual content, adding even more pressure on physical appearance. Perhaps more concerning is that our interactions are now driven more by artificial intelligence than human choice. This shift determines what interactions we participate in and what stimuli we are exposed to. We are not interacting in the same way that our bodies and brains have been designed to do for the past 60,000 years. Instead of one-on-one, voice-to-voice or face-to-face interactions, we now experience more frequent and immediate peer interactions. These interactions have a heightened intensity and demand and different tones. Changes are also seen in the level of emotional intimacy expressed. So much so that teens have started to create second profiles, often referred to as ‘Finsta’ with fake names, to compensate for the emotional intimacy lacking in their real Instagram profiles. There are now opportunities for behavior with no offline counterparts. You can have online-only friends, broadcast to the entire world things that you’re seeing or witnessing rather than assisting in those moments. There is no 1980s version of a selfie post, but it’s a common activity now. Now, all of this not only happens at the social interaction level, but it’s also having an effect on what psychological scientists refer to as the ‘macrosystem.’ This term describes the way digital media has changed our society and its values. We now live in a society that values status, dominance, visibility, even in our elected officials and celebrities. Even publications designed for youthful audiences are conditioning young people to place importance on their lives based on their number of followers. So, what are the implications for mental health given this backdrop? Well, there are many, and I won’t have time to go through them in great detail. However, I’ll give you a quick touch on some of the positive features of social media use, why social media behaviors are more important than the amount of screen time, how social media might lead or encourage kids to engage in dangerous behaviors, and how some people are more susceptible than others. I will also discuss how social media use can actually create stress, influence others, and potentially affect our brain development. Initially, there are some documented ways in which social media can have positive effects on child development, particularly for those from minoritized or discriminated backgrounds. Social media offers ways for people who feel alone to find support, affinity, or identity groups that help them feel connected to others who are experiencing similar issues. This connection is particularly important during teenage years. There’s some evidence to suggest a reduction in calls for social support. People might not share offline about some things that they post about online. But when they do share online, they receive a lot of social support and opportunities for commiseration. 

 

[Dr. Mitch Prinstein]: Even some evidence from our own lab suggests that online-only friends might buffer the effects of stress on suicidal behavior among teens. And again, that’s something that just wasn’t possible before digital media. But we also see ways in which digital media is leading to problems. One of the big ones that was highlighted, particularly in the Facebook files, had to do with social comparison. There was a rich dataset and scientific literature talking about all the different ways that social media really plays with our opportunities to engage in social comparison. The images and the posts are not necessarily real. The mandatory liking that teens have to do with one another without friendship consequences makes kids think that a lot of people endorse what’s being said, discussed, or liked when actually those are just fake likes or mandatory likes. This often leads to the posting of unrealistic positive images which make people feel like they have to make upward comparisons to others, which, in our research, we see is a predictor of depressive symptoms over time.

 

[Dr. Mitch Prinstein]: Social media also has really augmented the promotion of explicit maladaptive behavior. We saw a lot of that with pro-ana sites, which are sites that really encourage, describe, and promote engaging in eating disordered behaviors such as those related to anorexia. This is also happening with non-suicidal self-injury like cutting and other forms of maladaptive behavior like substance use. This particular analysis, which was done about 11 years ago, found that there were many videos on YouTube – I believe they’ve since been banned – that were encouraging kids to cut, how to do it in a way that will hide their behavior from their parents. Sometimes, those images themselves are triggering for more cutting behavior, but there are no warnings attached to those posts.There are some individuals who are more susceptible to damage that’s happening on digital media platforms than others. In addition to cyber victimization, those coming from racial and ethnic minoritized backgrounds are experiencing remarkably high levels of online discrimination, which is not only higher in terms of its frequency but more harsh in terms of its content because it can be done anonymously. Everything you’re seeing here that’s not blue is the percentage of kids who are experiencing or witnessing online discrimination directed towards a group or directed towards individuals. Research done by Brandesha Tines shows that this was predictive of anxiety and depression even after accounting for offline discrimination. Kids also report that the amount of time it takes them to answer all their notifications, to meet the friendship demands of liking whatever their friends post, to deal with FOMO, or fear of missing out, and the extent to which they feel they must be online even when they should be doing homework or sleeping, all of this creates a number of sources of what’s called digital stress. And digital stress is, in fact, a significant predictor of depressive symptoms over time. It’s a much stronger predictor than simply how much time you’re spending on social media at all. There’s research demonstrating increases in depressive symptoms within adolescence just from the experience of all the stress that kids report related to their social media use and expectations.

 

[Dr. Mitch Prinstein]: There’s also data demonstrating that kids are very likely to be influenced by others. This is a complicated phenomenon, but what seems to be happening is that if kids are exposed to seeing their friends post pictures of, let’s say, alcohol use, and these are young adolescents that are in the late stages of middle school or early stages of high school, according to research done by Jackie Nesi and colleagues, what happens is that kids see those pictures being liked. When they see those pictures being liked even beyond their own expectation of how much they thought that adolescents approved of drinking, it makes them think that all kids think that drinking is a cool thing to do. This leads to an earlier likelihood of engaging in heavy episodic drinking, which is defined as five or more drinks on a single occasion. This effect on the age of early onset isn’t just for alcohol. We see this for body image issues, cutting, and in a variety of different ways. We also see this in the huge misinformation and disinformation campaigns that have been occurring among adults as well. There’s also emerging data, including from our lab, about the ways in which social media might be affecting brain development. A really fascinating study was done by Lauren Sherman and colleagues about five years ago that looked at how kids’ brains respond in the context of social media. They did this by having kids participate in a social media type of platform while they were getting their brains scanned in an fMRI. The results highlighted two different areas of the brain. The ventral pallidum, located towards the back and the bottom, takes what we find really rewarding and exciting and gives us a motivational impulse to go get more of it. It’s like a craving or an instinct to go get more of what you like and feel good. That’s in contrast with the prefrontal cortex, highlighted here in red, which acts as the brain’s brakes and tells us not to follow every impulse.

 

[Dr. Mitch Prinstein]: You should really think about that first and maybe be inhibited, and that’s unique to humans, especially humans after the age of 25. In her research and her colleagues’, what they found is that if they showed kids images of things that are cute, like puppies and infants, then the area of their brain that seemed to show activation was the area that encourages more of that, because it feels good and that’s nice. If they showed pictures of things that were dangerous, illegal, immoral, or harmful to others, then the area of the brain that seemed to show activation was the inhibition center, the brain’s brakes. That’s good news. Parenting works. We’re teaching kids not to do those things. But if they showed them the same images with simply an indicator saying that the image had been liked a lot on social media, then the activation of that inhibition center shut off. This suggests that social media images that have a lot of likes, even if they’re attached to something dangerous, harmful, illegal, or immoral, are less likely to be associated with inhibition activation, or the brain’s brakes shutting off. We, and by we I mean Dr. Eva Telzer and I, along with a number of colleagues who are working within a donor-funded center called Wi-Fi, recognize this as a really important emerging area. We’re doing some research that I hope to be able to talk about in the future. It does seem that there are both benefits and potential risks associated with social media use in adolescence. We are summarizing this work in a handbook that’s currently being typeset. It’s “The Handbook of Adolescent Digital Media Use and Mental Health,” and thanks to our donor from the Winston Foundation, that book will be made free, open access to everyone, from Cambridge University Press. We will be posting that entire book available for anyone to download for free at TeensInTech.org, where we are also sharing our undergraduate curricula, videos, and other resources. If you have any research in this area or anything you’d like to link to us, please reach out to us, ironically on social media, or you can email me, and we’d love to include that too. We aim to help people get the information that they need. Thank you all so much.

 

[Dr. Colleen Kraft]: Thank you so much, Mitch. That was fascinating information. One question that our listeners have, and I’m going to ask you about, is the whole idea that an image itself will actually shift from maybe negative to something somebody might actually be influenced by because of the liking or non-liking, or really the peer influence there. Do you have any ideas or suggestions on how that piece of it could be mediated?

 

[Dr. Mitch Prinstein]: Yes, absolutely. It is so crazy. Research from the Pew Institute says that parents do a great job talking with their kids about their offline relationships but not as much about their online relationships. As parents, and my kids are starting to get to that age as well, we often don’t understand half of those platforms. I don’t know what TikTok looks like, I don’t know what to ask my kids. But it’s important that we’re asking them to really think about how to be social media literate. By that, I mean, why do you think kids are clicking “like” on this? What do you think that means? Are they just saying “like” because they have to, or do they actually think it’s a good idea to do something immoral or illegal? Helping parents enter the dialogue and instruct their kids on how to rethink how they use social media is crucial.

 

[Dr. Colleen Kraft]: That’s a great practical answer, and thank you again so much for your information. I’m going to move to our second speaker, Dr. Elizabeth Englander, who is the founder and executive director of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center at Bridgewater State University. This center delivers programs, resources, and research for the state of Massachusetts and nationwide. As a researcher and professor of psychology for 25 years, Dr. Englander is nationally recognized as an expert in the area of bullying and cyberbullying, childhood causes of aggression and abuse, and children’s use of technology. And without further ado, Dr. Englander, Elizabeth.

 

[Dr. Elizabeth Englander]: Thank you so much, Dr. Kraft, and hello everybody. I’m so happy to be here today. I’m going to be talking a little bit about cyberbullying and how it relates to Facebook and Instagram, and some of the information that they’ve been releasing. I’m going to be more concrete than Mitch in terms of talking directly about what our research really shows that parents can do to help their kids manage these problems because I think it’s a very challenging part of parenting today. So, let’s go ahead and get started. All right. Okay, so, my name is Dr. Elizabeth Englander. I’m the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center. Just so you know, we have a lot of resources on our website, and it’s really about parenting and social media, bullying, cyberbullying, and we’ve been doing a lot of work on the pandemic and mental health during the pandemic, and how all of these things are being affected. But let’s begin. I want to just begin by pointing out that there is an issue specifically with Instagram. Not necessarily quite so much with Facebook, but with Instagram. A study in 2017 found quite a lot of children, about 42 percent, said they had been cyberbullied on Instagram. And when you take data like that and you sort of roll into it what we’re currently learning about Instagram, you might remember Frances Haugen’s testimony in front of Congress. She was talking about how Facebook and Instagram really prioritized profits over what they knew might be very damaging for adolescents. And it’s certainly enough to worry parents.

 

[Dr. Elizabeth Englander]: A few facts about cyberbullying that you might find useful: one is that cyberbullying is really closely associated with what your kids are experiencing in school. It doesn’t always happen this way, but much of the time, if something is happening with your child online, it’s also happening with them in school. What we found is that in our research, the proportion of kids who experience bullying both in school and online grows as kids get older. Another thing to understand is that cyberbullying is not always exceptionally severe. And I think it’s important emotionally as a parent to remember this because it can be very frightening when your kids come up to you and say, “I’m being cyberbullied.” And you might be very worried about that. But it’s not always exceptionally serious. And I do think it’s really important to keep that in mind. These are just examples of different ways that kids cyberbully each other. So, for example, they might comment on another child’s post or on some pictures they put up. They might start rumors or gossip, or they might exclude people or ignore people. These are very, very common. There are lots of ways that kids might cyberbully each other, and the effects of them, I think as Mitch just pointed out, can be quite significant. But it’s really important to remember that this is a problem that exists on a continuum. So it’s not always going to be very severe every time. And this can help you, I think, cope as a parent if you understand that because it can be a very nerve-wracking experience.

 

[Dr. Elizabeth Englander]: There are certain factors that we know tend to make cyberbullying more impactful. So for example, if your friends are the ones who are attacking you. What we find in our research is that girls are most likely to say that they’re being bullied or cyberbullied by someone from their friends group. Boys do not say that, but they also can be bullied by friends. And when this happens, it can be very, very impactful. Also, when things are done repeatedly, when the problem is also happening in school, we find that in our research, when the problem is happening both in school and online, kids rate it as especially impactful. And I think that really goes to that sense they have that they can’t escape this problem. Then of course, when things are more malicious or severe, obviously, that’s going to have more of an impact with kids. So why don’t we just tell kids to unplug Instagram? Like, why don’t we just say to them, “If you’re being bullied on Instagram, stop using it”? Well, one of the reasons that we don’t find that this is very effective is that we find that the apps like Instagram that tend to generate more cyberbullying are the same apps that tend to generate more of the positive outcomes. So Mitch was just talking about some of the positive outcomes that happen on social media. And these are undeniably real. So if a child comes to you and says, “Hey, I’m being bullied on Instagram,” but “I don’t want to give it up”, it’s important to understand that they may be getting a lot of positive social connections and positive social support on Instagram, as well as a lot of problems. And that might explain why they’re having a tough time giving that up.

 

[Dr. Elizabeth Englander]: So, what’s the solution if your child gets a lot of support on an app and they don’t want to give it up? So I think the solution is to talk. And that is a non-technological, non-social media oriented solution. But it’s the one that is by far the most effective. And again, Mitch brought this up already in his talk. But it’s undeniably true that talking with kids really helps them cope with some of the social challenges. So, what are the points that we have found in our lab that are most effective with kids? The points that you can make are things like: make sure when you’re communicating on social media that you’re being really clear. Everybody might not know you’re joking. You may think it’s obvious, but they may not know. Use emoticons, use other indications that you’re being friendly and you’re not trying to attack somebody. That clarity is really hard to do and really important to do online. Don’t gang up on people. So don’t, you know, just as we teach kids not to gang up on people at school, it’s even more damaging when they do it online, and because it can really spread very quickly. So teaching your kids to really think before they start ganging up on somebody, even if it feels like they’re being loyal to a friend, is a really good habit to get into. If someone seems unclear to you, so for example, if you feel like somebody is mad at you and you don’t know why, talk to them before you get all mad and start getting back at them. There’s a lot of misunderstandings online, a very, very common problem. Remember also that emotions seem to escalate really quickly in digital environments. So kids might be in a situation where somebody gets a little annoyed and they post about it or they message about it to a couple of their friends. And suddenly the whole thing sort of spreads and accelerates and snowballs, and you have a situation where you have the sixth grade in a school and everybody is mad, and it’s just like a feud. Those kinds of things, unfortunately, are not rare. And kids are really good at understanding that emotions can escalate and sort of catch fire really quickly online. But it’s a really good idea to remind them of this. Be careful about images you post and really think about images that have other people in them.

[Dr. Elizabeth Englander]: It’s really difficult to always talk to people before you post a picture of them, but it’s certainly a good message to get across and to emphasize. And to encourage. And a really good habit going forward. Finally, this is a really stressful time we’re in right now. It’s a stressful time for the adults. It’s a stressful time for kids. Kids are really struggling right now with mental health and social health and social skills and their relationships with their friends. So, try to keep things positive. These five points were the five points that the kids in our qualitative research really rated as most helpful. What else? You can be a role model, and you can really show your kids how to use social media and be a role model for them in terms of the things you want them to say and you want them to do. So, for example, one of the issues you might have heard is about sharing. And sharing has to do with sharing a lot of information about your child without their permission. So, you know, in general, I have to say that sharing information about your child on social media is not a good idea. And it’s not one that I encourage. But if you’re going to share information about your child, if you’re going to share a picture about them or anything about them, show them the picture and ask them first if this is okay. This might seem silly to you to ask an eight-year-old if it’s okay if you post a picture of them in their really super cute Halloween costume. But it’s actually a really good thing to do because what you’re doing is you’re modeling for your child how it’s a good idea to ask people before you talk about them or show pictures of them on social media. Don’t ignore life on the screen. So that means that show your kids how when you’re interacting with them in real life, uh, when you’re at the park, when you’re taking a hike, when you’re making dinner, and you’re interacting in real life, you put the device down and you pay attention to the person who’s in front of you. This is going to be one of the best life skills that you’re going to be able to teach your kids. It might sound completely obvious, but kids in this generation really do struggle with this. Discuss with your kids how social media distorts things like body image and self-image and how people look different and feel different and things are not always what they appear. One of the things we found in our research that was really interesting was that even when kids were kind of aware that social media distorts photos, it still bothered them or got to them when they saw, you know, fabulous, wonderful, happy, positive, upbeat photos all the time. So, it’s a really good idea to remind kids of this and talk to them. Finally, model for your kids how to handle things when you’re upset about something. So you might be upset, for example, about something like a police officer in your town or a teacher at your child’s school or maybe another parent. But instead of creating a social media mob that dislikes this person to sort of go after them, model for your kids more appropriate ways to deal with a problem like this. Talk with your friends face to face or think about really productive ways you can address the problem. Mobbing online is not productive, and we don’t want to encourage kids to do it with their peers because then we’re talking about cyberbullying, and that’s a really serious problem. And of course, you can always model for your kids how to report things when you’re having a problem, and that’s a really good skill too. It’s not always going to solve the problem, but it’s definitely the responsible thing to do. Um, it’s also, when you’re dealing with a cyberbullying or a bullying incident, it’s incredibly important to be supportive of kids. You know, right now, kids are living in a world that has changed enormously under their feet very fast, and they’re really feeling the consequences of that. But the one thing that has really stayed steady are their families. So, really, family support is incredibly important right now. Be sure to take family time with your kids, away from screens and social media.

 

[Dr. Elizabeth Englander]: Go for a walk, go for a hike, cook dinner together, play a board game together. It really doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you’re showing your kids how incredibly important it is to connect with people face-to-face, away from screens. This is going to be, again, one of these critical social skills that kids everywhere are going to be needing some help with. So, start it with your own kids.One of the things we found along this line on this same issue was that kids who ate dinner with their families were less likely to get involved in bullying and cyberbullying. This was even true when their families tended to fight a lot at the dinner table. So, if they reported that they had a family that quarreled a lot or, you know, maybe they had teenagers in the family who got mad really easily, even in those situations, kids who regularly ate dinner with their families were less involved in bullying and cyberbullying relative to kids who had few or no family dinners each week.If your child is being cyberbullied, let the school know about it. They may not be able to stop it, and they may not be able to give you any information about the other kids involved. But — and by the way, that’s a law, that’s not them stonewalling — the law says they can’t talk to you about any other child, doesn’t matter what the situation is. They can’t. But what they can do is support your child, and that’s incredibly important. Finally, by far the most important skill that we find in our research is just parents who talk to their kids and are interested in what they’re doing. And just in case you think that that doesn’t really have any impact or your kids don’t really care what you have to say, I’m just going to point out that about 45 percent of the time, kids told us that their parents did not talk to them about their social media behaviors and their friendships and how they were doing socially. But when their parents did talk to them about these issues, about two-thirds of the time, what their parents had to say was really important and really impacted their behaviors. So, if you want your kids to tell you when there are serious problems, if you want your kids to be conscious of issues and to be careful about issues, talk to them about it. Don’t worry so much about being an expert. Don’t worry so much about understanding everything. The key factor seems to be just parents who show interest and who talk to kids regularly about how things are going. So, this is my contact information, and you can get in touch with me there. My website is elizabethanglander.com, but I will also put the center’s website that I run in the chat box for those of you who are interested. We have a lot of resources for parents and for schools, almost all of them are completely free. We really encourage you to take advantage of them. 

 

[Dr. Colleen Kraft]: Thanks so much. Well, thank you, Elizabeth, for that insightful information. A question for you: it seems from both yours and Mitch’s presentations that the bottom line is that the social media sites and apps are out there. What really matters is how we and our kids react to them and discuss those reactions. This reaction sets the stage for either a positive or negative self-image and even some psychopathological outcomes. Given your focus groups, are there any apps you’d specifically advise against?

 

[Dr. Elizabeth Englander]: Paparazzi is somewhat problematic because it encourages kids to take pictures of others, but it also discourages selfies, which can be a positive for some kids. However, I’m hesitant to entirely dismiss any app, barring a few extreme exceptions. For instance, if your child is on an app and you advise them to stop, there might be another problematic app they’ll come across the following week. We need a more long-term approach as parents: teaching our children to be conscious and discerning online users. Encourage discussions about the potential risks and benefits of certain platforms. The goal is to nurture them into intelligent consumers and participants of social media. It’s more about the skills they develop than focusing on individual products because these skills are vital for their future.

 

[Dr. Colleen Kraft]: Thank you, Elizabeth. That’s such an essential perspective. We’ll now move to our third presenter. Jimmeka Anderson is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her research revolves around critical digital media literacy education and technological equity for historically marginalized students. She founded and led “I Am Not The Media Incorporated” for a decade, developing curriculum and community programs that empowered youth through media literacy and media creation. Over to you, Jimmeka.

 

[Jimmeka Anderson]: Thank you, Colleen. I’m thrilled to be here. Elizabeth has laid a great foundation for what I’m about to discuss. My focus will be on offering tips for parents to use at home with their children, especially regarding combating misinformation. Today, I’ll delve into the challenges our youth face in navigating online misinformation. I’ll now share my screen.

 

[Jimmeka Anderson]: Alright, so once again, these are tips and resources for helping our children identify misinformation online. And if you hear anything that you like, please feel free to tweet it and share it with others so everyone can be a part of the conversation, even those that aren’t here. I first want to start off by just kind of setting a tone about where social media used to be and where it is now. In 2005, I was in college, and Facebook just hit the scene, and everyone was getting on. And at that time, it was just for college students, and it was a way to connect and for you to poke your crush. So, when I was getting on Facebook in 2005, it was fresh, it was new. And I remember, one day, in my dorm, two hours passed, and I had been on Facebook for the whole two hours. And I was like, “Whoa, this is crazy.” I hadn’t realized fully what was happening, but I saw the potential of some of the issues that we’re talking about in today’s conversation. Things have changed so much with social media, especially Facebook. You now have everyone on there: businesses, advertisers. Anyone can now have a Facebook account, whereas before, it was just us college students. But most importantly, children are there. I’m doing research right now with my dissertation, and I’m having these conversations with young black girls. And one of the key things that I’m seeing across the board with them is that the majority of them got on social media, not Facebook, but social media, Instagram, at the age of 10. With everything that’s now happening in these spaces, I think that’s why these conversations are so vital. Because, at the age of 10, the closest thing that I had to being social was a shared phone line, house phone line in that home, where I could talk to my friends. And occasionally, my parents could pick up the conversations and say, “Hey, get off the phone.” So, they’re living in a different time and era right now. And that makes them very vulnerable to a lot of exposure and outside influences. So, what’s going on in 2021 right now? Let’s talk about it. We had COVID-19 happen, a global pandemic. Climate changes, Australia wildfires, the killing of George Floyd happened in 2020, racial unrest across the U.S., Donald Trump’s impeachment trials, Kanye running for president, infamous presidential debates, violence at the U.S. Capitol, remote schooling, state lockdowns. The Delta variant came out. All of this, and it was all online.

 

[Jimmeka Anderson]: And it wasn’t just us seeing it; it was our children seeing it. It was so much information, and that created so much uncertainty because the information had different perspectives, different kernels of truth, different pieces of the story, and how it was constructed and altered and told. And so that created this feeling of, “What is true? What can we trust?” And this is what our kids are going through as well. It isn’t just us. Our children are dealing with this as well. So let’s talk about what our youth are experiencing. Youth are watching online—everything, YouTube, social media. I remember growing up, if you asked me, “Who was my favorite singer or entertainer?” I would like to tell you Whitney Houston. If you ask youth today, I guarantee you, more than likely, it’s going to be a TikTok influencer or some type of social media influencer. And that word “influencer” means something. It’s influencing them. Those people in those spaces that they’re online are influencing them. They’re impacted emotionally. They’re feeling afraid. I was afraid. They’re afraid, confused. They’re finding outlets to express themselves and unpack, and sometimes it is on social media where they’re venting and expressing their feelings. And some of them are wanting to get engaged and wanting to do something. But we have to ask ourselves, are these children equipped and understand how to navigate in spaces online? Well, let’s talk about it. Let’s see what the research shows. So, RAND has done a lot of work with their Truth Decay initiative. One of the things that they did show is that right now, children aren’t really equipped to even learn about how to navigate online because our teachers aren’t equipped to teach about these topics online. A RAND study in 2021 showed that teachers lack training and resources to support students’ learning of how to combat disinformation. And they saw this with 50% of elementary school social studies teachers. And when we talk about elementary schools, that’s usually they’re teaching all subject matters. If your child is in elementary, they probably have one teacher. So when we say 50%, that’s a lot. They did not have any teacher preparation or in-service training to equip them to even talk about how to navigate disinformation online. And when we get to secondary education, those social studies teachers, that number goes to nearly 40% of them feeling that they’re not competent or equipped to teach children about how to navigate online through misinformation. Additionally, a study done by Learn to Discern in 2020, which is a program designed and ran by the International Education and Research firm IREX, it showed that targeted skill-building, and that’s what we were just hearing about in the past presentation, skill building, it actually is effective in reducing the engagement with misinformation. A lot. Additionally, other programs have come about with a lot of this work. I know there’s a lot of work that has been done by Stanford History Education Group, their Critical Online Reasoning program, ISTE. There’s so many initiatives now that have been created to combat this issue. And some research has come out of some of these initiatives, such as one of them being the KQED Learn, which is an initiative that did a study in 2020 where they conducted pre- and post-tests with nearly 200 students whose teachers participated in their media literacy and civic engagement programs. What they showed from this is that skills such as lateral reading were very beneficial in helping students, and children, to be able to identify misinformation online. And teaching skills in these programs also allows students to be able to look at images that have been altered and edited and be able to tell what’s even true with images and photographs that they see in online spaces such as Instagram. So, if we’re having challenges with educators not feeling confident, competent with teaching these skills, I think that there’s a need for us, even as parents. I have a 12-year-old daughter, and I see that there’s a need for me to still have these conversations and provide her with resources.

 

[Jimmeka Anderson]: And so, I have to educate myself. That’s why webinars such as these are so important. I’m hoping today I can give you some tips and resources that you can implement in your homes with your children. Education and skill-building has been proven effective, as you have seen with some of the data and research I just shared. So, what does that look like? I’m going to share some tips. The first thing I would say you want to talk to your children about is, when they’re engaging with information online, help them understand that all media is constructed. Everything that you engage with, from a photograph to the text, a sentence, a person wrote – it is constructed. I know myself, sometimes when I put even some commentary on my social media posts, I try to think about how I’m going to word this. What kind of phrase, what kind of emojis am I going to use? Everything is intentionally constructed. They have to understand that. So, when they’re engaging with this constructed media, they have to ask themselves, “What type of information is this?” The first type is, is it credible? Does it have facts, statistics, data? An example of that would be saying, “Kanye West has been awarded 21 Grammy awards.” That is something that has data. You can go check and verify. It can be proven. Okay. Then there’s propaganda. This is information that may not necessarily be false but it is presented in a very slanted and perspective-based way, such as, “Kanye West is more talented than so-and-so,” or, “He has won 21 Grammys.” So, understanding what type of information. And then we have misinformation, disinformation, and another type of information that’s not listed right here is malinformation. Misinformation is information that you might encounter online that may not necessarily be untrue, but it may be misleading. Wrong was not intentionally made to harm or to hurt or inflict danger upon any group. It’s not intentionally constructed to be false, but it may be false. Depending on the way it is presented, disinformation is intentionally wrongfully created information, and malinformation is information that’s designed to harm and hurt others. So, helping your children understand, “What type of information are you engaging with?” Helping them understand the different types of information. And once again, this is a chart that allows you to see that there’s a difference between information being just false and then the intent to harm. And that helps us piece this together because I know there were so many buzzwords going out, such as “fake news.” Everyone heard “fake news,” but what is fake news? What is misinformation? And understanding that there are different types. So, educate your children on the different types of misinformation, disinformation, and content that they engage with online. The next tip: allow them to explore their confirmation bias. And when I say that, I say that because we have to do that as well. A lot of the challenges that we’re experiencing online is largely due to our confirmation bias. If you don’t know what confirmation bias is, just think of it when you have a disagreement with someone. Say you had a disagreement with a close friend and then you want to go tell someone your side of the story. You want someone to agree with your side of the story, so you know who to call. That’s gonna say, “Oh my gosh, you’re right! How dare that happen?” You’re seeking some type of confirmation of bias about what you believe. And as we navigate online, we find ourselves clicking on content that we want to align with our own biases. I’m going to click on something that says, “You can lose weight with ice cream,” because I want that to be true. “Oh my gosh, let it be true. Let me read this article on why I can’t lose weight eating ice cream.” Right? And so, what happens is, we then start finding ourselves in these informational bubbles, these echo chambers online. So much has happened now with confirmation bias in the algorithms that play out with our clicks. As we seek that confirmation bias, it creates these echo chambers, and it also has fueled online polarization in the social media sphere. So, social media algorithms – it’s very important to talk about with kids. And it may sound like, “Well, what is that? That’s a lot. Algorithmic literacy, what is that? That’s too much.”

 

[Jimmeka Anderson]: I got this picture right here from “Space Jam” because I thought it was really cute how they incorporated this algorithm concept with “Al-G Rhythm,” played by Don Cheadle. It helps them understand that sometimes in these online spaces, there’s an invisible entity online trying to gauge our interests to show us the content we prefer. This helps kids grasp how algorithms function in the digital realm. Sometimes, social media knows us better than we know ourselves because it keeps track of our biases. So, why is it crucial to recognize our biases when we venture online? Because the media is biased; it’s constructed. I’d like to share a chart. As a media literacy educator, there’s a digital download fee for this media bias chart. However, if you’re a parent, you can just search online for the “media bias chart,” and you’ll find it. This chart displays various media outlets and their position on the media bias spectrum. It helps you understand that if you exclusively watch a particular news station, it might be because it aligns with your biases, influencing the way you perceive news. I encourage active open-minded thinking when engaging online. The primary goal should be truth-seeking and being open to various media sources to uncover the underlying truth. So, how do we achieve this? Tip three: analyze and verify. We need the skills Elizabeth discussed earlier. As much as we want to protect our children, we can’t be there for them every time, everywhere. Therefore, we must arm them with skills for digital resilience in the virtual world. This is essential because, as they continue their education and join colleges, they will use learning management systems and engage extensively online. The way we work and learn has shifted online, so they need skills to be critical thinkers and active consumers in this digital space. Some essential skills include fact-checking and lateral reading to counter misinformation. Fact-checking involves verifying articles’ authenticity using fact-checking websites. Lateral reading, as observed in studies on professional fact-checkers, involves opening multiple screens, gathering information from various sources, and comparing them. While this may sound daunting, these are vital skills, especially when encountering crucial health and safety information. We must determine the accuracy of such information.

 

[Jimmeka Anderson]: But if we don’t have enough time, because I know some might say, “Hold on, that’s just too much right now,” what are some quick strategies I can take away? Well, this is one right here. I think if you look at this photo, it says, “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet just because there’s a picture with a quote next to it.” And we see Abe Lincoln. Most images and content shared online, people just immediately click and share. They don’t even sometimes open it up, really read through, and then they can see it’s very blatant. So actually read the content. Don’t just read the headline. Don’t just skimp. Don’t believe everything you read. Read everything. Because when I see what it says about the internet, we have to know the internet did not exist when Abraham Lincoln was living. Maybe it did, I don’t know, and we just didn’t know about it. But you would understand then, that it’s not credible; it’s not true. Ask yourself: Who created this? Is the source known or unknown? Is this a reliable media source? Who made this and why? How does it make you feel? A lot of the time, much of the information we engage with, post, share, and comment on is designed to be clickbait. It feeds off our fear. And I think it’s also important for us to help our children understand that there are people who actually get paid to create fake news articles. The way they get paid is because they need to get clicks and they need as many people on that site or article as possible. The way they’re going to do that is they’re going to put up shocking headlines. They’ll put up stuff that makes us react because we react from fear. It’s fight or flight. And that’s one of those emotions that prompts our reactions. So ask yourself: How does this make me feel? Does this make me want to react? Is this clickbait? When was it created? Often, articles shared online may have been true but are now misinformation because they occurred five years ago. I tell students all the time, to explain this, what if I told you, using Elizabeth as an example, that Elizabeth had gotten detention. If I told you that today, but Elizabeth actually had that detention two years ago, it wasn’t something recent. It’s misinformation due to the date. Look at the dates on some of these articles, and that’s another thing you should look for. It’s a key, easy way to spot misinformation. Lastly, I want to provide you with some resources. These are resources for parents and educators. There’s a new site called the Cyber Citizenship Education Hub, and the address is cybercitizenshipeducation.org. I’m going to show this really quickly. This is an initiative done with many allied organizations in the field, including cybersecurity, media literacy, and civic engagement. All these resources have been compiled. There are about a hundred resources in this hub right now. These are all free, so you can access resources and actually do some of these activities. There are games on here, creative ways to talk to your students or children about misinformation, and help guide and learn together. If you’re thinking, “I don’t really know where to start,” you can learn together. That concludes my presentation. Thank you so much, and I hope you all got something you can take away and implement right away.

 

[Dr. Colleen Kraft]: Thank you so much, Jimmeka. That was an amazing presentation, and I’m definitely going to look up the cybercitizenshipeducation.org. You know, I was thinking, as you were talking about the misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, that would make a good quiz. You know, which one is which? And maybe do sort of a matching activity. But it sounds like that site may have activities like that. One of the questions that we have is, can you identify any actual apps or something on social media that may do some of the same sorts of things? Something a parent could share with a child and maybe do a quiz together or do an activity together?

 

[Jimmeka Anderson]: Oh, yes. Once again, all of these that I’m going to recommend are online on the cybercitizenshipeducation.org page. There’s games such as Harmony Square that’s been created actually by the US Department of Education. The government got in this game. There’s also the Internet Awesome Initiative that Google has created with activities as well. The Stanford History Education Group, they have a lot of videos and activities that you can go and engage with right away on their website. There’s something called the Bad News Game. So, there’s so many cool games online that you can engage with your child right away. Cybercitizenship.org, I think, is the easiest thing to do because then you can look and shop through. But hopefully, those will help.

 

[Dr. Colleen Kraft]: Thank you so much. And thank you to all of our presenters. We are now going to transition to our question and answer for the entire panel. So, I’m going to invite our panelists to all come online here. And as we get started, we actually have a question from one of our listeners, Amy Geller. So, Amy, if you want to come on and ask your question to the panel, let’s hear from you.

 

[Amy Geller]: Hi everybody, thank you so much. This has been great today. My question is, how can I share with my tween/teen who is fairly mature—she loves social media, what she’s been allowed to play with—but how do I explain to her at an age-appropriate level about concerns? I mean, we do talk a lot about them, but I’d love to know from you, the experts, what am I asking her to look out for? And what’s age-appropriate to talk with her about?

 

[Dr. Colleen Kraft]: Go ahead, Mitch.

 

[Dr. Mitch Prinstein]: So one of the things that, um, actually they do in my own kid’s school is they talk with kids about understanding different points of view. And they ask, you know, “What is the point of view of the people who have developed the digital media platforms?” And kids usually can quickly get to the idea of this: they’re developed to make money, they’re developed to keep me on for as long as possible, they’re developed to get me to kind of make connections that make me want to come back. And to try and engage in some mindful ways of being on digital media and saying, you know, “What are some of the goals that you have when you go on digital media? I want to hang out with my friends, I want to see what’s going on, I want to see something entertaining, I’d like to be on it for 10 minutes.” That’s all completely appropriate. But then the key is, what are some signs that you might not be meeting your goals, you know? I’ve been in 45 minutes, I feel stressed for not having checked. Or I feel like I’m being taken to sites and places that I wasn’t intending to go on when I first started. And really helping them recognize, well, that might be achieving a different point of view. That might be, that’s not getting you what you wanted from digital media. That might be something that’s what the digital media companies want you to do. And that approach seems to be a very helpful way to get kids to understand it in a way that uses the language they’re learning in school, too. 

 

[Dr. Elizabeth Englander]: I would also add, Amy, that you might ask your daughter what she thinks is appropriate and inappropriate. Ask her what kinds of problems she’s seen or run across, what kinds of issues her friends have had with their parents or with their friends or just with social media in general. And sort of listen for some of those cues about the issues that all three of us have brought up. And, you know, if it comes initially from her, it’s going to be much more effective than if it comes initially from you. So she says, like, “Oh, I’ve seen problems, you know, where I had a friend who was on this really awful website that was talking about cutting,” you know, like Mitch was talking about his research. Then you could say, “Oh, well, you know, I know something about that because I was in this webinar and that really is a concern. And what do you think about that? And what are the dangers, and let me tell you what I think.” And that, that kind of approach is advantageous just because it’s coming from her. So it’s, it’s going to be more effective than you lecturing her. I’m sure you’re not doing that anyway. 

 

[Amy Geller]: She’s really, she’s really great in that respect. And she, she is young enough right now to know, “Oh, that’s a little scary.” And she’ll share that with me, “I found this thing. That’s, it’s not really something I look at. What’s it about?” Although she is pretty savvy. For me, it’s more about the invisible effect, like the, or the invisible impact, like, how can I help her? What Mitch said was, was awesome. It’s, it’s the, you know, getting sucked in, right? It’s how to identify getting sucked in. 

 

[Dr. Elizabeth Englander]: And problems like anxiety, which kids are not always aware of, um, you know, the association between anxiety and social media where we see issues where kids are anxious when they use social media, they’re anxious when they don’t use social media, it’s kind of, kind of hits them both ways. And so you, you want to sort of listen for openings when she’s talking to bring up some of those hidden issues. And the idea is to have a conversation and to teach her how to think about this in sort of a critical way. And I do think that taking different perspectives is essential today. One issue we’re seeing online is a significant increase in bias, impacting kids when they’re bullying or fighting. Encouraging kids to take different perspectives is one of the key ways that you combat that. So, I just want to piggyback on Mitch’s advice and say that’s an important point today. 

 

[Jimmeka Anderson]: Amy, I want to jump in one more, real quick cause I feel like there’s another question coming. I think it’s really important to also empower our children to understand that they have agency and authority in this social media space. And when I say that, you know, there’s gonna be times where maybe they may not communicate with you about how they’re feeling about everything. Let’s just be clear, I feel some type of way almost every day on social media, as I scroll I’m like, why did they post that? Oh here we go! So I think it’s really important for us to empower them to understand the authority that they have over their own profile or space. And when I say that, you can unfollow someone. I have unfollowed people just because I just didn’t like how their posts made me feel. Maybe they were being too positive and made life seem like it was amazing over there, and it’s like, that social competitiveness kicks in where we’re always comparing ourselves, right. Like whoa, they’re taking all these trips and here I am working all day! You know, so sometimes there’s things internally that we’re like, okay. You know what? I have the power to unfollow! I have the power to take this app off. My daughter, like I said, she’s twelve years old, and a couple of weeks ago she just came to me and she said, “I took off TikTok.” I said, “Okay, well, you wanna talk about it?” She was like, “it was just some kids being mean, and I didn’t have time for it.” I was like, I’m so glad that you recognized that you were bothered and you decided to remove yourself. So just helping them understand that they have that agency and authority over the space to remove people or the app itself.

 

[Dr. Elizabeth Engalnder]: You know, sometimes when we’re talking about FOMO in the lab we talk about something called JOMO, which is the joy of missing out. And we were really surprised on how much kids, especially girls your daughter’s age, really glommed on to this idea. Like, it’s not always bad to miss out. Sometimes it’s better to miss out. So, excuse me, so sometimes we talk to them about JOMO when we have groups of kids in the lab and you’d be surprised how sort of on board they are with the whole idea.

 

[Amy Geller]: Thank you all very much, that was great. 

 

[Dr. Colleen Kraft]: Thank you, and I love that, JOMO. I’m gonna have to remember that one. 

 

[Dr. Elizabeth Englander]: Absolutely, it’s what Jamaica was talking about, totally.

 

[Dr. Colleen Kraft]: A question that came from a number of listeners about the role of legislation, regulation, and Congress with social media and your opinions on this. Where I’m, I’m hearing everybody saying is that, stuff is gonna be out there. Regardless of regulation, it really has everything to do with how you, how you work this with your child and how you really focus on your child’s ability to use their developing brain to figure out what’s going on. But, your ideas on Congress and regulation and legislation and what we need to be advocating for?

 

[Dr. Mitch Prinstein]: Yeah, the American Psychological Association, we’ve been doing a lot of work, meeting with senators and talking with folks in energy and commerce and get together about regulatory steps. The horse is out of the barn for sure, I don’t think that social media is going away. We’re very pleased that the intention to create an Instagram for kids under the age of twelve has been jettisoned at this point, hopefully it will remain that way. But there are a number of things that can be done and it’s really important that everyone listening is being very active and vocal about advocating because, of course our legislators listen to their constituents. There can be surgeon general box warnings about what we know about the addictive properties of social media and the ways that adolescent brain development coincides with the things that social media activates within the brain to create almost a perfect storm that is leading to addictive processes with our kids. We do it with other things that are addictive, we should do it here too. Twitter has started to use a couple of different regulatory, you know, started to independently do a few things. So if you forward an article that you haven’t read, it comes up with a warning that says, “you’re forwarding an article you haven’t read! Be careful you’re not forwarding misinformation based on just a headline!” So that could be done all the time. There could also be warning signs that also come up after being on for ten minutes or so to say, you’ve been on for ten minutes. Do you mean to stay on?” You know, really recognizing that in some ways, without realizing it, and I’m sure many people have watched The Social Dilemma, but without realizing it, the programmers didn’t quite know just how addictive and how dangerous this was all gonna be. But now that we do know, you know, it’s our responsibility to provide regulations in a way that protects people in the same way that we protect folks from other things that we know are dangerous, illegal, harmful, can change brain development and can expose kids to illegal content.

 

[Jimmeka Anderson]: Okay!

 

[Dr. Colleen Kraft]: Oh, go ahead.

 

[Jimmeka Anderson]: I’m so sorry Colleen. So, just talking about policy and things that can be done, I’m in the education sphere so a lot of the data I was sharing with you about how educators are not equipped to even teach our children how to combat misinformation, how to build digital resilience, and a lot of them don’t even know about the resources that exist or how to implement them in instruction. But there’s an organization, national organizational called Media Literacy Now, and there are state representatives from Media Literacy Now in each of your states. I encourage you all to go on Media Literacy Now’s website and see some of the individuals, community leaders that are trying to get media literacy mandated in our schools, where there are standards and funding that can help support teaching kids how to learn how to navigate online. And so if any of you all are interested in getting involved in that work and just want to have a voice and just talk and say, “hey, what can I do to support policy happening where our kids can learn this stuff in school?” Go to Media Literacy Now and check out who your state representative is, and just talk to your state legislators, tell them what you wanna hear!

 

[Dr. Elizabeth Englander]: I think that’s a great tip Jimmeka, and I’m aware of them too. They are a great organization. The only thing I would add to this is, I don’t think parents should wait around for any kind of regulation, state or federal. You know, this is a pressing issue right now, it’s pressing both because we’ve been dealing with our kids and social media for a while, but it’s also particularly pressing now as we’re beginning to sort of emerge from the worst of this pandemic and we’re trying to put the toothpaste back into the tube about kids’ media use and digital tech use. I really wanna emphasize to parents, please don’t wait until you feel like you’re an expert, please don’t wait until you feel like you know everything, it’s really not important. The most important thing is to ask and to talk, and really show your kids, model for them how to think about issues, how to ask questions, how to not be afraid of new topics or new perspectives, and don’t, you know, I hope that policy and regulation come around, I really do, but I don’t think any of us should wait for it.

 

[Dr. Colleen Kraft]: Those were all great answers, thank you very much. The next question we’ve got is, what can parents say to their kids to guide them on Facebook’s big push for the Metaverse? The safety instructions provided by Oculus themselves says that virtual reality headsets shouldn’t be used by kids for more than fifteen minutes at a time, and Facebook/Meta seems to be ignoring this. Comments?

 

[Dr. Mitch Prinstein]: I’ll just say that, there are a great deal of parents and there might be data on this, and I wonder if Elizabeth has data on this but, a great many parents have their kids on social media because they don’t want their only kid to be the one not on social media and then suffer the peer relationship consequences. I think it’s very important that dialogues like this one really promote an active discussion among parents, even to go so far as to make a pact within a grade or classroom to say, we are all going to enforce limits on social media together, and we are all going to be able to say, don’t worry, all of your classmates have to get off at 6:30, you know, that’s the policy among all the parents. And this is how parents can play a big role, but so many parents, yeah, are kind of, it’s a phenomenon in social psychology called pluralistic ignorance, this idea that you know, we’re all engaging in the same behavior but we assume we’re the only one doing it for our own personal reason. And what’s really happening is that, no parent is wanting their kid to spend a whole lot of time on there, especially unrestricted, but they’re all afraid they’re the only one that feels that way. SO we need to kind of speak up and say, we’re all gonna do this together.

 

[Dr. Elizabeth Englander]: And I think the pandemic has made this worse because a lot of parents feel right now like their kids lost so much over this last year and a half, that they really don’t wanna deny them anything right now. But you know, there are national organizations that have addressed this kind of thing. So for example, there’s an organization called Wait Til 8th, which is a national organization that helps local PTOs set up groups of parents who decide not to give a cell phone or mobile device to their child until 8th grade. And using that model, you could approach all kinds of things, like what time do you have to get off social media? And, do you have, you know, using the model of the group is really helpful. I can guarantee every parent listening that whatever you do, you’re not the only parent doing it. I can literally guarantee this. However, I understand that feeling you have that you’re depriving your child of a critical social sphere and you don’t wanna do that, I completely understand that. So, it really helps you feel easier if you have a group of parents who are doing the same things you’re doing. And you might learn about different ways to enforce rules and different kinds of rules that can be helpful. There are lots of ways to address these issues. There’s apps like unGlue which allow your child to budget their internet time, instead of focusing on like, one hours vs. two hours which is a very difficult approach. But budgeting makes it much easier and you know, there’s all kinds of different approaches that you could do, and if you get together as a group and you use some of these national organizations that can give you kind of a model, then you know, really it’s a wonderful way to go, cause you’re gonna feel a lot easier.

 

[Jimmeka Anderson]: Family Link is another great app, I just wanted to throw that out there. I used that one with my daughter for a couple of years in that, I can control the apps that she actually has access to, and then I can also control and limit the time that she’s on certain apps and all of that. I can basically control everything on her phone, but Family Link, so I’m just gonna throw that in as an app that I definitely recommend as well.

 

[Dr. Colleen Kraft]: Well thank you so much, and again a huge thank you to our panel. I’m gonna ask each of you for just your final thoughts on this topic and then we will wrap things up. So, Mitch.

 

[Dr. Mitch Prinstein]: Just wanna say thank you for listening. If you’ve taken an hour and a half out of your life to be a part of this, you’re already doing the right thing because you are committed to this issue, you are being attentive to the science, you are looking for concrete suggestions, please tell everyone you know that there’s a whole community of people out there and there’s a whole bunch of science out there to access, and people don’t have to feel alone in trying to manage this very very scary moment in our history, really, as a society where we’re being confronted with this very daunting and powerful technology force that has the potential to affect our kids’ development in ways we’re still just learning, and as a parent, that’s scary.

 

[Dr. Colleen Kraft]: Thank you. Elizabeth.

 

[Dr. Elizabeth Englander]: You know, I do agree with Mitch, I think it’s a scary time to be a parent, but I really wanna encourage everybody to take the long view, you know. There have been many times where we’ve had to deal with very difficult situations, and what kids usually remember when they live through things like the emergence of social media or a global pandemic, what they really remember is sort of what happened in their family and what happened with their, how did their parents deal with it and talk to them about it, and I think that’s by far the most important skill, it’s gonna get you through a lot of different situations. THis one’s particularly hard because it makes us all feel like the kids are running circles around us and we don’t know what we’re doing, that’s very distressing, but what we find in our research is what kids really care about is having parents talk to them. That’s really what they care about. And I think in the long term, that’s a strategy that everyone can do, that everyone can benefit from, and that, you know, you’re not gonna hit the mark every time, nobody does, I don’t, nobody does. But, it’s really helpful to sort of, I think, keep the long view.

 

[Dr. Colleen Kraft]: Thank you, and then great practical advice for everybody. And Jimmeka.

 

[Jimmeka Anderson]: I just wanna say to the parents that are listening, if right now, well if before this session you were feeling like “I don’t know what to do,” it’s okay. It’s okay because I think we’re all figuring it out, all of us, even cause, everything’s changing, it’s forever changing and evolving, it’s technology. BUt one thing I will say is we’ll learn together, and that’s gonna be my advice for you with your children. Learn together. So, check out some of those resources, take some of that advice that we’ve shared, share it with your children, and learn together. Dive in with social media with them. Create shared accounts with them, you know, in their tweens and early years. Just learn together.

 

[Dr. Colleen Kraft]: Thank you so much, and thank you to everybody who was on this webinar and thank you so much to our panelists. I’m gonna pass this back to Paul to finish things up.

 

[Dr. Paul Weigle]: Great, thank you Colleen, and thanks also to Mitch, Elizabeth, and Jimmeka for sharing your time and expertise with us today. And thanks as well to those of you who are joining us from home or from work. When you leave this webinar you will be asked to complete a short survey about our program. Please take a moment and let us know what you think. To learn more about the topic, be sure to visit www.childrenandscreens.com and check out our tips for parents and other resources. And again, don’t miss your chance to select your own webinar topic. Until this Friday for a $100 donation, you’ll automatically be entered into a raffle to choose a future webinar topic. Your generous help is vital for the institute to be able to continue to provide this webinar as well as other services. Learn more on the website. We will post a video of today’s webinar on our YouTube channel, to which you can subscribe to keep in touch with future webinars, and we hope you’ll share our resources with your fellow parents, teachers, clinicians, researchers, and friends. You can also follow Children and Screens, ironically, on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn at the accounts shown here. We hope you’ll join us again on Wednesday December 8th for our fortieth Ask the Experts webinar, where we’ll plan ahead for still being home for the holidays. Thanks again for joining us today, be well, be safe, and enjoy a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.