Social media isn’t good for our kids — or us. So what are we going to do about it?
I don’t have a great answer, but I want to talk about it anyway
My 16-year-old son is convinced that every home is cozier than ours. He points this out every time we walk or drive around our neighborhood together. We live in a fairly dense 85-block neighborhood and there are 26 homes on our block alone. (Picture Sesame Street or Brooklyn with a lot less diversity.) So there are plenty of opportunities to peek into other peoples’ homes. When the streets are dark, the glow of lamps turns all these row houses into shadow theaters, putting on quite a show for voyeurs like us on the sidewalk below.
“That house looks so cozy,” he’ll say, pointing to a genuinely gorgeous home with just-right lighting and art, “Doesn’t our house look cozy from the outside?” I ask. “Nope,” he responds a little too quickly. “That house looks way cozier.”
He knows how much this bothers me, so it’s become a game. “Cozy AF,” he now says as shorthand, pointing to house after house, even the big brick homes that have been chopped up into student housing with packing crate furniture and haphazardly hung fairy lights. And even though it’s a game, I think he genuinely believes it. The grass is always greener, the couch is always softer.
Every time we have this discussion, I’m reminded of social media. The news is full of stories about social media’s ill effects on kids, but I think we adults are struggling with it just as much. And the pandemic didn’t do us any favors. The isolation of social distancing and the advent of remote work and school only increased the amount of time we spend online. I don’t have any answers, but I do have some thoughts, and I’d love to hear yours.
When I spend time on Instagram, I find myself thinking about how everyone else appears to be going on more date nights, traveling to more exotic places, raising more accomplished kids, making more memories. When I find myself having these thoughts, I do a little exercise: I think back on the last week and imagine what I could have posted based on whatever I did for those seven days. I imagine what my life would look like from the outside. And then I remind myself that no one needs to see all that and I move on.
But I’m 51. Imagine being 16 and thinking everyone else’s house is cozier. That everyone’s date is prettier. That everyone else is a better athlete. That everyone else got accepted at a better school. It must be exhausting.
I kept social media and smartphones from my kids for as long as I could — longer than anyone else I know. We gave them “dumb phones” in middle school. For the first kid, it was a flip phone. The other two got iPhones that were completely locked down. No world wide web, no games, no social media, no apps. We made the mistake of giving our oldest an iPod Touch at one point, but when we realized it was just a phone that you couldn’t make calls on, we repossessed it.
The plan was to withhold social media until they were in high school. And we stuck with it. Until the third kid. He got social media six months earlier because a global pandemic came along and — as you are all too aware — changed everything. No sports. No school dances. No more doing the “walk” (a middle school tradition of hanging out in the retail shops and restaurants in the “Grove and Libbie” neighborhood near his school).
He was so desperate that he actually put social media on his Christmas list in 2020, which is a big deal because our kids only get two Christmas presents: one from us and one from “Santa.”
We caved. My husband wrote a limerick to present the gift. And on Christmas morning, he read it to our son before we ceremoniously removed restrictions from his phone.
There once was a boy, his friends called him Gibby
He used to enjoy the walk to Grove and Libbie
Until COVID came around
Which brought him kinda down
So we’re giving him social media, Yippee!
I was proud of having held off. I was even a little smug about it. But in the end, I’m not sure it mattered. My kids were just as susceptible to all of the problems and challenges social media presents as everyone else’s.
Instagram made my oldest son so miserable that he quit it after college (he says he’s now much happier). My daughter developed an eating disorder shortly after graduating high school and recognizes that TikTok and Instagram played a huge role in that downward spiral. And the kid whose phone we unlocked as a Christmas gift when he was 14? He’s just as addicted to social media as his peers who had phones in second grade.
So when the surgeon general publishes a 25-page report about youth and social media, I’m a little bit skeptical about how much any of us can do to stop this slow-motion trainwreck. Tech companies are motivated by profits, not the mental health of our nation. Politicians don’t understand how wifi — never mind Instagram’s algorithm — works. So, like with so many other problems, that puts the onus on parents. Which, let’s be honest, usually means moms. And we’re already doing too much.
Much like the supercomputers we carry around in our pockets but still call phones, social media has outgrown its name. It’s not purely social anymore. It’s business. It’s marketing. It’s sales. It’s publishing. It’s entertainment. It’s public policy. Heck even the surgeon general’s official profile ends with a plea to follow him on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. It’s no wonder we spend so much time on these platforms.
In a piece hopefully titled “The Age of Social Media is Declining,” Ian Bogost reminds us that social media was never a natural way to socialize (or work or play), but that it became second nature anyway. “We cannot make social media good, because it is fundamentally bad, deep in its very structure,” he writes.
Look, I don’t believe social media is all bad. Social media has introduced me to so much great writing. It enables me to stay in touch with far-flung friends and family. It empowers me to promote my work. It serves up cat videos that my son and I bond over (since I’m incapable of bonding over sports). Heck, I even found the person who stopped my daughter’s seizures — an epileptologist in Texas whom I never would have otherwise met — thanks to social media.
But it still makes me feel out of control. And it makes my kids feel that way, too, even if they don’t always realize it. I thought about this a lot over the long, rainy Memorial Day weekend, when my kid, his friends, and I all spent too much time on our phones. Too much time looking into the shadow theaters of other people’s lives. What small part can I play in helping them — and me — cultivate a healthier relationship with this technology?
Sure, there are apps designed to limit your time on these platforms, to curb your cravings for a buzz. But those tools only treat the symptoms. And social media is like the hydra of Greek mythology. When you cut off one head (Twitter), two more grow in its place (Truth Social and Lemon8). To get to the root of the problem, you need to do deeper work.
One of my closest friends — who is also one of the smartest — says she often checks in with her kids (two teens and a preteen) to ask what they’re getting out of social media. Then she tries to support those interests with analog experiences. Her youngest told her that he’s trying to learn how to make a computer. So she took him to a store where he could buy the supplies to build a keyboard. One of her daughters enjoys makeup tutorials, so my friend took her to Nordstrom for a lesson at the Bobbi Brown counter. I think this approach is brilliant.
As summer approaches, that same friend is also thinking a lot about how much more free time her kids will have. They’re all old enough to stay home when she runs errands. And she doesn’t need their help cooking dinner, but she wants to encourage them to do stuff IRL. “One question I ask myself is, ‘Could <insert kid name> be doing this with me?’ “ she explains. “Be it cooking, gardening, a Target run. Whatever gets them back to real life.”
Of course we have to challenge ourselves to step away from our phones, too. I’m ditching digital subscriptions to my favorite magazines for paper versions. I’ve also promised myself to think harder about the time I spend online and how it does — and does not — serve me. That’s the whole point of a Substack called
. Created by Jordan Santos and Ford Blitzer – two women with opposite approaches to the internet — the newsletter’s goal is to help women develop a healthier relationship with online life. Their Twenty-one questions to ask about your life on the internet is a great place to start. This inquiry recognize that our relationship to the world wide web is imperfect and evolving. They questions are nuanced. And that’s what makes them hard to answer and very much worth your time.And while I’d love to believe that I could get my kids to answer them, too, I know that’s not realistic. Still, I’ve decided to use questions #6 and #7 to start a conversation. And we’ll see where that gets us.
Baby steps, people.
With my new-ish role as an editor at WBUR’s Cognoscenti, I’m finding it tough to write an essay and curate the links you love every week. So, starting June 2, I’ll alternate: I’ll share links one week and an essay the next.
Thanks to everyone who gave a gift subscription to Skin for Mother’s Day. Gift subscriptions are always available — simply use the button below.
And, finally, despite all the challenges social media presents, I use it to promote my work. Do me a favor and give Skin a follow on Insta, where I plan to start doing more.
Also on my mind
Looking for a Father’s Day gift for your favorite guy? Look no further. (Also, did you know that the Ken dolll’s full name is Kenneth Sean Carson?)
And for the high school grads in your life? You know they want cash, but you also feel the need to give them a physical present. I got you: Just tape a card (containing a check) to this tidy little toolbox. It’s always a hit.
In Virginia, we’re in that honeymoon period where it’s consistently warm but not yet buggy. This is my best chance of to take my work outside and I’m using the recommendations from the product people at Wirecutter to do just that.
Work calendars get wacky during the summer. Use these four Google Calendar settings to tame the chaos.
Levi’s 501s are 150 years old this year. Despite my recently proclaimed love for a pair of AGolde denim, 501s are still my all-time favorite. Becky Malinsky explains their secret sauce here.
When it first appeared in 2011, Nextdoor seemed innocuous — helpful even. But now the fear-filled platform has a major misinformation problem.
No, it’s not your imagination: Guilt tipping is out of control.
The news is full of talk about struggling boys and men and deaths of despair. Like the conversation around the ills of social media, this is one worth participating in. I recommend What are men for? (Matter of Opinion), Here’s What I’ve Learned About Raising Boys in My 30 Years as a Child Psychologist (Self), Man Overboard, (Slate), Men Have Lost Their Way (NYT opinion) and Parents, talk to your sons about Andrew Tate — we teachers can’t take him on alone (The Guardian).
If visiting museums with kids is on your agenda this summer, this Cup of Jo piece will be helpful. My tip: when our kids were little, we would choose three must-see pieces ahead of time and focus on those. (At MOMA, for instance, that could be “Starry Night,” “Campbell’s Soup Cans” and Pollock’s “Pollock’s “One, Number 31, 1950”). Anything else they absorbed was gravy.
Geena Davis made a spreadsheet to show you how sexist Hollywood is. Check out the Geena Davis Inclusion Quotient (GDIQ) here.
Yes to this.
Gosh, this conversation is desperately needed! When I think about my online presence as a writer and solopreneur, I often feel like a failure for not posting enough or making more of an effort to spend time online. But when I think about my mental health, it makes all the difference to let go of what “they” tell me I should do to be successful online. Thanks for this permission slip to choose my health over the Internet!