Meet the parents who refuse to give their kids smartphones

[Sympthsical]

9. Children's brains are not developed enough to deal with social media

The psychological evidence is there in reams. Facebook's own internal research about Instagram provided tons of evidence of how socially and emotionally damaging their own products could be with teenagers.

Since at least 2019, staff at the company have been studying the impact of their product on its younger users’ states of mind. Their research has repeatedly found it is harmful for a large proportion, and particularly teenage girls.

“We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” said a slide from one internal presentation in 2019, seen by the Wall Street Journal. “Thirty-two per cent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse,” a subsequent presentation reported in March 2020.

Another slide said: “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression. This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”

Comprised of findings from focus groups, online surveys and diary studies in 2019 and 2020, the Instagram research shows for the first time how aware the company is of its product’s impact on the mental health of teenagers. And yet, in public, executives at Facebook, which has owned Instagram since 2012, have consistently downplayed its negative impact on teenagers.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/14/facebook-aware-instagram-harmful-effect-teenage-girls-leak-reveals

Frankly, I don't trust adults with social media. It's a toxin. But in a free society, adults get their choices. Children get their parents choices, and it's clear some parents don't want their kids engaging in it. Good.

When we talk about healthy children, somehow mental health always slips through those cracks.