Social Media Pandemic
Adolescents and Social Media
Remember the Covid Pandemic? Well, I do, through a screen, many screens actually. A screen of a laptop with a professor trying to get all of their students to pay attention through that laptop screen of zoom. While the pandemic was going on, did anyone ever think about the children who had to deal with these zoom classes? Well, imagine being in just 6th grade, the best time of a young child’s life where you get to have recess and go out and play with all of your friends, that was taken away from children due to the pandemic, but with this, an entire new social media phenomena through adolescents started. As of today, ninety percent of adolescents ages 13-19 have used social media. Seventy five percent report having at least one active social media profile, and fifty one percent of those report visiting a social media site at least daily. Two thirds of adolescents have their own mobile devices with internet capabilities. In today’s day in age, the entire world is surrounded by technology and phone usage, whether that be through social media or news platforms the list is endless. The real question that we have to ask ourselves is if these children, the future of our country, does using a phone at a young age create habits of addiction for the rest of their lives? Well, in my religious study, it does and this starts from a stem of technology when the first ever Iphone was released to the world, which sure feels like a very long time ago. Adolescents in their ages from 13-19 are where they develop the most, through their development in the brain all the way to how they communicate with people, especially their family. Adolescents with addictive phone usage directly affects them and their families across the nation.
The Beginning of a New Fear
So first, how did we get to this topic? Well, let’s say an Iphone, the first Iphone came out on January 9, 2007. Most of the people in this room were either young students still in elementary school or adults who had a full time career. I for one can’t say I remember when the first Iphone came out. But this release date is really important to understand when discussing adolescents and their addiction to the phone. As stated by the American Academy of Pediatrics, “Any Web site that allows social interaction is considered a social media site, including social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter; gaming sites and virtual worlds such as Club Penguin, Second Life, and the Sims; video sites such as YouTube; and blogs,” (Volume 127, Issue 4). Social media sites are a direct consumer for any adolescent with a phone, and through these phones creates three distinctive things that we will analyze further throughout this paper, which are; communication skills, depression, and addiction.
The book, written before it all
Sherry Turkle, published a book on the date of May, 2011, titled, “Alone Together” where it explains the effects of how social media and technology is used in today’s society and suggests it is leading to a bigger problem down the road. Was she right? Turkle explains, “Freud teaches us that the experience of loss is part of how we build a self. Metaphorically, at least, mourning keeps a lost person present. Child culture is rich in narratives that take young people through the steps of this fitful process,” (Turkle 34). This narrative of self when a child is young, isn’t explained through a phone screen, it is explained through losing in a real life experience where the child has to grow and learn through that experience. Turkle states, “on this almost-level playing field, attitudes about robotic companionship are something of a litmus test for how happy children are with those who care for them. So, children who have incompetent or boring babysitters are interested in robots. Those who have good babysitters would rather stick with what they have,” (Turkle 71). Think about it, when a child is playing outside and doesn’t get picked on a team, that child has to sit out of the game. He learns at that young age that those people don’t think he is a good enough player, and learns how to deal with adversity. Turkle explains that a child must deal with this adversity to develop their mind for the real world, and that the real world isn’t through a phone screen. “Roman, eighteen, admits that he texts while driving and he is not going to stop. “I know I should, but it’s not going to happen. If I get a facebook message or something posted on my wall… I have to see it. I have to,” (Turkle 171).
Turkle explains how addiction stems from a very young age, some adolescents get addicted to sports, some get addicted to reading, and most get addicted to a phone. She examines how it further affects the mind of a young child who is not fully developed yet, and their brain latches on to things much stronger than it can handle. For example, “The technology has become like a phantom limb, it is so much a part of them. These young people are among the first to grow up with an expectation of continuous connection: always on, and always on them. And they are among the first to grow up not necessarily thinking of simulation as second best. All of this makes them fluent with technology but brings a set of new insecurities,” (Turkle). Along with being so deeply connected to the children’s phones, she explains how this connection leads to much more bad things that destroy the growth process for a young adolescent kid. Put it this way, when the kid becomes a teenager and goes to his first day of high school, everyone is on their phone, everyone has a smart phone in their hand. This addiction may not be met by some but bring it back to the 80’s, she explains, when high school teenagers did not have any choice but to develop a face to face relationship with their other classmates. These interactions created a much stronger development to the brain helping them struggle with adversities in life more than just being addicted to a phone.
Where do we go?
First off, we will base this entire phenomenon on two simple studies, which will be the secondary source of the book, “Alone Together,” and the primary source of U.S. newspaper articles found throughout the entire United States dealing with social media through adolescents. This study will be involved and made part through one simple thing, framing. I will use Sherry Turkle as a pre-study to this phenomenon and it will be the backbone of my study, then using the newspaper articles in today’s society to frame my work around her book. What has changed from the time in 2011 when social media was not as big of a part of society as it is nowadays. Are there things similar we find in her book that relate to the new society nowadays, or are there more things different? This is the question we will answer throughout my study of adolescence and social media. “As infants, we see the world in parts. There is the good—the things that feed and nourish us. There is the bad—the things that frustrate or deny us. As children mature, they come to see the world in more complex ways, realizing, for example, that beyond black and white, there are shades of gray. The same mother who feeds us may sometimes have no milk. Over time, we transform a collection of parts into a comprehension of holes. With this integration, we learn to tolerate disappointment and ambiguity. And we learn that to sustain realistic relationships, one must accept others in their complexity. When we imagine a robot as a true companion, there is no need to do any of this work,” (Turkle). What we find here is the connection of the brain and growth process of a simple real life relationship. No matter what your stance is on technology, there is no one that can argue that your most beloved relationship in your life and you would rather talk to them through a phone rather than face to face. She explains how today too many of us are dependent upon a computer or phone to keep memories of the past. She compares this to “laziness” and “moving too fast” that cause humans to lose a true memory and throw it on their phone. We are causing the loss of what being a human actually is, love and relationships, helping out your neighbor.
What is Really going on
What my main source, Turkle, is really trying to make us understand in her book “Alone Together” is that in today’s society, we are simply all using and relying on our phones too much. This had a direct correlation to both adults using their phones, and leading to children becoming addicted to your phone. Turkle explains how when a child is still in his/her young learning years, they look up to their parents and directly follow what their parents are doing. Nowadays, adolescents are getting iPhones at ages as young as 10-13, making their addiction to their phones that much worse. When an adolescent is in his developmental stage of the brain, they become addicted to anything that is given to them, and in this case, it is the phone. Most parents don’t watch their children use the phone and keep track of the usage they have on the phone, which causes them to freely search and proceed to any kind of thing they want to do all day on that little device. “People are lonely. The network is seductive. But if we are always on, we may deny ourselves the rewards of solitude,” (Turkle). With this, what if a child is left at home one night while the parents are out for a drink, they are lonely and sad, so they scroll through their phone for hours. The kid posted a picture and a bunch of his classmates made fun of him in the comments. The child is now more depressed, and even worse, lonely. The phone creates these adolescents a sense of escape, even though the escape is into an entirely new world of addiction and hardships.
How I found my Data
So, my data gathering was a process of one secondary source, which was a source of fiction, “Alone Together,” written by Sherry Turkle, and having primary sources of newspaper articles throughout the United States to further Dr. Turkle’s process of adolescents and phone usage. This process directly was first reading the entire novel, and taking down very important notes and quotes that came to what I am trying to prove. The secondary sources weren’t a sense of trying to prove the truth in a newspaper article, but to give a real life example of things families and their adolescents go through caused by social media. These sources stem from three main things that adolescents are going through because of their phone usage; addiction, depression, and communication skills directly affecting their families at the dinner table. For example, as explained by the Morning Call news, “Adolescents have failed classes critical to their futures at higher rates than previous years, affecting graduations and college prospects. And as elected leaders and public health officials scrambled to bring students back to school last winter and spring, the focus on having the youngest and most vulnerable students return to in-person instruction left many high school students to languish, with large numbers missing most or all of the 2020-21 academic year,” (Morning Call).
The work I have used to collect my data was from my primary sources of newspaper articles framing my work around my secondary source, the book, “Alone Together.” Using this method of framing helped to find real life situations with real life families and dealing with this sense of “fear” that their children are becoming much too addicted to their phones. Using Turkle to back my sources and collect my data through these newspaper articles shows how these have a direct correlation to each other. From the year 2011, when the book first was released, we found some direct data that correlates similarities and differences. By framing both of these sources, the first thing I found was that the dinner table that I previously talked about earlier, is lossed. In Turkle’s book, she states that “parents are scared that a family dinner is long gone due to their children being addicted to their phones and video games,” (Turkle). Now, with this being said, what is the feeling through parents in today’s society? Well, in a news article from the Times Record in January 2021, “family dinners are long, sacred, time of the past, where families in America sit down in other rooms, watching television, playing video games, and scrolling through their phones,” (Time Record). Times Record reports, “The dinner table sits in the heart of the home, creating a common gathering place for meals, discussions, homework sessions and board game nights. Yet, with the distractions of phones and divisions created by busy schedules, a family meal today might only be found in a Norman Rockwell painting,” (Times Record). So, this framing from the book around exactly 10 years ago is a direct correlation of what Dr. Turkle warned us about. It might not be a huge deal that family dinners are gone, but what I have found is that from 2011 to 2021, social media has taken some of that family one on one time away from these children.
During the Covid pandemic, a whole other pandemic was started with adolescents, a social media pandemic. Kids were forced to be sent home from school, go on a computer, and not have any social life with their friends outside of their house. This was not their fault, but solely created a whole other pandemic for the adolescents during those 2 years. For example, “The school's wellness center has been overwhelmed with students struggling with anxiety and depression since the first day back. By the end of September, fights were frequent, and "blunt and flagrant disrespect" was rampant, Bailey said. In October, homecoming pep rallies were canceled for freshmen and sophomores, partly to follow COVID-19 restrictions and minimize crowds. By November, the principal was averaging at least one "informal hearing" per day for students who had been suspended,” (Morning Call). In Turkle’s book, she states that “Texting offers just the right amount of access, just the right amount of control. She is a modern Goldilocks: for her, texting puts people not too close, not too far, but at just the right distance. The world is now full of modern Goldilocks, people who take comfort in being in touch with a lot of people whom they also keep at bay,” (Turkle). Framing this around the news article from the Morning Call shows that this pandemic has caused adolescents to forcibly go on to the phone and get away from their friends in a digital world. Turkle shows that everything she has studied, has shown that social media has increasingly become involved and disrupts adolescents' lives.
She states that, “the mind is developed at a main base during the early years of learning and developing relationships.” Adolescents who had to learn this through a covid pandemic caused them to learn that sense of social skills being through a phone the entire time leading to more addiction and depression through adolescents. This correlation the pandemic has and framing this around Turkle’s book shows that technology has created an entire new pandemic with children who are addicted to their phones, with that being said, we can’t blame them for the addiction for the last 2 years, but we can fix it.
Through the rest of my analysis and data gathering, you will find sources from direct news articles that deal with the adolescents and phones through the three main types that my analysis will be broken down, addiction, depression, and communication skills. Throughout this, I will show you the main affects these three things have on adolescents and families caused by the usage of the phone. The newspaper articles will determine the many real life traumas that families deal with now with their kids being addicted to their phones, directly correlating back to my primary source of the novel “Alone Together.” This process of simple learning and understanding on how this all plays out in some many American families nowadays, will show the exact pandemic we are dealing with as a whole nation through adolescents and phone usage. Turkle’s study will be the backbone of this paper, as it is one of the best selling books at its time, explaining this through newspaper articles throughout the entire United States. There is a reason Turkle’s book continues to sell years after its release because people want to know and learn about some of the effects that social media can bring to people, more importantly, adolescents. Her book captures the true feeling of the American public, as social media is still a very new thing to all of us and we all are continuing to learn the pros and cons of this phenomena.
Addiction
So, the first thing I found in my data gathering was addiction. Adolescents deal with many forms of addiction at a young age, but no more stronger than addiction to their phones. As first reported by the Tribune-Star, on February 27, 2022, “Ella Walker was a 13-year-old, straight-A middle school student who played sports and loved Harry Potter movies. On Jan. 22, the New Albany teenager took her own life. From bullying to social media addiction, Ella's parents detailed a heartbreaking set of circumstances they believe ultimately led to her suicide,” (Tribune-Star). As stated by a CDC study, the sucide rate for adolescents of age 10-24 from social media addiction rose 56% from the year 2008 to 2018. This steady increase in addiction to children’s phones causes families to become increasingly worried about their usage with their phones and social media. Framing this around Turkle’s book, I found that Turkle determines that when the child is young and lonely, they escape to the online world where they get lost in addiction and loneliness. She states, “People are lonely. The network is seductive. But if we are always on, we may deny ourselves the rewards of solitude,”(Turkle). We find this framing has shown that Turkle has shown that nothing has changed, but just got worse through just 10 years of this social media pandemic. She shows that addiction is a long stem that comes from very early years of when a child is raised, whether that be addiction to reading, addiction to playing sports, or addiction to technology.
Addiction from the brain comes from the early years in a child’s life and is developed even stronger as the child comes to his teens, as explained by Dr. Turkle. On September 29, 2021, the PR Newswire explained, “This innovative presentation will explore how a parent or caregiver's engagement with devices can impact emotional and social attachment development in children. In psychology, attachment theory explains how the parent-child relationship emerges and influences subsequent social and emotional development. The presentation will identify examples of unhealthy or inappropriate device management which could contribute to the development of a potentially new device-driven relational insecure attachment bond, with vast repercussions for our nation's youth,” (PR Newswire). What this shows is the adolescent brain becoming addicted to the engagement with the things the phone has to offer like social media. This addiction is causing families to have a bad relationship with their kids because of the addiction these kids have to their phones. It shows that when a parent is constantly on the phone, it also causes their child to develop a sense of the brain where their child isn’t receiving enough emotional connection to that parent. As shown by the Southeastern Connecticut legislators, "The parameters haven't been set yet, but we have some ideas of looking at what it would be like in a certain environment, most likely a school that doesn't allow phones at all versus a school that does," Somers said. "Words can really leave wounds, and I don't think adolescents who are going through a lot of changes in their lives at that point are equipped to handle some of the negativity,” (Connecticut Legislators). With this being said, adolescents are slowly becoming so addicted to their phones that they don’t know how to deal with real life loss and tragedy. The phone doesn’t help when something bad happens in their lives, it doesn’t fix their problems, it is solely just a place to escape that problem. The adolescent brain when addicted to their phones doesn’t create a safe place for them to be and for them to avoid this problem, and sadly, these kids are paying for their addiction to the phone in the worst way possible, cyber bullying leading to suicude.
This problem between adolescents and the phone usage is solely surrounded by the main problem of addiction, but this addiction is affecting their communication skills as well. One of the most important things a child goes through in their adolescent years is learning and developing social skills. Turkle explains that in chat rooms, like Facebook and other online social media apps, that children become more addicted to virtual interactions better than real ones. Burlington Record explains, “The mental health challenges of teens are even greater amongst those with prior mental health issues during crises, which may be an outcome of isolation, feelings of uncertainty, lack of daily routines, lack of access to health services provided through schools, and lack of advanced emotional development,” (Burlington Record). Having this mental lockdown due to the pandemic causes a series of mental distraught and emotional devices through the adolescent mind, and it’s communication skills that it develops through interpersonal relationships.
In a news article on the U.S. news, Dr. Helen Lee, the founder of the Reboot Foundation, which is a platform that was made to promote the effects that social media has on mental health. As stated in the news article, Dr. Helen claims, “Social media is currently designed for virality and addiction. People may willingly share their data in exchange for a free service that they value. But they have not agreed to submit to experimental manipulation that encourages slot machine-like behavior and can drive feelings of anxiety and depression. What's more, the algorithmic elevation of sensationalistic content distorts users' perception of political realities, promotes polarization, and worse. Limits, standards and regulation are needed,” (U.S. news). This algorithmic elevation is the same evaluation that Turkle used to develop the effects of addiction social media creates through adolescents at a very young age. Framing this to Turkle’s work that anxiety and depression increases with social media use in adolescents can be shown through her book 12 years ago. “Today’s young people have grown up with robot pets and on the network in a fully tethered life. In their views of robots, they are pioneers, the first generation that does not necessarily take simulation to be second best. As for online life, they see its power—they are, after all, risking their lives to check their messages—but they also view it as one might the weather: to be taken for granted, enjoyed, and sometimes endured. They’ve gotten used to this weather but there are signs of weather fatigue. There are so many performances; it takes energy to keep things up; and it takes time, a lot of time. “Sometimes you don’t have time for your friends except if they’re online,” is a common complaint.”
Depression
Next, depression. Steadily over the past several years, we as a country have seen phone usage and social media in adolescents cause direct harm to the minds of these young children, notably in the last two years from the pandemic. The Boston Herald states, “The Harvard Graduate School of Education says recent studies have noted a significant uptick in depression and suicidal thoughts over the past several years for teens, especially those who spend multiple hours a day using screens,” (The Boston Herald). This depression directly correlates to the usage of adolescents and their phones, and it all comes back to troubling their family lives at that dinner table. The American Academy of Pediatrics states, “Such parents may lack a basic understanding of these new forms of socialization, which are integral to their children's lives. They frequently do not have the technical abilities or time needed to keep pace with their children in the ever-changing Internet landscape. In addition, these parents often lack a basic understanding that kids' online lives are an extension of their offline lives. The end result is often a knowledge and technical skill gap between parents and youth, which creates a disconnect in how these parents and youth participate in the online world together,” (American Academy of Pediatrics).
Closing
Through everything that I have found in the work of framing Turkle’s work to American news articles, I have found that Turkle’s work has not totally been proven to be true, but has been proven to be a very big phenomenon in American children. Using this framework has shown a correlation from when the book “Alone Together” in 2011 was released, until the year of present day, social media and technology is a phenomenon in adolescents and can cause addiction that is harmful to adolescents. So, let’s bring it back to the dinner table with your family, maybe you don’t have a young brother or sister who experiences this addiction to their phone. But there are children out there, many of them actually, 90% as of 2021 is the usage of adolescents and social media. Turkle states, “This give-and-take prepares children for the expectation of relationship with machines that is at the heart of the robotic moment.”
Sources
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