Children are influenced by social media companies more than we realize. Many of them balk at even the idea of searching the Internet because their online autonomy is completely dependent on their mobile phones. The only acceptable online environment for them is one customized by big technology algorithms that serve customized content.
As children’s free time and imagination become increasingly tied to the social media they use, we need to understand that unregulated access to the internet comes at a cost. Similar things happen to adults. With the advent of AI, we will outsource countless human rituals, such as exploration and trial and error, to machines, and spiritual loss awaits us. But it’s not too late to change the narrative.
This spring, I visited a group of high school students in suburban Connecticut to discuss the role social media plays in their daily lives and mental health. Today, more children than ever before report feeling depressed, lonely, and isolated. More teens, especially teen girls and LGBTQ teens, are seriously considering suicide. I wanted to have an honest conversation about how social media can help and harm your mental health. By the end of our 90-minute conversation, I was more concerned than ever about the well-being of my children and the well-being of the society they would inherit.
There are many problems for children and adolescents who use social media, from poor mental health to dangerous and age-inappropriate content to vigorous efforts by tech companies to enforce their own age verification rules. exists. But the high school students I met warned me of an even more insidious consequence of growing social media addiction among minors: the death of exploration, trial and error, and discovery. Algorithmic recommendations help you discover and pursue interests, find communities, and learn about the world. Simply put, children today are not learning how to become curious, critical adults. And they don’t seem to realize what they’ve lost.
A week before I met with the students, I, along with three of my Senate colleagues, Hawaii Democrat Brian Schatz and Republicans Katie Britt of Alabama and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, spoke about the importance of children on social media. A protection law was introduced. The bill is a comprehensive attempt to protect young people on social media, prioritizing stronger age verification and completely banning social media use for children under 13. But there was one provision in the bill that was particularly concerning for this group of students. It would ban social media companies from using data collected from children – what they watch and swipe – to build and drive algorithms that spoon-feed personalized content. Return to user. These high school students have become dependent on, and in some cases dependent on, the algorithms of social media companies.
Their reliance on technology seems familiar to most of us. Many of us can barely remember a time when we needed a gift last minute, or sat by the radio waiting for our favorite song to come on, and didn’t have Amazon to fall back on. Today, information, entertainment, and connection come to us on a conveyor belt, requiring less effort and exploration than ever before.
Withdrawing from the ritual of discovery comes at a cost. We all instinctively know that life’s journey is just as important as the destination. In our wanderings, we learn what we like and what we don’t like. The more you put in the sweat to get the results, the more fulfilling and satisfying the results will be.
Why should students put in the effort to find a song or poem they like when an algorithm can do it for them? Their phones provide endless content related to what they’re already interested in. Why take the risk of exploring something new when you can just get sent to it?
What the kids I talked to didn’t know is that these algorithms are designed in a way that inevitably makes users unhappy and keeps them unhappy. According to an advisory issued by the Surgeon General this year, “there is sufficient evidence that social media also poses a risk of serious harm to the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people”. According to a report by the nonprofit Center to Combat Digital Hate, Users may be served suicide-related content on fewer than 3 occasions A few minutes after downloading TikTok. In five minutes, he could come across a community promoting eating disorder content. Instagram is full of soft-core porn and serves as a gateway to hardcore content on other sites (often with similarly lax age verification). And all over social media, highly curated and filtered fake lives are exposed, creating envy and inferiority complexes in the developing brains of teenagers.
Social media companies know that content that causes negative emotions holds our attention longer than content that makes us feel good. It’s the same reason the local news reports on mass shootings and house fires instead of local food drives. If you’re a girlfriend’s teenager and you feel bad about yourself, your social media feed will usually continue to deliver videos and photos that can exacerbate your negative feelings.
These kids may think they need algorithms, but in reality, algorithms are making many kids feel worse. It is no coincidence that grief and suicide rates among teens have increased just as algorithm-driven social media content has taken over the lives of children and adolescents.
After hearing feedback from students in Connecticut, I am more convinced than ever that this legislation is essential. By weaning young people from their dependence on social media and forcing them to engage in real quests to find connection and fulfillment, we are breaking away from the lost adolescence that has shaped us for centuries. You can recreate the rituals of the period.
The role social media has played in the decline of teenagers’ mental health also foreshadows what’s to come for adults with the rapid introduction of artificial intelligence and machine learning into our own lives. . The psychological impact of the future transfer of thousands of basic human tasks to machines will make the effects of social media seem like child’s play. Today, machines help us find songs we like. Tomorrow, machines will not only find songs, they will also create them. Just as we were unprepared for the impact that social media algorithms will have on our children, we were unprepared for the psychological toll that would come from outsourcing countless human functions to computers. However, you may not be ready.
Regardless of whether laws protecting children on social media become law, we need to engage in broader dialogue with adults and children from all walks of life, and machines and algorithms have done it all. When do we need to decide if we are truly happy as a species? Is it work for us, or is fulfillment only found when humans actually do the work of human search and discovery?