What I Wish Parents Knew about Social Media

Scientific American

7 hours ago

On Friday afternoons shortly before the school bus arrives, my mom arrives at my house. She ambles into my kitchen to make a cup of tea, and after a few minutes my son will come running in the back door. They will chat briefly, but inevitably my son will ask to watch YouTube videos on my mom's tablet. Then they will go and sit on the couch and watch videos of people playing Minecraft, or Super Mario Odyssey, or some combination of the two for an hour or so, until my husband and I finish work.
Occasionally I will find myself looking over their shoulders as formulaic videos, with the same jump cuts and extreme close-ups, made by people I had never heard of (but still with millions of subscribers), play. I research social media for a living, and I still find myself wondering: Is it ok that my son is watching this? If junk food for the brain existed, these videos might be it.
Clearly, I don't ban all screens in my house, and I wouldn't tell you to ban them in yours, either. But in my work, I've seen how little transparency social media companies offer parents and kids about how their systems operate—and how much harm that invisibility can do. In my recent look at the algorithms that drive these platforms—what's called their feed algorithms—my co-authors and I found that only one of the major platforms, X makes details of how its system works publicly transparent. This is not okay.
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There's some good news though: through research not sponsored by social media platforms, we are learning more about where the most serious risks to kids and teens are, and what things parents can do to manage those risks. Understanding the design of these systems, and talking with your child about them, is one of the most powerful tools you have to keep them safe and supported online.
Here are three things I wish every parent understood about social media—and how to talk to your kids about them.
Your teen isn't the customer—they're the product. I say teen because, in general, kids under age 13 are not supposed to be on these platforms, which make money by selling ads. They do this by collecting fine-grained data about what your kid watches and reacts to, and then monetize that data by literally selling your child's attention to the highest bidder, in the hopes of getting their money today or building a new lifelong customer for the future. Once kids are over 18, social media companies can also directly sell their data to data brokers (just as they can do with yours). Just remember, on social media, advertisers are the customer, not you or your kid.
That doesn't mean that people don't also get value out of social media, but for teens particularly, it can be hard to understand what they are exchanging for the entertainment they are getting.
What you can do:
• Talk to your kids about how the platform's business model works. Make sure they know that their attention and engagement is what's being sold.
• Talk to your teens about what they want to get out of social media. Do they want to keep up with their friends? Do they want to be entertained by influencers? Do they want to learn about trends or games or fitness? Decide together how they can be mindful around those goals and how you can support them in doing that. You should also figure out what they (and you) are and aren't comfortable giving away in exchange for whatever value social media delivers to them.
• Sit down together and go through the platform's ad preferences and privacy settings. Talk about what the settings do, and decide together what's right for your child—and your family.
Algorithmic feeds are designed to maximize usage, not well-being. Every major platform uses feed algorithms to keep users scrolling, watching or clicking as much as possible by offering them what they think the user will like next. There is no platform I'm aware of that observes an 'upper bound' of how much usage they will try to optimize for, meaning that no matter how much social media users consume, their feed algorithms will keep trying to get them to use more. Platforms do this by carefully calibrating aspects of what they show you in feed, from the mix of topics and video length, to other aspects of system design, like how often they notify users about reactions and comments to their own content. Feed algorithms also adapt to each user's behavior and can quickly home in on whatever type of content users pay attention to or engage with the most. I think even the most social media-loving teen understands that more isn't necessarily healthy.
What you can do:
• Talk to your kids about how feed algorithms work. You can use the 'feed cards ' my co-authors and I developed to explain how these systems work on platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Facebook.
• Ask your teen to show you their feed and scroll through it together. Can you 'hack' with the algorithm by watching certain videos or reacting to certain types of content and seeing how quickly the algorithm adapts? Talk to your kids about how (and whether) they can stay in control of their experiences when they are using algorithmic feeds.
• Remember that you can set limits without banning social media. Social media algorithms will always try to get your kids to use them more. Some teens don't yet have the self-control to step away, even when they are having experiences that make them feel bad. Has something on Twitter or Facebook ever made you incandescently angry? If so, that was probably the point—rage-bait works. And if you're over 25, your prefrontal cortex is fully developed—think about how that might have felt to your child. Talk to your kids and decide on sensible limits on how late in the evening they can use social media, and how much time they can spend on social media overall. Use in-app tools to set limits, but remember kids often know how to circumvent these, so pay attention to where your kid's device is too.
Content moderation exists, but don't count on it. It's natural to hope that social media companies are catching and removing harmful content before your child sees it. But surveys show that even young teens report seeing content on social media that disturbs them. How is this possible? Platforms do take down a lot of content, but as my research shows, content removal often occurs after feed algorithms have already shown the harmful content to most people who will ever see it.
What you can do:
• Don't assume that 'the system' will catch everything; it won't.
• Ask open-ended questions about your kids' social media experiences: 'What's the best thing you saw on TikTok this week?' and 'Have you seen anything that upset or confused you this week?'
• Remember that different platforms have different rules, and different enforcement. If your teen is routinely having experiences that make them uncomfortable, it might be time for them to shift to another platform that feels safer for them, or even just take a break to reevaluate if what they are getting from using a given social media platform is really worth it.
The Bottom Line
I'm not going to pretend any of this is easy. My research has also shown that the transparency tools that platforms offer are difficult for users to use and understand. But we parents can give our kids their best chance to develop a healthy relationship with social media if we can stay engaged, curious, and consistent. And finally, it's important to hold the line on some non-negotiables that have the most potential to cause kids harm:
• Make sure kids and teens don't have phones or social media in their bedrooms overnight. Kids need sleep—not all-night Snapchat sessions.
• Don't let kids lie about their age to join platforms early, or to get an 'adult' account instead of a 'teen' one if they're under 18. On many platforms there are meaningful differences in default settings, data collection and even in feed algorithms between teen and adult accounts.
I'm still learning, both as a researcher and a parent. But what I've learned so far tells me this: there are ways to help teens have safer, better online experiences, but kids need involved parents and consistent rules to make sure that happens.