When likes become lifelines: how social media is quietly reshaping girls’ mental health- and not for the better
As part of our book club series we are looking at the impact of the smartphone and social media on Gen Z otherwise known in our book as “The Anxious Generation”. One pattern described in the book is the impact of social media on girls vs boys, with girls coming to more harm. So why is this and what can we do to prevent it in a world that lives online?
“The Anxious Generation” starts the chapter “Why Social Media Harms Girls More Than Boys” with a heartbreaking story of an 11 year old girl who fell into depression only a few months after downloading Instagram. But this isn’t one story, it’s a recurring pattern amongst our young girls with studies showing a direct relationship between levels of depression and hours spent on social media per day.
The proposed reasons in the book for why girls are more vulnerable to harm than boys is described as 4-fold:
Girls are more sensitive to visual comparisons, especially praising or criticizing other body types
Girls’ aggression is often expressed as criticizing other girls, whereas boys express their aggression in a more physical manner
Girls more readily share emotions and when everything moved online girls became “hyperconnected”. Girls with anxiety and depression can therefore influence others to develop the same.
The fourth reason is that social media has made it easier for men to approach and berate women without accountability. Preteen girls are often approached by older men and pressured by boys in their school to share revealing photographs of themselves
So now that we know the worrying trends in the data and some of the proposed reasons for it, what can we do as parents to protect our girls?
Fortunately their is a wealth of information and support on the book’s supporting website (1). The resources range from how to chat with your kids about social media, how to become literate in the language of social media and how to challenge ourselves and our children to “break-up” with our phones.
The first interesting movement I noticed on the website is the NoSo movement. This is a school-based movement where children are encouraged as a collective to have a so-called digital detox. The advantage of a collective movement here is that no child is made an outcast by not having social media, instead it’s making no social media the norm (2).
The second helpful resource I came across was from the Khan Academy providing parents and children alike with information on the way social media works and the harm that it can bring. Helping make parents more “literate” in the confusing world of social media, it helps you make informed choices about if and how much social media influences their family (3).
The last resource is not specifically targeted at pre-teens and teens but at adults. It is called the “30-Day Phone Breakup Challenge”. The reason I include it here is if we want our children to be offline, we have to lead by example. I am guilty of endless scrolling, to the point where my toddler grabs my phone to copy me; if this is not a sign of too much screen time I don’t know what is. The challenge involves 30 days of daily voice messages and challenges to help reframe our relationships with our devices (4).
Information is power. We now know what the data shows in terms of harming our young girls, we think we know the reasons and we have tools to challenge the trends. There are many ways that we’ve failed through not understanding the true impact but now we know and now we can protect our girls.
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