We need to get kids off the screens — and that doesn’t just mean social media.
We’ve collectively spent a lot of time, correctly, worrying about kids on the internet, frequently discussing about how social media harms kids and teenagers.
Social media use increases anxiety, can lead to bullying and can put kids in physical danger as they interact with unknown strangers.
We have memorized the risks: shortened attention spans, predators, a compulsion to photograph food before eating it, kids referring to themselves as “influencers” — parents have been on guard for all of it.
But while we’ve been focused on how kids connect with each other online, the kids have changed the way they actually use the internet.
They aren’t using social media to socialize at all anymore, but basically carrying a TV around with them at all times of the day and night.
They’re using their phones for entertainment, not connection — even when they’re physically present with their friends or involved in what should be an entertaining activity.
Observe kids or teens using their phones and you’ll see them swipe, swipe, swipe — no interaction, no selfies, not even photographing breakfast.
It’s the TikTok effect.
TikToks are brief videos that can feature a dance, a joke, an observation.
The app boasts “millions of personalized short videos,” fed to you in an infinite stream by a computer algorithm.
If you like watching cooking, the algorithm will show you food videos.
If, like my husband, you enjoy watching people trip or walk into panes of glass, you’ll get them until you’re doubled over on the floor, crying with laughter over someone else’s pain.
But the style and addictiveness of TikTok is no longer limited to that one app — a fact that many parents don’t seem to get.
Instagram and YouTube have adopted the TikTok model in the form of Reels and Shorts, respectively: the same concept on a different platform.
And while TikTok might be especially dangerous due to its well-publicized Chinese propaganda and spying capabilities, the other apps have managed to capture the Toks’ addictiveness for their own purposes.
Look, I’m not a luddite. Who among us doesn’t scroll on their phone while waiting on a line or for an appointment?
But our kids’ obsessive consumption is another matter. It’s common now to see kids and teens just watching videos side by side at the beach or playground. Eyes glazed over, swipe, swipe.
When we were kids most of us spent our Saturday mornings watching cartoons for hours. But eventually, we turned off the TV and went to hang out with friends. We didn’t take Tom and Jerry along with us to entertain us individually during the lulls in playtime.
Kids don’t ever have that break anymore.
As we’ve been monitoring the dangers of social media, we didn’t notice that kids have stopped the socializing part altogether.
In 2023, YouTube logged 1.35 trillion visits, a new study found, 68% of the total visits to the top 10 social media sites last year.
But as YouTube CEO Neal Mohan has said, the site is “a place where you come to consume . . . as opposed to try and connect with your friends.”
In other words, it’s media, but it’s not social.
If nearly 70% of visits to social media sites have nothing to do with socializing, we may have been worrying about the wrong thing: Social media is bad for kids, but this new media is making them anti-social.
Research shows teens spend nearly five hours online every single day, and no wonder — this binge-watching of bite-sized entertainment is also highly addictive.
The algorithm keeps suggesting ever-more interesting videos, and the kids just keep swiping.
One study that looked specifically at adolescent usage of TikTok or Instagram Reels documented multiple signs of addiction, including “spending more time on the platforms than intended, experiencing negative social consequences, experiencing symptoms of withdrawal, and/or feeling distressed when access to the platforms was restricted.”
”What can we do?” so many parents ask. “It’s just the way of the world now.”
Not really. It’s a new world, true, but that new world can still have rules.
Try giving your kids a more analog life.
That doesn’t mean no screens ever, but perhaps no screens in public. No screens on playdates or car rides or restaurants, and no watching videos on your own when you’re with your friends.
(I know, I know: Enforcing limits on phone use is brutal, and not just at the start. But “easier said than done” is true of pretty much all serious parenting advice.)
This is sane, socialized behavior, and it shouldn’t be controversial to enforce it.
One may argue that adults are doing this, too.
Sure, adults who don’t know how to have relationships and struggle to interact with others might scroll these short videos — often without headphones on — while in public.
Unless you want your kids to grow up to be those people, teaching them how to handle moments of boredom has to begin right now.
Social is good. Constant media is not.
Karol Markowicz is the author of the book “Stolen Youth.”