The internet is raising today's kids
Teen mental health issues are on the rise and the adults who are raising them do not feel fully equipped to solve it. Kids are being left to their own devices-- both literally and figuratively.
As a therapist who works with young people, I’ve been on the front lines of the adolescent mental health crisis for many years now. There are many others who have highlighted what I’m seeing, too. I’m not the only one who’s talking about it, and some have argued it has reached a boiling point. Others are starting to wonder whether or not tech companies should be held accountable. In any case, it looks like social media and big tech litigation might be the new tobacco litigation.
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 noticed how the internet, current trends, and even modern health practices themselves have shaped how we think, feel, behave, and connect.
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.
Therapists, researchers, teachers, and doctors have been sounding the alarm bells on teen mental health for a number of years now, long before the pandemic.
Two weeks ago, the CDC released the Youth Risk Behaviour Survey data, which offers a glimpse into how high school-age kids are doing. This is the most recent national data on teen mental health, particularly as it relates to the pandemic. Despite this being American data, it confirms what I’ve been seeing as a Canadian therapist, too. The kids are not alright.
There are very few teenagers I speak to who do not mention how social media, video games, or the internet influence their wellbeing. It is baked into their experience as modern adolescents. I agree with Johnathan Haidt’s conclusions about social media and its effect on teen mental health; using social media apps negatively impacts adolescent mental health and explains the rise in their mental health rates.
While I think it’s important to hold social media companies accountable and encourage moderate social media use, 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. That is, the internet has fundamentally changed how we all connect and relate. Adults are struggling with the effects of being constantly online too.
Frequent internet use affects us all.
The data shows us that adults do not use social media as frequently as teenagers do. They do not use the same apps, either, but that does not 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 pronounced in younger people. In other words, adults already have a set of skills to manage their stress and discomfort. It is either that, or adults are just that much better at hiding or coping with the negative impact. I suggest we start to take a closer look at the latter to 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 and same-age colleagues. I, too, battle against the algorithm and notice my attention, frustration tolerance, and even my memory and executive functioning shifting. It impacts us individually and it impacts the way we show up in our interpersonal relationships. 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. I would also argue that the youth mental health crisis cannot be reduced to an issue for teens to resolve themselves through therapy alone. We all have a role to play in making modern life easier to live.
Okay, great Jake. So now what?
The reason I bring this forward is to offer my thoughts about what I think will help repair the damage to attention, stress tolerance, and relationships.
First, 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. 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.
In addition, kids need help from adults. It is not the responsibility of kids and teens to resolve this issue. For those requiring therapy, I strongly believe that parents play an important role in the change process. In instances where teens refuse, parents should still seek guidance from a professional to address the layers of the issue that are in their control.
A Yale study released in 2019 found that working with parents as a replacement intervention was just as effective as working with the young person alone to address their mental health. This finding makes sense, especially given that kids require co-regulation, a principle routed in attachment theory and nervous system science, in order to learn how to self-regulate. Co-regulation is a prerequisite for self-regulation.
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. This would have to be an active process whereby adults use their calm to help kids find the calm inside of them. We cannot expect kids to solve their own problems without adult support. As adults, this means we have to start by managing our own emotions first. Kids cannot regulate themselves when they are surrounded by dysregulated adults.
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. 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.
Despite being plugged in, many kids today are feeling disconnected. I worry that every moment kids spend alone online is a moment without a safe, caring, and attuned adult presence. It is my view that the rise in adolescent mental health rates is not just about kids using social media, it is about the time away from nurturing relationships during a formative period, which impairs 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 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 life. 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 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. No matter the strategy, we do not yet fully understand the risks and consequences of raising kids in a digital age.
A primary concern of the people supporting young people today is that the internet is raising today’s kids. Many parents feel lost when it comes to this issue, and 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.
With technology changing and advancing at a rapid pace, there is no sign of this slowing down. That is, unless we finally do something about it.
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