by Diana Graber
•Media and internet-related activities can improve family relationships, when parents and children watch TV, stream content, play video games, and use educational apps together. They can also stay in touch by texting, using messaging apps, and making video calls.19
•The role of social networking in strengthening and maintaining friendships has been reported by over 90 percent of teens using mobile devices in countries as diverse as Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.20
“Contrary to urban mythology,” Rutledge adds, “online friendships do not replace offline relationships. For teens, there is no fundamental difference between online and offline in terms of their social lives.”21
ONLINE GAMES CAN STRENGTHEN FRIENDSHIPS, TOO
It’s a rare teen today who has not played a video game. A nationally representative sample of 1,102 young people, ages twelve to seventeen, found that 97 percent play video games. That’s 99 percent of boys and 94 percent of girls, with little difference among various racial and ethnic groups and incomes.22 Online gaming “handles” (the nicknames kids use while playing video games) are one of the first pieces of information that 38 percent of adolescent boys share when they meet someone in real life with whom they’d like to be friends.23
Online games are essentially social media sites, because youth are often connecting with existing friends and making new ones while playing massive multiplayer games. Numerous players compete, cooperate, and interact with one another in expansive virtual worlds.
I hear my young students talk about online games often. Actually, make that constantly. They describe their gaming friends in such fond and intimate detail that you’d think they lived right next door. But I guess when your friends live on your phone, computer, or gaming device, they feel even closer than a physical neighbor.
Recently during the holidays, I was curious what the most coveted “tech” gifts were among young teens, so I quizzed my classes. Overwhelmingly, they told me they wanted headsets, the “voice-activated kind that let you talk to your friends while gaming.” Today over 71 percent of all gamers use headsets so they can converse and work together to solve challenges.24 “If you watch kids playing games, they are playing together,” says Dubit’s David Kleeman. “As they play they are not just talking about what’s in the game; they are actually talking about what we used to sit around and talk about on the telephone.”25
Some of the skills kids learn while playing games with friends manifest in better offline relationships. In “The Benefits of Playing Video Games,” researchers say that gamers can translate the prosocial skills learned from playing with others to “peer and family relations outside the gaming environment.”26 Another study suggests that kids who play multiplayer games are more likely to have a positive attitude toward people from different cultures because online gaming exposes them to a more diverse group of friends.27
These positive findings can’t change the fact that many kids today spend too much time playing online games, and for some that’s a real problem. In early 2018, the World Health Organization added gaming disorder to its latest draft of the International Classification of Diseases Manual, or ICD 11. “Gaming disorder is characterized by a pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behavior (‘digital gaming’ or ‘video gaming’), which may be online or offline,” according to the ICD-11. “The behavior pattern is of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.”28
Several countries outside of the United States have already identified gaming addiction as a major public health issue. The South Korean government introduced a law banning access to games between midnight and 6:00 a.m. for kids under age sixteen. In Japan, gamers receive an alert if they spend too much time playing, and China’s Tencent (the leading provider of internet value-added services) limits the hours per day that children can play its most popular games. Many of the parents I speak with in the U.S. believe we should follow suit.
Probably due to my experience with the New Zealand-bound snowboarders, I didn’t let my own young kids play video games. But when my oldest daughter reached high school, she was introduced to Minecraft by the fifth-grade girl she was tutoring. “I can’t believe you didn’t let us play games like Minecraft when we were young!” she chastised me one evening after a “tutoring” session. “Do you have any idea how much kids learn playing it?” I didn’t. But since then I’ve learned that Minecraft, a game where users build their own worlds and experiences, has been lauded for helping children develop spatial reasoning, problem solving, reading, writing, math skills, and more. So while there are definitely some valid concerns parents need to be aware of if their kids play online games—particularly when they are young—there are also positive benefits to be had. One of these is the opportunity to nurture friendships made in “real” life. We owe it our kids to know about the benefits and to protect them from downsides.
THE DOWNSIDES OF GAMING
One morning Jules, a twelve-year-old boy whose sweet face makes him look barely ten, arrived early to class. I asked him how his weekend was, and he told me he spent most of it playing GTA (Grand Theft Auto). GTA is an M-rated action-adventure video game. That means the Entertainment Software Rating Board has determined it is appropriate for “mature” players ages seventeen and older. In this game, players assume the role of one of three criminals (they can switch back and forth) who complete missions in a fictionalized version of Los Angeles or another fictionalized major city. According to a GTA game review on Common Sense Media’s website (where you will find helpful reviews on nearly everything kids do online), “Players kill not only fellow gangsters but also police officers and innocent civilians, using both weapons and vehicles while conducting premeditated crimes, including a particularly disturbing scene involving torture. Women are frequently depicted as sexual objects, with a strip club mini-game allowing players to fondle strippers’ bodies, which are nude from the waist up.”29
I didn’t know this at the time, so I responded to Jules offhandedly: “Maybe I’ll check the game out sometime.” He looked at me in abject horror. “Don’t do that, Ms. Graber—there is a lot of cussing. You wouldn’t be able to handle it.”
Jules told me that many gamers cuss freely because, they figure, “Who’s gonna hear me besides other players?” Plus, they are role-playing. How many violent criminals do you know who apologize politely before shooting someone into oblivion?
According to my young sources, foul language and bullying in video games is often directed at “squeakers,” the youngest, newest, and most naive players.
“Yeah, this squeaker started playing Call of Duty,” said Ross, another twelve-year-old boy who had joined our conversation that morning, “and everyone was cussing at him and calling him names. I could hear him softly crying, so I taught him how to use his mute button.”
While I commended Ross for this act of empathy, I couldn’t shake the image of a young child somewhere, crying in front of his screen.
“By the way, what is Call of Duty?” I asked Ross.
That’s when Troy, a wizened thirteen-year-old, chimed in. “It’s a first-person shooter game with lots of violence and gore. I started out gaming on Call of Duty a long, long time ago.” He told me he was nine years old when he first started playing the game.
“Yeah, I was a squeaker,” he said. “I remember the first time I logged on. I said, ‘Hi,’ and then everyone started cussing and bullying me. I learned all the cuss words I know in the first hour of playing that game.”
My morning conversation—a carbon copy of many I’ve had before and since at all sorts of schools—is the reason many adults hate all video games. But keeping teens from playing them, or talking about them, is an exercise in futility. A smarter approach is to find out what they’re playing, because for every violent, first-person shooter game, there’s a Minecraft. So please help your kids find appropriate games, ask who they are talking to, and w
hat they are talking about. Most importantly, be mindful of age guidelines. It’s easy to find recommended ages and reviews for nearly every game in the universe by going to Common Sense Media’s website. Please don’t let it be your nine-year-old silently crying in front of a screen.
Social Media: Any website or app that enables users to create content, share content, communicate, or participate in social networking.
DOES TOO MUCH SOCIAL MEDIA CAUSE DEPRESSION?
Yes. No. Maybe.
Teen anxiety and depression are on the rise. At least that’s what many experts are reporting. Researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy report that from 2005 to 2015, depression rose significantly among Americans age twelve and older, with the most rapid increases observed in young people.30 In her book, Jean Twenge writes that adolescent self-esteem, life satisfaction, and happiness have plunged since 2012, the same year smartphone ownership reached the 50 percent mark in the United States. By drawing upon massive databases, large national surveys conducted over time that, in total, queried eleven million people, Twenge makes a compelling case that the smartphone is to blame for this problem. She extrapolates the following from the data:
The results could not be clearer: teens who spend more time on screen activities are more likely to be unhappy, and those who spend more time on nonscreen activities are more likely to be happy. There’s not a single exception: All screen activities are linked to less happiness, and all nonscreen activities are linked to more happiness.31
While her argument sounds convincing, some experts have questioned these findings, primarily because the link Twenge draws between smartphones and teenage angst is correlational; that is, the data doesn’t prove that smartphones are directly responsible for teenage depression. Other factors could be at work. It could be that depressed kids are spending more time on social media (some studies suggest as much) or that nondepressed kids are spending less time on social media.32 Other things could be making them depressed—like gun violence, global warming, college admissions, or the news in general. Or we could be getting better at reporting and diagnosing depression and anxiety. Researchers from Harvard who have been studying youth and technology use for over a decade warn, “No single answer . . . can be applied to explain the mental health and well-being of an entire generation.”33
As Dr. Rutledge points out, most research shows that “social connection is an antidote to depression, not the cause of it.”34 She suggests it might be more meaningful to ask teens themselves why they feel depressed, so that’s what I did. One thirteen-year-old looked at me quizzically when I asked her, wondering why I was asking such a ridiculous question. “We’re depressed because we’re teens,” she told me matter-of-factly. I could almost hear the “duh” she was too polite to add.
Other teens told me that connecting with their friends online makes them feel “way less depressed.”
“I often turn to my friends on social media when I feel bad,” said Kelly, a shy fourteen-year-old. “It makes me feel better.”
Although it’s hard to dismiss Twenge’s findings (believe me, I’ve tried), what good can come from dwelling on them? Eliminating the smartphone from teen life just ain’t gonna happen.
Fortunately, the same data reveals that the happiest teens are those who spend a small amount of time on electronic communication activities, not those who spend no time.35 Reducing screen time, not eliminating it, seems to be the best recipe for happy teens, and is a more realistic goal.
THE GOLDILOCKS HYPOTHESIS
In the child’s fairy tale Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Goldilocks goes for a stroll in the forest and stumbles upon a house where she finds three bowls of porridge. The first one, she discovers, is too hot. The second is too cold. But the third bowl is just right, so she eats it all up. It turns out this fable might apply perfectly to technology.
Researchers Andrew Przybylski and Netta Weinstein speculate that a similar “sweet spot” might exist for how much time teens spend using technology. Their research reveals that screen time may benefit teens’ well-being by providing opportunities to develop social connections and skills. Well-being increases as teen screen time increases, up to a certain point. After that point, increased screen time is associated with decreased well-being.
Like Goldilocks discovered with her three bears, these researchers discovered that a level of screen time use seems to correlate with mental well-being for youth, and this level differs depending on the day of the week. On weekdays, teens’ well-being peaked at about the following:
•One hour and forty minutes of video game play
•One hour fifty-seven minutes of smartphone use
•Three hours and forty-one minutes of watching videos
•Four hours and seventeen minutes of using computers
However, on the weekends, teens could engage in digital activities between twenty-two minutes and two hours thirteen minutes longer than weekdays before demonstrating negative effects.36
The researchers also say that not all digital activities are created equal. Some activities help teens build life and social skills, which in turn fosters well-being. Researchers even suggest that some digital activities may not be displacing meaningful offline activities that contribute to social development, whereas—hold on for this one—solitary reading just might!
CAN YOU HAVE TOO MANY ONLINE “FRIENDS”?
With online friends, is it possible to overdo a good thing? The short answer is yes.
The average teen is said to have about three hundred online friends.37 That number sounds low to me. A quick look at the social media accounts of my kids and their friends reveals a different story. The friend count I more commonly see ranges from three hundred to a thousand or more.
That’s an awful lot of relationships for a teen to manage. Science agrees. The number of stable relationships the human brain can maintain is much, much lower: 150.38
British anthropologist Robin Dunbar figured that out. Judging from the size of an average human brain, he discovered that the number of people a person could effectively manage in a social group was 150. Any more than that, he postulated, would be too complicated for the brain to handle. Yet young humans juggle this many friends and often many, many more.
When Dunbar was asked if virtual social networks will prove wonderful for friends or will ultimately diminish the number of satisfying relationships one has, he couldn’t answer. “This is the big imponderable,” he said. “We haven’t yet seen an entire generation that’s grown up with things like Facebook go through adulthood yet.”39
LIVING FOR “LIKES”
If I don’t get one hundred likes in the first five minutes I put a picture up, I take it down.
—EIGHTH-GRADE STUDENT
When kids, or anyone for that matter, post something to a social media account, they’re “speaking” to their large audience of friends and expecting, or hoping, that many will respond in turn, through comments or “likes.” These likes—which for youth translate into positive affirmations— influence the kinds of posts teens put up and leave up.
For many teens, monitoring their social media feeds becomes a time-consuming task that includes tracking their likes. In 2015, Penn State University researchers found that most teens post a lot of photos but quickly delete them if they do not immediately receive a boatload of likes.40 In another study, teens explicitly stated that a minimum threshold of likes was needed to convey popularity on Instagram. That threshold ranged from thirty to ninety in total.41 Interestingly, studies indicate that, on average, males need fifty-nine likes on an Instagram post to “feel happy,” whereas females only need forty-five.42
Here’s something else that might surprise you—adults post more photos on Instagram than teens do.43 This startling fact holds true in my own family. My husband, a cinematographer who posts beautiful photos on Instagram, has been chastised more than once by our teenage daughter fo
r overposting! Today he tries to stick to the “one-a-day” rule she imposed on him.
How this quest for validation and positive affirmation from peers is affecting the well-being of youth (and adults) is a question just beginning to be answered. A Children’s Commission for England study discovered that while younger children felt good when they received likes or comments from friends, at about Year 7 (early middle school), they start becoming overly dependent upon this affirmation.44
This is when kids start using techniques that will help them garner a high number of likes. What are some of these techniques? According to kids I’ve queried, they range anywhere from “liking and commenting a lot on their friends’ posts,” to “using the right hashtag,” “tagging the right friends,” “asking your friends to like and comment on your posts,” and, most importantly, “choosing the right time to post.” Kids say that “posting right before bedtime” is the “perfect” time to collect a lot of likes.
Kids have also told me it’s important to “earn” your likes and followers fairly. Purchasing followers (yes, that’s a thing) in the hopes of getting more likes makes users appear “desperate” (kids can “absolutely tell” when followers have been purchased). Using too many hashtags is “lame” as well. Our daughter advised my husband that using two hashtags per post was “just right.” And the worst social media offense of all? Liking your own photos. That’s akin to committing social media suicide!
ANXIETY AND FOMO
Many parents are concerned about the anxiety all this social media management must be causing in their kids. This, it turns out, is a valid concern. A 2017 survey of almost 1,500 teens and young adults found Instagram (along with Snapchat, Facebook, and Twitter) to be associated with high levels of depression, bullying, and FOMO, the “fear of missing out.” Instagram, where personal photos or selfies (often carefully staged or touched up) rule, was the worst social media network for mental health and well-being. A teen respondent to the survey wrote, “Instagram easily makes girls and women feel as if their bodies aren’t good enough, as people add filters and edit their pictures in order for them to look ‘perfect.’”45