Social Media's Tragic Impact on Teens

Amid years of mounting evidence of the negative impact on teenagers, social media Goliaths continue to peddle their addictive platforms, placing profits ahead of young people's mental health.   Tech firms operate with legal impunity, ignoring the studies documenting the harm caused by social media.

At the outset, let's stipulate that social media also has positive aspects.  Platforms have facilitated communications, enabled social connections and provide access to a myriad of information and perspectives. However, tech giants have failed their responsibility to clean up the content sewage. 

Teen social media usage soars every year, turning casual usage into an addiction. A Pew Research Report shows the top social media platforms used by young people 11-to-17 years old are:  Youtube, 95%; TikTok, 67%, Instagram, 62%;  Snapchat, 59%; Facebook, 32%; and, Twitter, 23%.

A study by Jean Twenge, psychology professor at San Diego State University, discovered that students who spent five or more hours a day online were 71% more likely to have a least one suicide risk factor. Those include depression, thinking about suicide or attempting suicide.  

Research shows that the average young person spends an average of three hours a day on social media.  The study by Twenge found that the overall suicide risk factors rose "significantly after two or more hours a day of time online."  

A 2018 Children's Mental Health Report documented the negative effects of social media on  adolescents, aged 11-to-17.  Thirty-five percent of participants were classed as poor sleepers and 47% were classified as anxious.  Higher levels of anxiety correlated with increased usage.

While social media companies argue there are benefits to their platforms for teenagers, actual research underscores the dark side of social media.  A Common Sense Media survey of social media users found 70% of teens "feel left out or excluded when using social media."  

The evidence is unequivocal.  

It is no coincidence that teen suicides and depression are rocketing higher.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that suicides in females aged 15-24 have spiraled 87% over the past decade.  Suicides jumped 30% among males in the same age group.

Overall, 22% of high school students in a recent survey said that had seriously considered suicide; 18% admitted they had a suicide plan; and, 10% reported they had attempted suicide at least once.  Female students were at higher risk with 30% claiming they had considered attempting suicide.

Social media apologists will point out there is no direct link between suicide and social media usage.  However, a previously unpublished study from Facebook found Instagram to have harmful effects among a portion of its millions of  users, particularly teen girls.  

Findings indicated that Instagram makes body image issues worse for one in three teen girls. Among teens who reported suicidal thoughts, 6% traced them back to Instagram.  Instagram and Facebook are both owned by Meta.  

Congress has hauled the likes of Meta Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other social media bosses to Washington for hearings. Senators and representatives pound tables, haranguing  the executives. Yet there is never any legislative action to hold social media firms accountable.

Zuckerberg hired an army of lobbyists to influence senators and representatives. Since 2017, Meta has poured $100.6 million dollars into lobbying efforts.  As added protection, Zuckerberg funneled an unprecedented $419 million into non-profits aimed out turning out Democrat voters in 2020.

Other big tech firms have parachuted into Washington, reinforcing their lobbying activities.  That's why no legislation will ever be passed to rein in Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat or TikTok. Spreading money like fertilizer in Washington turns antagonists into allies.  

Who will make the profiteers change their algorithms that feed an addiction that is killing teenagers?

Turns out the parents of teens are the ones fighting back against steep odds.  The number of families pursuing lawsuits against social media titans has soared to more than 2,000.  Another 350 lawsuits are expected to move forward this year, according to reporting by CBS News "60 Minutes."

Kathleen and Jeff Spence, interviewed on the program, recounted a harrowing story of how their 12-year-old daughter sank into depression and developed an eating disorder after opening at Instagram account.  The teen logged on at age 11, although Instagram requires users to be 13.

The daughter searched instagram for fitness routines that sent her into the ugly underbelly of social media.  Her feed was bombarded with photos of very thin, sickly girls promoting eating disorders.Those disturbing images were delivered by Instagram's algorithms, which push content. 

Her life began a downward spiral by 12 when she began spending five hours a day scrolling through anorexic body images.  Her weight dropped and she drew a picture of herself in her diary, surrounded by her laptop while writing:"stupid, fat....kill yourself."

She began struggling with mental health, depression and her body image. "It made me hate myself," she confessed to a "60 Minutes" reporter.  Her sophomore year she posted on Instagram that she didn't deserve to exist. A friend shared her post with a school counselor who called her parents.

Her parents got help for their daughter.  But in some cases plaintiffs lost their child to suicide. The previously noted Facebook internal document reveals employees knew Instagram was pushing girls to dangerous content, the "60 Minutes" investigative reporter revealed.

If Congress won't protect vulnerable teens, then perhaps the lawsuits will finally force social media platforms to reform their algorithms, built to force feed inappropriate content to users. However, the social media platforms have buildings full of attorneys to protect their profits. 

And the parents' cause suffered a blow when the Supreme Court handed social media titans a major victory in a recent decision.  The justices unanimously rejected two cases aimed at piercing the legal shield adopted 27 years ago to protect internet companies from liability lawsuits.  

That leaves the parents' lawsuits against big tech as the last, best and likely only chance to hold social media firms accountable for their actions.  

Censorship: Social Media Turns Political

Social media is transforming itself into a potent political force. Giants such as Twitter, Facebook and Google are exerting more control over content, employing stealth algorithms to censor or silence conservative voices.  There is a burgeoning backlash about the firms' dominance and influence.

Once social media was dismissed as irrelevant in the political arena.  But modern political campaigns direct their messages at their mushrooming audiences.  Barrack Obama hired an entire team of social media experts.  Hillary Clinton tagged a former Google exec as her chief technology officer.

Social media no longer takes a backseat to legacy media, including television, newspapers and radio. More people turn to social media for news.  Twitter has 157 million users.  Facebook counts 2.6 billion.  Google logs 3.5 billion searches every day.  Social media owns Americans' eyeballs.

A recent Pew Research Center report found 67 percent of all Americans report they obtain at least some of their news from social media.  TV is second with 57 percent.  And it's not just young people on social media.  One-half of Americans over 50 go to social media in search of news.

The Goliaths of social media, including Twitter, Facebook and Google, have virtual monopolies in their segments. As publicly owned companies, they theoretically have every right to foist their ideologies on Americans. However, most people are unaware the content is manipulated.

For example, enterprising undercover journalists recently exposed Twitter's use of guidelines that filtered pro-Trump posts on its site.  In addition, the reporters discovered Twitter was using a technique called "shadow banning" to hide conservative content from public view.

Twitter users were never advised of the deception until news reports shined light on the practice.  Most free speech advocates believe the social media platform should have been upfront about their ideological approach.  But Twitter is not the only social sloth in the covert censorship business. 

Google employs auto-complete algorithms designed to erase certain disparaging and offensive terms from its content.  However, the company admits it's an inexact science.  Users have no idea what is being filtered and why. The search results reflect the biases of those who wrote the algorithm.

A few years ago the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) opted to drop its antitrust lawsuit against Google despite finding its search algorithm was biased.  The exhaustive probe documented the firm promoted its own services at the top of search results to the detriment of its competitors. 

Despite the mountain of evidence, Mr. Obama's FTC dismissed the lawsuit against Google.  Surely it is coincidental that Google executives, led by parent company CEO Eric Schmidt, were frequent and large donors to Mr. Obama's presidential campaigns and Democrat causes.

If Google favored its own products and services, it raises suspicions that the company also adopts the same strategy with political candidates. As an example, the firm can rig the search results to produce the most favorable stories about a candidate to appear on the first page. 

The American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology did a study that showed the results displayed by Google influence political decisions by participants.  The research found this could tip an election by moving voters' opinions of candidates by margins ranging from 37 to 63 percent.

Another Google social media company, You Tube, has been stung with criticism too.  Media sources reported that Google had enlisted "trusted flaggers" to delete questionable video content.  It turns out one group it "entrusted" was the Southern Poverty Law Center, a controversial left-wing outfit.

SPLC promptly labeled many conservatives on YouTube as "extremists," including Dr. Ben Carson and Fox News contributors Laura Ingraham and Judge Jeanine Pirro.  However, the law center found nothing extreme about ANTIFA, a militant protest group with a record of inciting violence. 

For years Facebook has been featuring sponsored news ads in the feeds of its users.  This allowed Russian-backed firms to post fake news about Clinton and Trump on users' feeds.  Now Facebook is trying to clean up the mess it created by cracking down on deception.  But who makes that call?

A hush-hush algorithm is now trolling Facebook weeding out fake news.  Sounds like a good idea.  But the computer nerds at Facebook wrote the algorithm.  And they are mum about what kinds of items might be deemed to be inappropriate for its audience. Transparency be damned.

Why does any of this matter?  The answer is that every political campaign now uses social media to raise funds, hold virtual campaign rallies, advertise the candidates, organize volunteers and motivate voters.  It is a paradigm shift from legacy media to social media as the top election influencer.

But if that's the case, is that a good thing for America?

That question has yet to be answered.  If monopolistic social media behemoths decide to back a single candidate or ideology by censoring information, does that give voters a fair opportunity to make informed political decisions?  Americans need to start worrying about the answer.