Is Social Media Making Teens Less Happy with Life? - KOAT - April 25, 2022

How does social media affect teens’ happiness?

We’ve been waiting for large studies and data on this question for years! Recently there was a British study of over 84,000 people asking “Does your satisfaction with life decrease with heavy social media use?”

Not surprisingly, there were two periods of time in the teen years where researchers noticed that heavy social media usage led to a decrease in satisfaction with life.

• Puberty (between 11-13 for girls and 14-15 for boys)

• 19 years old

Both age ranges are associated with major life changes. For puberty, a teen is changing rapidly physically. For 19 years old, it’s a transition to living independently, going to college or starting a career.

What parents can do to protect teens on social media

Parents, here’s what you can do.

Help your teens see how much time they spend on the internet using social media apps and websites. An easy way to begin tracking social media usage is to introduce an app to track their time. Smart phones come with an app built in - iPhones have Screen Time and Android phones have Digital Wellness. You can find these helpful apps under “settings”.

Some social media accounts have a feature that reminds users to take a break. Make sure your teen is using all the safety features offered.

Set limits on how much time teens are online. You can do this by collecting smart phones and tablets for part of the day, by using Google Family Link to set limits (it works on Android phones and newer iPhones) or Apple’s Family Sharing.

Set a bedtime for all devices. Phones and tablets should not be in your teen’s room overnight. Make it a family rule that devices are charging outside of the bedroom by 10 pm. If that doesn’t work, collect all devices yourself. Lock them up if you have to. Nothing good happens in the middle of the night and you’ll avoid so much drama and potential trauma if you enforce this rule.

Check who your teen is following on their social media and what their feed is filled with. You can ask your teen who they follow and you should also scroll your teen’s account together. Look especially for the influencer accounts, the people they don’t know and have a big following.

• Are the accounts giving healthy, positive advice? Making them feel good about themselves?

• What ads do you see?

• What is in their “for you” page, a page of suggested content they might like, based on what they’ve looked at before?

Be curious. Ask questions. Start conversations. It’s okay to start a conversation even if you don’t know much about the social media platform.

Here’s our director, Lisa Honold, with more in a recent interview with KOAT News.