Yesterday the US Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, released a warning about the use of social media and youth mental health. What then are the implications for it’s use in education. Our course EME6414 focuses on ways to use social media for education, but is it unsafe for our students to engage in this way. You can find a copy of the advisory, Surgeon General’s Advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health.
The 25 page advisory discusses the potential benefits and risks of social media use of youth. The report acknowledges that social media may be a place for youth to find support from peers when identifying with a marginalized or minority group. It goes on to mention that social-media based mental health interventions may be helpful to some children and adolescents. It is also a space for self-expression and social connection. The report does state that the risks may far outweigh the benefits. It quotes results from several longitudinal and large studies.
The results of the Braghieri & Makarin (2022) study, Social Media and Mental Health, stood out to me as it studied 359,827 college-aged youth. It looked at the staggered roll out of a social media platform across U.S. colleges. The study found a 9% increase in depression and 12% increase in anxiety. The authors also noted that the introduction of the platform may have contributed to more that 300,000 new cases of depression.
Although we are studying how to leverage social media for educational purposes, which we may consider good or harmless, how much impact does the mare introduction to social media have on our students? In this class, for example, we have been allowed to choose what platforms we feel most comfortable engaging with. I am not a fan of Twitter as I mentioned in a previous post. I find the platform to have a more toxic environment than most others. By asking our students to participate on these platforms, we are opening them up to content exposure, one of the risks mentioned in the Surgeon General’s report. There platforms contain information on self-harm and are often liked to low self-esteem, body dysphoria, eating disorders and other social disorders.
The report recognizes gaps in the data and suggestions for us all as we move forward. Below I give an incomplete list of suggestions for each group. Please review the report for full details.
For policymakers:
- Strengthen protections to ensure greater safety for children interacting with all social media platforms
- Ensure technology companies share data relevant to the health impact of their platforms
- Support the development, implementation, and evaluation of digital and media literacy curricula in schools and within academic standards.
For technology companies:
- Conduct and facilitate transparent and independent assessments of the impact of social media products and services on children and adolescents.
- Prioritize user health and safety in the design and development of social media products and services.
- Design, develop, and evaluate platforms, products, and tools that foster safe and healthy online environments for youth
- Create effective and timely systems and processes to adjudicate requests and complaints from young people, families, educators, and others
For researchers:
- Establish the impact of social media on youth mental health as a research priority and develop a shared research agenda
- Develop and establish standardized definitions and measures
- Evaluate best practices for healthy social media use
- Enhance research coordination and collaboration
Bottom line, do I think we need to remove the use of social media in education? No, but we need to look closely at the age group we are working with and the potential unintended consequences of social media exposure. As with all things me must judge if the the benefits outweigh the risks.
This is a very important warning that has been released. Although there are major benefits to social media and technology, there are also serious concerns to consider with the platforms as well. I think that there needs to be more attention paid to the long term effects of social media usage and how we can protect those who use it, most importantly children.
[…] This is a topic with a constant presence in the social media conversation. Additionally is the Surgeons General’s report I wrote about earlier this week. Much can be done about privacy and security on the end of the companies and the users. These […]