Doctor, student on social media addiction’s impact on mental health | Your Health | #childpredator | #onlinepredator | #sextrafficing

Dependence and addiction to social media has many adverse effects on teens’ mental health, including insecurity and feelings of isolation, according to Dr. Alan Atkins, child and adolescent psychiatrist at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health.

Atkins said social media companies employ psychologists to design systems that keep their users hooked. Teens are especially susceptible to social media addiction due to these systems, as the part of their brain that regulates and controls impulses is not fully developed.

“You never know when you’re going to get a (direct message), so your brain is always wondering whether there might be some reward for you in your next time opening the apps or the website,” Atkins said. 

On social media, teens compare themselves to unrealistic versions of others, slowly deepening their insecurities, Atkins said. Although users may feel novelty and connectedness from these interactions, Atkins said they are ultimately unsustainable in satisfying people’s social needs. 

“It’s like we’re building a house with faulty bricks, or we’re building a diet with just junk food, where you feel satisfied in the moment, but you don’t realize that your body actually isn’t getting what it needs to,” Atkins said. “(Comparison leads to) depression and anxiety. You start to feel worse about yourself and feel inadequate compared to other people.”

Conversely, Nadathur said social media can also provide easy access to wellness resources, as there are many Instagram and Tiktok accounts dedicated to promoting positive mental health. 

“When you’re engaging in (those accounts) on a constant basis, you’re bound to see something that’s positive, and it might influence you more than something else that you might see,” Nadathur said. “While there are positive and negative sides to social media, it is dependent on the person who is using it to choose what they want to engage in and how long they want to engage in it.”

To remedy or prevent social media addiction, Atkins recommends teens spend a maximum of one hour per day on social media, instead dedicating that time to productive hobbies. Additionally, he encourages students to carve out regular times in their schedule for social interaction.

“I think it’s important to have meaningful engagement in your life with hobbies, time with friends, sports, and have those things be recurring and structured so that it’s not on you to have to think about setting them up every time,” Atkins said.

Furthermore, Atkins suggests that families spend more time in nature to detach themselves from technology. 

“Go to a river, hang out, skip rocks,” Atkins said. “That kind of thing has many documented benefits on health, from movement to sunlight … exposure. The goal isn’t to eliminate electronics or screen time, we just want to make sure that it’s a tool that we’re using rather than us being used by it.”

If you or someone who you know struggles with social media addiction, Atkins offered a few resources/techniques to combat it. The first is Halo, an app that blocks distracting apps on phones based on location to help with productivity. The other is healthychildren.org, which helps families plan their screen-time usage.