Yuen: Are the kids all right? Here’s how young people can achieve digital well-being.

Not all experts agree that smartphones and social media are fueling the teen mental health crisis. But they still have guidelines for kids and their parents.

By Laura Yuen

The Minnesota Star Tribune

April 10, 2025 at 6:00am

Social Media Challenge:

An influencer reboots her life

Your brain on social media

Make your smartphone dumb

This is the third in a four-part reader challenge on creating a healthy relationship with social media.

Social media is like an insatiable itch. A time suck. A FOMO land mine. And a lifeline.

These were some of the sentiments I heard when chatting up some Twin Cities high schoolers, whose views of social media don’t differ vastly from those of adults. Many teens don’t need us to tell them about online technology’s potential pitfalls, from cyberbullying and predatory messages to disrupted sleep and comparison traps.

When I asked 18-year-old Gabby Walz how much social media she consumes, she said, “Too much.” About three to four hours of her day is spent on apps like Snapchat and Instagram, which is below the national average of nearly five hours a day. Walz (no relation to the governor) relies on social media to stay in touch with friends and family, or even to find inspiration.

“The danger comes in when you start to compare yourself to other people,” said Walz, a senior at Two Rivers High School in Mendota Heights. “It is so subconscious that it affects kids’ minds, especially as they’re growing. I think that’s where it gets dangerous: It affects us without us knowing.”

Our understanding of how these platforms affect young people is evolving, but there’s still so much we don’t know. Former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory in 2023 acknowledging the expanding body of research about social media’s potential harms to mental health. Adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media double their risk of experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety, according to one study. Murthy’s report said there was not enough evidence to conclude whether social media was “sufficiently safe for children and adolescents.”

That puts much of the onus on parents to help their kids figure it out. And still, many moms and dads feel powerless and on their own.

In Minnesota, Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office sued Meta, alleging the social media giant is harming the mental health of young people. Last year, the office also released a report detailing concerns about the apps, which was recently expanded to include potential effects of artificial intelligence.

State Rep. Zack Stephenson is pushing a new bill that would require social media companies to notify users with warning labels. The DFL lawmaker from Coon Rapids likened the current moment with big tech firms to the collective naivete regarding the dangers of smoking and the largely unregulated tobacco companies in the 1950s.

“We’re going to look back at this time and think, how could they not see the harm here and not do anything about it?” said Stephenson, the father of two preteen girls. “This is one of the biggest issues that doesn’t get the attention it deserves in modern life. The kids are not OK. We are seeing all sorts of problems, and we need to take it seriously.”

So, how worried should parents be about social media? The new Netflix series “Adolescence,” which sheds light on the threat of online radicalization of boys, left me properly panicked.

Copies of Jonathan Haidt’s book “The Anxious Generation” have been on countless nightstands of now-anxious parents since its release last year. The social psychologist argues that the rise of the smartphone has “rewired” what used to be a play-based childhood and is fueling the teen mental health crisis. Haidt advocates delaying smartphone purchases until the age of 14 and social media use until 16.

Students stack their phones in the middle of the table during lunch at Two Rivers High School in Mendota Heights. (Alex Kormann/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

But other researchers say the relationship between social media and mental health challenges is not that clear-cut.

“Mental health is complex,” said Dr. Megan Moreno, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin and co-medical director of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health. “If we drill down, it’s never going to be a single solution or a single cause.”

Experts acknowledge that social media use can lead some teens to lose sleep or skip physical activity, for example, or feed them posts that encourage disordered eating or cutting. But it’s also important to recognize that each kid is different, and the likelihood of developing a mental illness can be traced to other factors such as family history or exposure to trauma. Teens can use technology to seek out body-positive content, find belonging, deepen their hobbies and express themselves online.

Moreno recalls a patient who had been struggling with depression and had plunged into online forums for support. A keyword search produced results ranging from helpful to harmful.

“On the one hand, they found groups where youth were lifting each other up and saying you should talk to your parents and your pediatrician,” she recalled. “Within that same search, they found communities who were saying antidepressants were a tool of Satan, that kids who are depressed are weak and ‘all of you should just go kill yourselves.’ It’s very hard to find the place where you feel safe and welcomed because it’s just so vast.”

What teens say

Abdulahi Dahir, a 10th-grader at Park Center High School in Brooklyn Park, received his first iPhone in fourth grade. As he got older, he grew wiser about its potential hazards. He figured out how to ignore “weird people,” like the random older man messaging Dahir for his personal information on Instagram.

Black and Hispanic teens in particular face unique challenges, given that they are more likely than their peers to use social media and encounter online racism and traumatic content that can affect their mental health.

Dahir, the child of Somali immigrants, recently completed a class facilitated by the Brooklyn Bridge Alliance for Youth that taught him and other Black youths how to tweak their social media habits. He learned how to take the occasional break from the platforms. He can now spot how algorithms pump out content intended to aggravate him. And he’s quick to weed out from his feed influencers who utter racially insensitive remarks.

He remembers getting into a heated discussion with another commenter on TikTok, which culminated in the man calling Dahir a racial slur. But these days, Dahir said, he’s learned to back away from online spats.

“I have a healthier relationship with social media,” he said. “I don’t engage as much. I don’t comment as much. You just got to know when to stop.”

For other young people, the seductive design forces of social media are the toughest thing to beat. They admit one truth: Many are extremely online. Half of teens say they are online “almost constantly,” up from 24% a decade ago, according to Pew Research Center. And in many cases, they have enough self-awareness to understand the effects of excessive use.

“Brain-dead,” said Two Rivers 10th-grader Nathan Zahn, describing how he feels when infinitely scrolling.

“I feel very gray when I do it,” agreed his classmate, Thomas Becken.

But on a recent spring day in the cafeteria, these boys and their friends were among the teens who deliberately stacked their phones in the middle of their table as part of a student-led movement to log off during lunch. (It didn’t hurt that their participation automatically entered them into a pizza raffle.)

“I feel very gray,” says Two Rivers High School student Thomas Becken, center right, about endlessly scrolling on social media. As an antidote to that, he and his friends participate in Log Off Lunch, a program that focuses on sidelining cellphones in favor of human interaction during lunch at the Mendota Heights school. (Alex Kormann/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

The 12th-grader who helped organize it is Charlotte Vogen. She decided to join her school’s digital well-being club, which partners with the St. Paul-based organization LiveMore ScreenLess, after her experiences at a monthlong summer camp that banned devices. On the last day of camp, she remembers seeing another camper literally gag when the girl touched her phone again. After Vogen settled back into her home life, she was frustrated to see so many people around her instinctively fixed to their screens.

Vogen said her smartphone use has since ticked up to about five hours a day, and she’s not immune to social comparison. She’s had to remind herself that everyone online is presenting their best, curated selves, and many of those pore-free selfies are enhanced by filters.

And it’s easy to feel left out when you see peers post images of themselves — gathering without you.

“Sometimes you feel like you’re not living enough,” said senior Sophia Agan. “The portrayal on social media is so different from how we experience life.”

How parents can help

Young people would benefit from many of the same hacks that help adults get off their screens. Turn off notifications. Protect dinnertime and sleep. Get phones out of the bedroom.

Is your child stuck in an algorithm loop of unhealthy content? Encourage your teen to hit the “reset” button, which can be done on apps like TikTok and Instagram. No need to wait until the feed hits rock bottom; a reset can help prioritize the kind of posts they’d like to see (until the algorithm figures them out again).

“Teens should feel empowered to do a reset whenever they feel like they need a fresh take on it,” Moreno said. “It would be great if more platforms allowed youth to have more control over the content that’s delivered to them.”

Families can also develop a tailored plan using age-appropriate guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics. Among them: Know your child, including their personality and maturity level. Set clear expectations and communicate often.

Researchers have found that kids don’t like feeling out of control when they’re up against the forces of social media. Parents, that’s where we step in. Protecting our kids from harm begins with consistent rules — that we ought to follow, too.

Reader challenge:

Parents, model good social media habits. Kids, watch your parents!

about the writer

Laura Yuen