Put down your phone. Get off screens. Adults everywhere urge youth to cut back on social media.
What do young people think?
Sienna Keene is a 17-year-old in California. “I personally would not let my kid have TikTok,” she says. “I would try to resist it as long as I could. It’s so addictive.”
The Surgeon General agrees with her last observation. In June, he called for warning labels to be added to social media platforms that are similar to the cautions on cigarettes.
Madeleine Maestre is a student at Santa Clara University. She says TikTok and Instagram have supermodels with edited photos that promote “unrealistic beauty standards.” She warns that some who claim to be fitness influencers promote eating disorders.
Bao Le is a student at Vanderbilt University. He says social media encourages users to make dangerous comparisons with each other. He warns that people’s posts are “just the highlight reel, like the 1% of their life that they really want to showcase to other people.”
Ava Havidic is 18 and lives in Florida. She urges long breaks from social media. “On weekends, I’ll take a social media detox for 10 hours or the majority of the day. I’ll hang out with my family, ride my bike. I only have notifications for my messages and workspaces.”
Doreen Malata is 22 and attends college in Maryland. She says idolizing TikTok stars and fixating on fashion trends harm youth. “You’re getting younger kids that are now obsessing over products and brands, and it’s just getting really hard to be young. And it shouldn’t be really hard to be young.”
A 2023 study found that teens spend about five hours per day on social media platforms.
The New York Times reported in April that half the population of the United States uses TikTok.
While in high school 10 years ago, Larissa May stumbled onto social media without any grasp of its dangers. She began running a fashion blog as a college student and was soon spending 12-plus hours per day on her phone. Her health and sleep patterns suffered. She started seeing a psychiatrist and taking medicine for depression.
May wondered why she couldn’t improve. “It was because I hadn’t healed my relationship with technology.”
In 2015, May founded HalfTheStory, a “digital wellbeing movement.” She works to educate young people and advocates for laws that will build a “safer digital world.”
“What I learn from every single one of our teens is that they wish their parents had more boundaries for them,” she says.
Why? While social media can provide enjoyable moments of connection, it can also be addictive and cause unhealthy outcomes. All people need boundaries around social media and internet use.
