What to know if your child seems glued to their phone. According to Child Mind institute, helping your teen to manage their social media use has positive implications.
Child mind institute reported, "Teenagers and young adults — ages 16 to 24 — are the most intense users of social media. Benefits of social media use include enhancing friendships and decreasing loneliness. But there is also evidence that overuse has a negative impact on self-esteem and satisfaction with their lives. And this social media use is also linked to an increase in mental health problems, including anxiety, depression and suicidality.
Social media’s popularity among adolescents isn’t surprising, since it has been shown to affect the reward centers that are so active in teen brains.
Increased time on social media has had dramatic effects on teen behavior, including fewer risky social activities and more mental health symptoms. “Displacement” may account for these effects. If social media replaces negative activities or isolation, it can be positive. If it replaces face-to-face interaction or exercise, it can be negative.
The good:
-Drinking, illicit drug use, and car accidents are down.
-Ninth-graders now are 40% less sexually active and the teen birth rate is down 67 percent since 1991.
-Less than an hour of gaming a day may have positive mental health effects.
The bad:
-Eighth-graders who spend 10 or more hours a week on social media are 56% more likely to report being unhappy than those who spend less time.
-Heavy users of social media increase their risk of depression by 27 percent.
-YouTube is widely viewed by teens as a positive force, but teens report Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram increase feelings of anxiety.
Girls are disproportionately affected by the negative aspects of social media.
-More than twice as many girls as boys said they had been cyberbullied in the last year (22% vs. 10%).⁷ -More than twice as many girls as boys report being cyberbullied
-Girls' depression increased by 50% between 2012 and 2015.
You can read the article in its entirety here:
https://childmind.org/awareness-campaigns/childrens-mental-health-report/2017-childrens-mental-health-report/smartphones-social-media/