Amid growing concern about the adverse impact of social media on young minds, some mental health professionals believe the time is right to reinforce healthy online habits.
In an interview with The Press Democrat, Dr. Kathryn Erickson-Ridout, a psychiatrist at Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa Medical Center, said that in general, mental health disorders carry much less stigma today than they did in the previous generation.
The pandemic, he said, brought a lot of awareness to the symptoms of depression and anxiety. And, in the North Bay and surrounding areas, the community-wide trauma of years of wildfires has pushed mental health symptoms like post-traumatic stress disorder into the mainstream, he said.
Erickson-Ridout said the ground is fertile for talking to young people about the effects of social media. He discussed the latest research on the effects of social media, related symptoms and advice for parents who want to reduce their children’s screen time.
This excerpt from the interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Democrat Press: How are the connections made on social networks different from those made in real life?
Erickson-Ridout: They are connections but they are not real connections. You have friends on Facebook, you have followers. But do you really know these people? Are they people you’re having deep conversations with about how you’re feeling and how your day is going? Usually not. So your real friends or your real social supports are probably different from your social media friends.
Q: What kind of consequences can come from interacting in this kind of virtual environment?
To: (Some) people feel a little uninhibited to vocalize all kinds of points of view related to these posts. Sometimes you have trolls saying really mean things, where maybe they wouldn’t say that kind of thing in real life, they’d have more self control there. So it’s a very artificial environment.
Q: Are young people modeling real-world relationships based on the ones they’ve made on social media?
To: Research suggests yes. As human beings, most communication is non-verbal. And when you’re on social media, you miss those signals. When kids were sheltered in place and couldn’t go to school and didn’t have that real social interaction, maybe outside of their families, there’s research that suggests they lost the ability to read and respond to social cues.
When you think about your childhood experiences of having that heart-to-heart with someone in the (school) hallway, part of what led to that moment was something in their voice, something in their body language that make you feel safe to communicate with it. person We don’t have that online. A child or young person might take the opportunity to be vulnerable with someone (online), but without these cues and without the social reciprocity inherent in human interaction, they may not get the response they need.
Q: What are some of the symptoms, the damage to the mental health of too much social networks?
To: More often, you see symptoms of depression or anxiety. Depression is defined as a range of symptoms, such as depressed mood, not being able to enjoy things as you used to; changes in sleep, appetite; your ability to move, your ability to concentrate; feelings of guilt or low self-esteem; and possibly suicidal thoughts.
Social media has certainly been shown to increase feelings of depression. There’s the colloquial term FOMO Fear Of Missing Out feeling like you’re not part of the group, feeling left out, feeling sad that maybe your life isn’t as good as someone else’s, where yours probably isn’t either.
Of course, there are also symptoms of anxiety, where you have multiple worries about your social interactions or aspects of your life. You can start to feel inadequate, when you start comparing yourself to others or maybe like no one cares when you put yourself out there and don’t quite get the answer you need.
Or someone makes a mean comment that they didn’t really mean, potentially because the social media platform really breeds the ability to dehumanize an individual. You don’t necessarily see them as humans, you see them as a post.
Q: So what can we do to counter this?
To: Social networks are a reality in our life. Taking it down and banning it could also have consequences. If your child is the only one not on social media, this can be difficult. But by really understanding and keeping records with your kids about what their mood is like, ask them to maybe track their mood while using social media. How did you feel before, what were some of the thoughts and feelings you had while using it? How does social media affect your mood and thoughts?
And then limiting the time. There are different controls you can put on devices to limit social media time, limit content. Or just the old kitchen timer.
Q: Limiting children’s use of social media is not as easy as turning off the TV with previous generations. It is ubiquitous. What do you say to a parent who wants to do the right thing?
To: Are you going to take away their phone and tablet and computer and watch and make sure they don’t have access to any of those things? This is a strategy, it might work for some families, but it’s probably not realistic.
So having real parent-child conversations and connections and understanding their use, I saw this study that showed that there’s a big difference between screen time when it’s just the child looking at the screen alone, versus you sitting with your child and watching whatever. could be and interacting with them around them.
This also led to a decrease in the child’s use of screen time as he became disinterested. They were like, I’d rather interact with you. So finding ways to connect with your kids on social media, understanding what they’re doing online and having real conversations, like, look, I realized before you got online you were pretty happy and then you’re kind of grumpy now .
Having these actual conversations to record can be helpful. But it’s hard and it gets harder as the kids get older.
Writer Martin Espinoza can be reached at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @pressreno.
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