The cost of being chronically online

A lot has changed over the last few years when it comes to our use of screens, social media, and the internet. It turns out, there are significant costs associated with being online way too much.

Feb 05, 2024

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As a therapist who works with young people and families, I’ve been on the front lines of the adolescent mental health crisis for many years now.

This week, in a rare gesture of bipartisanship, lawmakers in the U.S. Congress met with tech CEOs of The Very Large Online Platforms— also called “The VLOPs”— which are Meta, X, Snap, TikTok, and Discord. Lawmakers grilled these CEOs in a Senate hearing about online child safety and what their companies were doing (…or not doing) to protect young people.

Here’s where this gets interesting for me. We were in this exact same place a year ago.

In a previous post, I noted that I wasn’t the only one talking about this problem and, a year ago, some were already saying this issue had reached a boiling point. At this time last year, we were also asking whether or not tech companies should be held accountable. This issue has been the centre of focus as it pertains to social media and wellbeing.

The only way things will change, in my view, is if social media litigation becomes the next tobacco litigation. But there’s something in the way of preventing that from happening— something called Section 230, which essentially prevents these big tech companies from being sued based on actions from individuals on their platforms.

One year ago, the CDC released the Youth Risk Behaviour Survey data, which offered us a glimpse into how high school-age kids were doing between 2011 and 2021. This is the most recent and most comprehensive U.S. data set available on teen mental health, particularly as it relates to the first two years of the pandemic too. It was also the first survey to mention social media use. Despite this being American data, it confirms what I’ve been seeing as a Canadian clinician too. Being a kid today feels hard, stressful, and overwhelming.

From Play-Based Childhoods to Phone-Based Childhoods

I’m a millennial, which means I grew up in the 90’s and early 2000’s. I have childhood memories from the pre-internet days and I’ve watched how the internet, social media, and modern technology has influenced our culture. I remember playing in my backyard and coming home when the street lights came on. I remember the days of dial-up internet where I had to ask my parents for permission to go online. I remember downloading music from Limewire and getting my first MySpace and Tumblr pages.

Though internet access became more widespread throughout the 2000’s, I did not grow up online. I grew up using the internet, but the internet did not raise me. I had a play-based childhood, not a phone-based one. Today, Gen Z is between the ages of 11 and 26. They are the first generation to go through puberty with a smartphone in their hand and full access to mobile internet in their pockets. They have had a phone-based childhood, not a play-based one.

Therapists, researchers, teachers, doctors, and even parents have been sounding the alarm bells on the Gen Z mental health crisis for a number of years now, long before the pandemic. Since 2011, I’ve been working with young people in various roles— as a Big Brother, a camp counsellor, a family caseworker, a school counsellor, and now as an individual and family therapist.

Throughout the years, I’ve also noticed how the internet, current trends, and even modern health practices themselves have shaped how we think, feel, behave, and connect. I’ve seen nothing unlike the ways social media changes us. There are very few teenagers and young adults I speak to who do not mention, to at least some degree, how social media, screens, video games, or the internet affect their wellbeing. Being on the internet is not just something today’s kids do for fun. The majority of today’s kids are constantly online.

While I think it’s important to hold social media companies accountable and encourage moderate social media use within individuals, there is another layer of this problem I haven’t seen many people talking about…

Though social media undoubtedly exacerbates mental and emotional distress in young people, my work with parents and families reveals a similar trend among adults too. That is, the internet has fundamentally changed how we all connect and how we all relate. Adults are struggling with the effects of being constantly online just like kids are.

Constant internet use affects us all

The data shows that adults do not use social media as frequently as teenagers do. They do not use the same apps, either, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have their own digital drugs and virtual vices. Due to a difference in maturity, development, and life experience, the negative effects of social media and constant internet use are perhaps just more noticeable and more pronounced in younger people. In other words, many adults already have a set of skills to manage their stress and overwhelm. It is either that, or adults are just that much better at numbing, escaping, hiding, or coping with the negative effects. With that in mind, I suggest we start to take a closer look at the latter scenario so we can better understand the true impact of being constantly online.

As a millennial, I see the effects of social media and technology in my personal life with friends, my partner, and similar-aged colleagues. I’ve personally battled against the algorithm myself and have noticed how my attention, my frustration tolerance, and even my memory and higher thinking can shift. I’ve seen it show up in my relationships too. Even though the data highlights the negative effects on young people, of which I see every single day, I believe this is something we should all be concerned about. Constant internet use impacts all of us.

The reason I bring this forward is to offer my thoughts about what I think will help repair the damage to our attention, our stress tolerance, and our relationships. I believe today’s kids need more unstructured free-play to explore their curiosities, learn in-vivo problem solving, creatively respond to boredom, and learn how to navigate difficult problems. All of these things, at their core, happen in real life. We are seeing a drastic decline in adolescent self-efficacy— kids are struggling to action their own outcomes and find effective solutions for the problems they face. Unstructured free-play gives kids opportunities to practice building a sturdy inner voice. Play lets kids be kids. And play lets adults be adults too.

We can’t do it alone

In 2019, a Yale University study found that working with parents as a replacement intervention was just as effective as working with young people individually to address their mental health. This finding makes sense, especially given that kids require co-regulation, which is a principle routed in attachment theory and nervous system science, in order to learn how to self-regulate. When the parents can feel good and think clearly, kids can do the same.

With that in mind, I propose that in order for us to see a decline in adolescent mental health rates, parents and the adults who work alongside kids will need to better understand the realities of today’s teen so they can effectively co-regulate the adolescents around them. We cannot expect kids to solve their own problems without proper adult support. As adults, this means we have to start by managing our own social media use. We need to set a good example.

This isn’t to blame adults

The adults who are raising and caring for today’s young people had their own childhood too. They had their own struggles and their parents had their own of-the-times parenting challenges too. No one could have prepared today’s parents for the reality of what it would mean to raise a teenager after the internet boom. Previous generations of parents had somewhat of a road map, whether helpful or not, and today’s parents barely have one.

I think the rise in adolescent mental health rates is not just about kids using social media, but rather about the time away from nurturing relationships during a formative period, which in turn can impair social, emotional, and cognitive development. From the parent side, we can also view rising mental health rates as the direct result of attachment stress. Many parents just don’t have the opportunity or capacity or luxury to connect with their kids as often as they require it. This leaves kids with a feeling of doing it all by themselves without the skills to succeed or proceed.

To boot, many kids have begun to lose trust in the adults around them to help them process and understand the complexity of their lives. Many kids know that their parents have no idea what’s going on online. Many kids are missing out on their childhood because they think they need to become their own adult. This is another reason why kids need relationships with adults in order to develop the capacity for connection, clarity, and calm. Calm creates more calm.

The internet is raising today’s kids

The changing technological landscape means many parents are trying to raise well-adjusted kids through an era of drastic change. In some families, screen time is a common behaviour management tool and an easy way to soothe the stress of parenting. In this new generation, many kids are unfortunately being left to their own devices— both literally and figuratively. In other families, parents decide to add strict screen rules and monitor everything their kids do online. Both of these approaches create far too many micro ruptures in a child’s life, leaving them feeling too controlled or too out of control. The modern parent is in a bind.

A primary concern of the people supporting young people today is that the internet is raising today’s kids more than any adults are. This isn’t the choice of the adults around them either. Many kids get lost in their screens and many parents feel lost when it comes to navigating this issue. Quite frankly, I don’t blame them. Where is the road map? Where is the rule book? Where is the research? Where are the best practice guidelines? These waters are still largely unchartered.

It’s important for us to remember that there’s a whole life waiting for us away from our screens. And I’m hopeful that we can build a life of meaning and purpose away from algorithms and feeds.

With technology changing and advancing at a really rapid pace, there is no sign of this slowing down. That is, unless we all finally do something about it.

I’m doing it with you,

Jake