Last year, I had the surreal experience of visiting schools to talk to teenagers about how people like me make videos online. While all the pupils – aged between 14 and 18 – could name influencers they liked, when I asked them to give me examples of positive and negative content online, suddenly a lot of them went silent.
I’d been expecting them to mention the classics I know appear on their feeds – like comedy content, or aggressive debates on Live – but the vast majority had no idea what to say. Did they genuinely have no idea? Or had they never been given the opportunity to articulate themselves?
I have been thinking about them this week since hearing the news that there has been a sharp rise in problematic social media use among young people since the pandemic. In 2018, the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study found that 7 per cent of children engaged with social media in a problematic way. This year’s HBSC study has revealed that the number shot up to 11 per cent by 2022.
This is not, it’s important to say, just about how long a child spends on their phone. Studying “problematic use” on social media is a complicated business, mainly because researchers across the scientific community classify different kinds of behaviours, or different levels of them, as being concerning. But this study, published by the European arm of the World Health Organisation, has an interesting set of criteria.
It suggests that if you neglect other activities in favour of social media, have frequent arguments about using it, lie about how much time you spend on it and struggle to control your use of it, then these are signs you have a problematic relationship. Thirteen-year-olds were found to be the age group that most commonly reported problematic social media use, with girls more likely to say so than boys.
This isn’t surprising given previous research which has told us some of the most vulnerable people in society are the first to feel internet harms; we know that the impact of social media on self-esteem and social comparisons perniciously affects young girls.
We also know that it is the poorest young people with the least support in their lives who are likely to be the least protected from toxic effects of the internet, and this summer two new studies from King’s College London on smartphone habits in teenagers identified that teenagers with problematic smartphone use are twice as likely to have anxiety.
All of which suggests we need to do more to help young people. But when I went into schools last year, it was clear that pupils’ heavy social media use wasn’t necessarily coupled with literacy and critical thinking around social media video, which is what most will be absorbing through TikTok and other platforms.
It was also clear that pupils were quite literate about cyberbullying, and its existence as a phenomenon, but were far less aware of how negative videos featuring misinformation or misogyny could be affecting them just as badly.
After reading the WHO report, I’m confident that many of them don’t have guidance or structures in their life to lean on when their social media use verges towards problematic, or when they see harmful content.
It’s very important here to point out that the majority of teenagers – 89 per cent – do not use social media problematically. In fact, the study found that though many are heavy users, they reported stronger peer support and social connections.
But it is troubling that their numbers seem to be decreasing, and that a growing population of vulnerable teenagers is not being supported.
The reality of the future is that we will all be online with each other a lot; rather than discouraging young people from being heavy users, we should be teaching them to use their time online positively.
So much of how we talk about young people and social media is framed through the lens of addiction and compulsion. But really, this isn’t the case for most young people. To start with, there is no such disorder known as “social media addiction” because there has not yet been an identifiable evidence base for it; problematic use and an association with negative mental health outcomes is worrying, but not enough to prove causation.
Screen time recommendations are also red herrings; if a young person is using social media to learn a new language or deep dive into their latest hobby, they should relish hours online in balance with the activities and education they get to access offline.
I always hate to levy any blame on teachers, who are usually totally under-resourced by the Government. Not only are they vocal about requesting more support and training when it comes to teaching about the online world, but in investigations I did at Vice News I exposed the fact that the government had only spent around half the amount of money it said it had invested into such training, which is part of England’s sex education curriculum. I also reported on how barely any teachers had accessed government-approved training on the internet, likely because of how bad it was.
Yet I did go into a school a couple of weeks ago where every teacher I spoke to told me: “I don’t get social media – I never use it.” If teachers aren’t on platforms themselves, they’re not going to be able to advise young people on how to navigate them. Teachers must be empowered, and encouraged, to be authorities on how to be a healthy – and even heavy – user of social media whilst avoiding the slippery slope that could lead the more vulnerable to problematic use.
The WHO Office for Europe has produced a road map for action, where the first step is making sure digital literacy education is embedded in schools. The Government needs to totally overhaul its digital literacy education for an age in which vertical video and heavy social media use are the norm.
If it doesn’t, the next time WHO does this report, that 11 per cent of young people with problematic social media use is likely to skyrocket.
