As school begins, mental health experts say to watch social media use by teens

Mental health professionals say it’s important for teens to limit their time online and develop healthy social media habits.

DERBY, Kansas — High school senior Maggie Elliott likes talking to friends on Snapchat and getting inspiration for art projects on Instagram.

But she says it’s easy to spend too much time on social media.

“I’m like, ‘Oh, just one more video. Oh, just one more video.’ And then time goes by, and I’ve wasted two hours,” she said.

Across Kansas and the U.S., teens are living more and more of their lives online — time they’re not spending on homework, hobbies or hanging out with friends face-to-face.

Up to 95% of teens use some form of social media, according to the Pew Research Center, and a 2023 Gallup survey found that American teens now average nearly five hours each day on the platforms, with YouTube, TikTok and Instagram being most popular.

Between classes at school, Elliott says it’s become more common to see kids looking down at their phones instead of talking to each other.

“When you’re walking down the hallways, you don’t look up and say hi to someone you know,” she said. “It’s always headphones in, head down, go to class.”

It’s not just teens. Data shows adults are spending more time on social media, too. Maggie’s mom, Sarah Elliott, says she sometimes spends way more time than she wants to on the sites.

“It’s the access to news, current events — that’s where I get sucked in,” she said. “On the political side, depending on what it triggers in me, it can be unhealthy.”

How social media impacts teens

Scrolling for hours probably isn’t great for anyone, but research shows it’s especially bad for teens and their developing brains. In the Gallup survey, teens who were heavy social media users were much more likely to report having poor mental health.

Vivek Murthy, the U.S. surgeon general, called on Congress to require social media companies to warn users that their platforms are linked to rising adolescent mental health issues like anxiety and depression. He cited research that shows nearly half of teen users say social media makes them feel worse about their appearance.

Experts are split on how effective such a warning label would be, and some are wary of demonizing social media — acknowledging the sites often make it easier for young people to explore new hobbies and learn more about the world. Nearly 7 in 10 teens told Pew that social media makes it easier for them to pursue hobbies and interests.

“Surgeon General’s warnings are typically reserved for something that is unsafe at any level. One cigarette is one cigarette too many,” said Eric Litwiller, communications director of the Mental Health America of South Central Kansas. “You cannot arbitrarily paint social media with the same brush.”

Still, experts say social media can make teens more isolated by eating away at time they spend with family and friends, and can reduce their time spent sleeping and exercising. It can expose them to dangerous material, including content encouraging them to harm themselves or others, and it makes it easier for online predators to victimize kids.

Social media can also promote unrealistic beauty standards and has been shown to be particularly harmful for teen girls’ body image.

Sarah Elliott, an elementary and middle school teacher, thinks the sites supercharge the ways her students compare themselves to each other.

“It’s past just how you look. It is, ‘How many likes do I have? How many followers do I have? Oh my gosh, did you see what she posted?’” she said. “It creates a different form of insecurity.”

A teen mental health crisis

The increased scrutiny on social media comes as mental health professionals and educators are trying to curb a surge in serious youth mental health challenges. Between 2001 and 2020, youth suicide deaths in Kansas rose 64%, according to the Kansas Health Institute — outpacing the 41% rise during that time nationally.

But experts say the teen mental health crisis reached new levels during the pandemic, when everyone started spending a lot more time online.

In 2020, COMCARE of Sedgwick County saw a 225% increase in youth needing to be hospitalized or placed in a psychiatric treatment facility due to harming themselves or others, according to quality director Michelle Calvert.

Four years later, Calvert said those numbers still haven’t gone down.

“The problems that came from the pandemic for our youth with their social skills, their isolation, higher rates of depression, higher rates of suicidal thinking,” she said. “All of that is still happening.”

(She emphasized that anyone who’s in crisis can reach 24/7 support by calling or texting 988 or visiting 988lifeline.org.)

Youth mental health often worsens in the fall as school resumes, according to Kansas and federal data.

But Calvert says there are resources for help, including a teen-led suicide prevention effort called Zero Reasons Why. It started in Johnson County after the community saw a dramatic rise in teen deaths by suicide in 2018. Now with four chapters across Kansas, it brings kids together to support each other.

“We see less stigma,” Calvert said of the organization’s impact in Sedgwick County. “We see teens reaching out for help more.”

Grant Pritz, a therapist at Mental Health America of South Central Kansas, said he recommends some of his patients try cutting down on their social media time or take a break entirely. He says it can be addictive and expose young people to harmful content and people, even cyberbullying.

But it isn’t all bad. Experts say social media can be a lifeline for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer teens, who might rely on it for support in dealing with unsupportive families or befriending other teens with similar identities. Some research indicates finding online communities where they feel safe and understood is associated with less anxiety and a lower risk of suicide in LGBTQ youth.

“Social media was not created with the purpose of making people feel terrible about themselves,” Pritz said. “It was made to connect people.

“But, as a side effect of that connection, all these things that we experience — struggling with body appearance or struggling to find our place in the world — are so much more noticeable on a much larger scale,” he added.

He said it’s crucial for teens to learn how to use social media responsibly because the habits they develop in adolescence often follow them into adulthood.

Calvert said that’s where parents come in.

“You don’t just give the keys to the car to a kid and send them on their way,” she said. “We teach them. We drive first. Then we sit in the passenger seat while they’re driving.

“We need to do all that with social media and phones as well.”

Tips for parents

• That could mean parents keeping tabs on teens’ social media feeds and limiting their time online. But also ensuring they can ask for help without getting in trouble — and parents modeling healthy habits around phone use and social media themselves.
• During early adolescence, the American Psychological Association recommends parents and adult guardians provide closer monitoring and coaching around social media. It might be appropriate for older teens to have more autonomy as they develop better digital literacy and more need for privacy.
• The association recommends that parents intervene if teens’ social media habits begin to interfere with their sleep or exercise needs. And parents should try to keep an open dialogue with teens about the kinds of harmful material they can encounter — limiting teens’ exposure to content promoting eating disorders, self-harm and violence against others.
• Experts also recommend reminding teens about the long-term consequences of their social media use and the ways their data can be mined by companies or stored and shared with others years into the future.
• Parents’ own use of social media has a profound impact on their kids, too. And some evidence suggests parents could improve in this area: Nearly half of teens responding to the 2023 Pew survey said their parents were sometimes or often distracted by their phone when they’re trying to talk to them while less than a third of parents self-reported the same distractions.

Latest state news:

MORE …