“Kids these days and their dang phones!”: Rethinking the Impact of Phones and the Internet on Adolescent Well-Being

We as a society have framed the question of whether social media and technology directly harm our youth incorrectly. Often when talking to older generations something that's always divided Genz, millennials, Genx, and boomers is their stances on technology. I’ve faced resistance from older individuals regarding the influence of technology, even when I was only 10 years old and could only use my electronics for 2-4 hours. This divide over technology is fueled by news articles and studies claiming that social media or electronics are a direct cause for the rise of mental health issues in young people, despite the obvious fallacy that correlation isn’t causation this idea continues to spread. Now this isn’t to say that technology and social media have absolutely no flaws, there are flaws with these things but they’re not direct causes as everyone makes them out to be. 

While using social media for too long can be harmful, and social media itself can be toxic at times, usage and social media itself are not the main cause, the harm technology and social media causes are dependent on the content the user consumes or who they interact with on these platforms, and if their usage is causing genuine issues such as being withdrawn from peers and showing signs of a genuine addiction (crying over being grounded and using their phone a lot aren’t inherently signs), Teenagers who interact with content that causes negative emotions, such as constantly consuming political content or content that promotes harmful behaviors or teenagers who interact with harmful people, will develop mental health issues, whereas a user who interacts with more positive content or does not interact with harmful people/does not talk to many strangers will have fewer mental health issues because they are not feeding their brains with only negative things. Someone who uses Tiktok the most for example doesn’t automatically have a mental issue, as you don’t know what their for you page looks like and who they talk to, if someone watches primarily positive videos about their interests will be fewer likely to develop mental health issues compared to someone who watches primarily videos about war and human rights issues around the world.
Another dependent to be considered is that some social media platforms are better at protecting their users than others, marginalized demographics are more likely to run into harmful people and safety concerns on platforms such as Twitter than other platforms, and some platforms have a history of not protecting their minor users, like Discord. Platforms that do well with minor and minority safety are less likely to cause mental harm than ones that don’t. 

Okay idk how to conclude this but YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!! this was just a long ramble tbh I hope yall like it lol