Let's empower teens to take control of their screen use

Ashley Zhou was having a hard time sleeping. Her phone, which she kept nearby, distracted her from winding down at night. So before the 17-year-old went to bed, she asked her parents to charge her phone in their room overnight.

That helped in two ways: First, it gave her parents peace of mind to know she wasn't staying up late texting or scrolling on Instagram. Second, it gave Ashley the self-control she needed to take a break.

But this solution wouldn't have materialized if she hadn't asked the adults in her life for help. One might say it takes a village to raise a child who has a healthy relationship with their digital devices.

"I feel like screen addiction is pretty similar to any other kind of addiction, where it's really, really hard to get out of it, even if you know it's bad for you," Ashley told me. "Having those support systems around you — like siblings, friends, family, even teachers and classmates helping you through it — is really important. It has to be a multi-effort thing."

We tend to think that teens choose to submit their days and nights to the vortex of their screens. The truth is many teens know that social media can overwhelm them, and they need guidance and strategies to keep them balanced in an increasingly digital world.

Nobody actively wants to scroll away their lives, said Darrel Zhao, also 17. "But it's not their fault that these algorithms are targeting their desires, or that social media is created to get you hooked and keep you on your phone."

You don't need to tell a teen that they're up against the powerful design forces of Big Tech. But we should all snap to attention after the country's top health official issued a dire warning recently about social media's threats to the mental health of young people. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy's report acknowledges that while we don't fully know the impact of social media, the current research points to a "profound risk of harm" on children and adolescents.

I've been following the latest studies with a close eye because it won't be long before my kids, 10 and 6, ask for their first phone. I'll hold off as long as I can, hopefully at least until high school — and hope that parents in our friend circles do the same — because study after study seems to confirm the worst. Adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media doubled their risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes, including signs of depression and anxiety. Social media can perpetuate body dissatisfaction, disordered eating, social comparison and low self-esteem, especially among girls.

Still developing brains are particularly vulnerable to these apps. Starting around age 10, kids seek approval and social rewards, a desire that can be exploited by likes, follows and flattering comments online. During adolescence, these brain changes make it feel even more satisfying to receive such affirmations. It's almost as if "get dopamine" replaces the primal need to "get candy" in the one-track mind of a growing child.

And yet just about every teen is on social media: 95% of 13- to 17-year-olds are on it, as the surgeon general noted. Even among 8- to 12-year-olds, a shocking 40% of kids use these apps.

I reached out to Ashley and Darrel because they attended a digital well-being youth summit recently hosted by the Minneapolis-based nonprofit LiveMore ScreenLess. The two friends, who attend Wayzata High School, won an award for a video they produced encouraging teens to put down their phones and not let real-life interactions slip by.

It's not original to say this, but I am hugely grateful there was no social media when I was a teen in the '90s. I did not need to have my most inane and self-absorbed thoughts broadcast to the planet. I did not need a Snap Map showing that my friends were hanging at the mall without me. I did not need to compare the girth of my thighs to those of skinnier girls in bikinis posting selfies on Instagram.

So the biggest thing I wanted to know from Ashley and Darrel was: Is growing up with social media as bad as it seems?

"It's a double-edged sword," Darrel said. "On one side, it's nice. You can see what friends are doing. You can be notified of real-world events. It's a better tool for communication."

"It's hard to be part of the community or in an active member of friend groups if you don't have social media," said Ashley, adding that she learned to crochet through YouTube and gathers creative inspiration from Pinterest. "It's a huge part of my life that I don't think I could live without."

"On the flip side," Darrel said, "it can become addictive and toxic because of a lot of the content makes you more hooked to your phone and less able to converse in public, person to person."

Ashley worries that social media algorithms are deepening polarization in our country, keeping us further isolated in our bubbles and feeding the biases we already have, sometimes with misinformation and lies.

Surgeon General Murthy's report offers a plethora of tips and calls to action. Tech giants need to be more transparent about the risks to children and adolescents. Age minimums (it's 13 for platforms like TikTok and Instagram) should be enforced.

"Most social media platforms are designed to maximize user time and engagement, so that ultimately teenagers and their parents are pitted against some of the world's most talented engineers and product developers," Murthy wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post. "This is not a fair fight."

But parents like myself do bear some responsibility. We can protect our dinnertime from phones and tablets. We can set clear boundaries about screen use. And we can model healthy behaviors with our own devices.

I asked Ashley and Darrel how much time they spend on their phones. They said four to five hours a day. My answer was the same. Perhaps a reboot of the 1980s PSA, where the outraged dad demands to know how his kid learned to do drugs, is in order: They learned it by watching us.