Feyza Basoglu, MD, is a board-certified child and adolescent psychiatrist. She serves in the Inpatient Adolescent Mental Health Unit on Inova Fairfax Medical Campus for Inova Behavioral Health Services.
Whether you call them iGen or Generation Z, today’s adolescents and young adults are connected online more than ever. Over the past few years, we have seen a significant spike in social media use among teenagers – and we have also seen a dramatic increase in teenage anxiety, depression and suicide rates over the same period of time. Why is this generation struggling so much? And what can parents do to help their teens adopt healthy attitudes toward social media use?
There are several factors at play with social media that can pose challenges for adolescents. Research shows that teenage girls are more vulnerable to these factors than boys are and tend to find themselves in cyberbullying situations more often.
With all of these external pressures and internal emotional turmoil, teens can be vulnerable to seeing, and being influenced by, detrimental content online.
Detrimental content, also called harmful content, is defined as any kind of posting on social media that is exposing and also encouraging viewers to engage in a self-destructive routine. Detrimental content is not compatible with mental well-being and can worsen mental illness. Examples include posts and videos highlighting mental health disorder-related symptoms in unhealthy ways, including promoting behaviors such as restricting food, binging and purging, cutting, or other self-destructive coping strategies. Detrimental content can make these maladaptive coping strategies seem inviting.
It’s important to know that no teenager starts out watching detrimental content on TikTok or another platform. Rather, they are gradually exposed, and because the platforms’ algorithms show you more of what you’re interested in, that exposure leads to more exposures, accelerating the problem.
Here are three strategies, and lots of tips, to help your kids safely navigate the world of social media.
Social media can be helpful if you have a mature adolescent who is connecting with the right people and looking up the right things. The most important thing parents can do to help their teens navigate social media – or any challenge – is to invest energy each day in building a relationship of openness and honesty.
If you are dealing with feelings of depression, anxiety or chronic stress with your child or adolescent, a mental health professional can help you to develop the tools to help. Sometimes you could need to first speak to your primary care physician and then get a referral to a mental health professional and other times be able to seek out a mental health professional directly.
To learn more about Inova Behavioral Health Services, call 571-623-3500. Learn more about the Inova Impatient Adolescent Mental Health Unit and the Inova child and adolescent outpatient services at the Inova Kellar Center.
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