Teenagers on smart phones; Internet addiction
Getty Images
Meta recently reached a $17 billion settlement with states over claims that it fueled teen social media addiction, harming their mental health. The agreement, while seemingly huge, is less than 10% of Meta’s 2025 revenue alone. But the dangers to young people go far beyond media addiction.
Sextortion is sexual extortion, often occurring when a person shares a nude photo of themselves and then their new online “friend” threatens to share it with others if they are not paid urgently. Sometimes the victim is forced to perform other sexual acts. Rates are reportedly increasing, and a new bill that would make it a federal crime is being pushed by attaching it to the National Defense Authorization Act. This James T. Wood Act is named after a 17-year-old who died by suicide shortly after receiving such blackmail messages from someone pretending to be a teen his age.
Because of these serious abuses and unwanted attention, Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, has agreed to several changes, particularly instituting a 2-hour daily time limit and restrictions on use overnight (12 pm – 6 am) and during school hours (8 am – 3 pm). It will limit “like” comparisons and beauty filters, thought to contribute to teen mental health and body image problems.
Meta is also pushing for YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat to adopt similar measures.
Beyond Time Limits
Some programs take a much broader view of how to keep children and teens safe on social media. One example is The Retreat, a Long Island nonprofit that began to help domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking victims, and has expanded to prevention through education.
The Retreat’s programs are incorporated into schools in Suffolk County, from early elementary through adolescence, with a focus on teaching students to recognize and build healthy relationships.
Elise Trucks, Director of Development, described the program via email, “Prevention educators go into individual classrooms and stay with that classroom across a series of sessions—same educator, same group of students, over time. That continuity is a big part of what makes it work.” She added that it is a sequence that includes “My Boundaries in grades K–2, Hands Are Not for Hitting in elementary, Connecting Us in upper elementary and middle, Respect in Relationships in middle school, and Healthy Relationships Don’t Hurt—our teen dating violence curriculum—in high school.”
Courtney Hyland, Associate Director of Prevention Education at The Retreat, explained that they teach about sextortion, AI grooming, and online predators. For example, she said, they caution kids “if there’s this older person that’s pressuring you to share images or is buying you tons of gifts and giving you all of this attention and love bombing you—that’s not a healthy relationship.”
She said that the social media landscape is, in some ways, like an infectious disease—its reach is rapidly expanding, and it is constantly evolving. For example, a new threat is that of location sharing and mapping, which provides such detailed information of someone’s habits, likes, and where they have recently been, that abusers can better target them. ChatGPT can even analyze all this data about a person and pick out patterns that might be exploited.
Hyland also emphasizes to children and teens that “there are people they can go to for help, whether that’s a parent or trusted adult or a resource,” and helps them identify such sources before they need them.
In addition to in-school presentations, The Retreat has an online Teen Leadership Council and conducts trainings with teachers, the police department, medical students, and physicians. Because it is online, students from multiple schools can attend. The teens are building the digital safety resources themselves rather than receiving them, Trucks added.
The New York Community Trust awarded The Retreat a grant to expand its social media education program to address the youth mental health crisis. The grant, which The Trust renewed this year, is being used to build the digital curriculum and to teach families how to document something, report it, and ask for help. Melissa Greenberger, mental health program director for Long Island at The Trust, said via email, The Retreat “has unique insights and expertise on this topic. The Retreat’s Teen Leadership Council is a great example of a smart approach, because those closest to an issue bring important and unique perspectives in designing solutions.”
The Teen Leadership Council helps guide this rapidly changing social media world. Cate Carbonaro, Executive Director of The Retreat, asks them, “What are you seeing on the ground? What are your friends doing? And these teenagers are amazing. They end up doing some of our trainings with us to parents.”
Teen Suicide
We often think of teen mental health crises as being more common in girls, with eating disorders, anxiety, and depression, but completed suicide in boys is three to four times the rate of girls.
The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline was started in 2022, replacing the 10-digit 1-800-273-TALK number and expanding capacity. While LGBTQ youth are more than 4 times as likely to die of suicide as their heterosexual counterparts, in 2025, the Trump administration shut down the LGBTQ youth suicide line, claiming “children are encouraged to embrace radical gender ideology.”
While we tend to educate girls about “stranger danger” and “bad touching,” Carbonaro told me that a lot of the digital abuse is with people targeting young boys rather than girls, because boys tend not to have somebody ever talk to them about this. Her staff stresses that parents should keep open communication and that they won’t punish the kids for sextortion—they will work with the police to go after the perpetrators. The Retreat Staff help get images taken down from the internet and provide trauma support and counseling for the teen.
Dealing With Abuse
Trucks emphasized that people end up getting trafficked or exploited when they’re vulnerable—because of “isolation, dependence on an employer for wages or housing, seasonal or informal work, limited transportation, limited access to care, and having a lot to lose by asking for help.” It’s not the victim’s fault. This is a growing concern now because undocumented victims fear being deported by ICE if they report crimes. Similarly, their US-born children may not want to call unwanted attention to their parents.
Tools For Preventing Online Abuse
Perhaps the most important thing is for parents to reassure their children that they will help them through anything that might come up, and to educate them about different scenarios.
Teach kids about privacy and help them adjust social media settings. Protect your passwords and don’t share them with friends. Set the feed to choose a non-personalized algorithm and turn off autoplay. Teach them to set digital boundaries.
The Retreat has many other suggestions and samples on its site, including a media resources page and a contract for parents and students.
Another excellent resource is the NY Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence. I particularly liked their “Healthy Relationship Quiz,” “Deepfake Detective,” and “Choose Your own Adventure” to help learn about healthy and unhealthy relationships.
While Meta’s plans for improvement are a good first step, we need stronger controls to prevent cyberbullying and exploitation across all social media.
ConnectSafely aptly concludes, “The goal shouldn’t be to keep teens off the internet or take away their independence, but to give them age-appropriate protections while helping them develop the judgment and skills they’ll need to navigate the online world on their own.”
If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741.
