Gahanna-Jefferson youths not proof against social media’s grip

I was on a panel once when cellphones were relatively new, and we were asked what kept us up at night as school administrators.

Not one of us mentioned social media because it was so new, and it just didn’t have the power and resonance it has today. This was when not every phone was a smartphone, and it was still cool to have a flip phone.

It really wasn’t that long ago, but technology develops so quickly that it seems like the dark ages. We didn’t have a clue about how social media would affect our schools.

Today, what social media is doing to students and adults is something I worry about a great deal. The Netflix documentary, “The Social Dilemma,” shows us there are plenty of things to be worried about. I watched it for a second time recently, and I believe it is a film every parent, grandparent or concerned community member should take the time to watch.

Like maybe some of you, I’ve been hoping for a day when social media will be regulated, when big-tech giants are prevented from creating algorithms that push us toward vitriol and anger because they have found it creates longer user engagement and higher advertising revenue.

The creators of this revenue system, who were interviewed for this documentary, have a sense of sadness, a sense of regret, a sense that they’ve created a monster with no ability to find recompense, no ability to take a step back and fix it.

Multibillion-dollar companies have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to grow each quarter, which is why Facebook developed Instagram for Kids. However, they were forced to delay its release because a whistleblower, Francis Haugen, showed the world internal Facebook research that proved Instagram was harming children, especially teenage girls.

Below is dialogue from Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the New York University Stern School of Business. This is what he said in his interview for “The Social Dilemma:”

“There has been a gigantic increase in depression and anxiety for American teenagers, which began right around … between 2011 and 2013. The number of teenage girls out of 100,000 in this country who were admitted to a hospital every year because they cut themselves , or otherwise harmed themselves, that number was pretty stable until around 2010, 2011, and then it begins going way up.

“It’s up 62% for older teen girls. It’s up 189% for the preteen girls. That’s nearly triple. Even more horrifying, we see the same pattern with suicide. The older teen girls, 15 to 19 years old, they’re up 70%, compared to the first decade of this century. The preteen girls, who have very low rates to begin with, they are up 151%.

“And that pattern points to social media. Gen Z, the kids born after 1996 or so, those kids are the first generation in history that got on social media in middle school. They come home from school and they’re on their devices. A whole generation is more anxious, more fragile, more depressed.”

These statistics are heartbreaking, and our students in Gahanna-Jefferson are not immune. Like many adults, some of our children perfect their lives around fleeting – hearts, likes, thumbs-up memes and short-lived popularity that keeps them wanting more.

On the day that Francis Haugen gave her testimony to Congress, Facebook and Instagram went dark for six hours. That afternoon, I talked to Gahanna Lincoln High School principal Jessica Williams and asked her how the day went.

“It was fantastic – no Instagram!” she said.

Unfortunately, “The Social Dilemma” does a better job of exposing the problem and explaining it than it does giving us solutions. We are not going to put the genie back in the bottle, nor are many of us going to shut down our social media accounts like the pundits in the movie suggest.

However, a strong mix of individual and collective action with some regulation could help a great deal. Hopefully, it’s on the horizon.

Steve Barrett is superintendent of Gahanna-Jefferson Public Schools.

Comments are closed.