Post Author
Michael Cooper
Senior Director of Advocacy
At NC Child one of our focus areas is youth mental health and we are doing part to better understand the issue, from the impacts of the pandemic, to the role of peer pressure, to the impacts of new technology.
In that spirit we recently spoke with Mitch Prinstein. He is the John Van Seters Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at UNC-Chapel Hill and the co-director of the school’s Winston Center for Technology and the Developing Mind.
He also serves as Chief of Psychology Strategy and Integration for the American Psychological Association and his work as of late has examined topics including how the use of technology impacts youth mental health. That’s why we thought he would be an ideal person to talk to understand how smartphones and social media are affecting today’s youth and how we should best set boundaries.
The interview has been condensed for the sake of brevity, but we hope you enjoy a discussion that is very relevant to the issues being debated these days by leaders and policymakers.
NC Child: You’re a clinical psychologist and known for your research on adolescent mental health. How did you come to be involved in this field?
Mitch Prinstein: I have been interested my whole career in how adolescents interact with each other, and at some point it became impossible to understand peer relations without understanding online interactions because their online experiences have overtaken their offline experiences.
NC Child: Just how many hours a day are young people spending online now?
Mitch Prinstein: We did a study with sixth graders, and we were able to not rely just on how much they say they use their devices but actually take screenshots of that part of your device that’s keeping track of that for you. On average, teens were picking up their phones about 100 times a day and the range went all the way up to 400 times a day. We also saw that they are using their devices for about 8 1/2 hours a day.
NC Child: And this was in sixth grade?
Mitch Prinstein: These were sixth graders but then we followed them up over time. In our group at the Winston Center at UNC, which Eva Telzer co-directs with me, we were able to look at brain development over time. So, did the number of times they’re picking up their phone actually change the way their brains grew during the super critical time of adolescence? The data said, yeah.
NC Child: I remember my teenage years. I was very lucky to graduate high school before smartphones, before social media. How has all this technology changed the way that young people are interacting?
Mitch Prinstein: I think a good place to start is to remember that adolescence is the time when we go from just playing with our friends to developing relationships. Those skills that we learn in adolescence, they become important predictors of how well we do in our marriages, how well we do in our work relationships, and all of our friendships for the rest of our life.
Okay, so now enter technology and social media. The way they’re currently designed we’re kind of being encouraged to develop relationships with numbers rather than with people, right? We log in and it tells us you have this many followers and you got this many comments, but it doesn’t really tell us who those people are, unless we really dig in.
NC Child: When did these issues change from your perspective? Was it when the iPhone came out or is it more complicated than that?
Mitch Prinstein: I think there’s been gradual change. We started seeing that researchers had studied just basically surfing the internet at all while in classrooms. Of course, the person doing the surfing was getting lower grades. but the person sitting behind them was getting lower grades too. So, we started seeing these secondhand screen effects in the literature suggesting that tech was a pretty big distraction.
Then when you enter social media, it just plugged right in to that part of the adolescent brain that cares about when people are talking about them, agreeing with them, nodding, smiling, giving them power, influence. That is so important given the way that their brains start developing and social media attach right into it with major oxytocin and dopamine responses. Unfortunately, it was kind of a perfect storm.
NC Child: It seems like these algorithms are built in a way that that increases use and online interaction. Maybe they don’t want young people to get hooked but they do want them to use the product.
Mitch Prinstein: I think so, but we don’t know because, no one will share what their algorithm exactly does. Those are important companies secrets, I suppose. But it does seem that even when you’re scrolling past information in your feed, even if you pause for a tiny bit longer over one post than the other, that information is captured and used to determine what you see next in your feed or what notifications you get.
Think about it for a teenager. Remember how much you cared about what table you sat at the cafeteria and, you know, who is wearing the cool clothes. And then imagine getting a notification that says the most popular kid in school just posted something and they tagged your best friend on it. Of course you’re going to have a hard time not logging in, even though you should be doing homework.
NC Child: Middle school and high school can be difficult and that was true long before smartphones. But I’m thinking back to my experience and I’m thankful because if you had a bad day those interactions didn’t follow you home. If there was gossip or bullying that didn’t come home with you. But now it’s hard to turn off.
Mitch Prinstein: That’s exactly right. And one of the ways in which that’s particularly challenging is when we start thinking about cyber hate which could be bullying or discrimination. That might happen in a dark hallway of the school but now this might be happening online. The perpetrator may be anonymous so they can say whatever they want without any consequence, and then you pile on with other people liking or commenting to really traumatize the victim.
It’s probably for that reason that we’re seeing that so many kids are exposed to cyber bullying and discrimination and the effects seem to be above and beyond what they’re already experiencing offline.
NC Child: If young people are spending eight hours a day now on their phones what are they missing out on?
Mitch Prinstein: Sleep is number one. That’s important because other than the first year of life this is the most important time for brain reorganization and growth. And there’s some research saying that the number one reason why kids are not getting the recommended eight to nine hours of sleep at night, from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the number one reason is screen time.
NC Child: So, tech is not just affecting mental health but also physical health.
Mitch Prinstein: What’s happened in the last year or two is that schools around the world have started to take notice and change the ways in which devices are allowed, and that’s a little bit tricky because some of these devices were actually issued by the school.
NC Child: We wanted students to have tablets. We wanted students to have access to screens.
Mitch Prinstein: What’s happening now is that people are starting to question that and say maybe we should not have deadlines for homework at midnight because that’s actually encouraging screen use all the way until midnight. Maybe we shouldn’t have coaches and extracurriculars communicate via social media because that’s pushing kids on to social media. Maybe we need to get [devices] out of the classroom especially while the teacher is talking. That’s a time when you should be listening to the teacher.
But we don’t know what policy is the best one, and for that reason there’s a lot of research that’s now starting, including some of the work that we’re doing here in North Carolina to try and figure out what policy is going to protect kids the most but still save some of the good things that social media can offer.
NC Child: It sounds like there is no going back to a time before smartphones and social media and that we need to figure out how best to live with them, amplifying the good, and addressing the bad aspects.
Mitch Prinstein: I think it’s true. There are a lot of things that we’ve dealt with when it comes to adolescence. We tried to get them from using alcohol or cigarettes or having sex …
NC Child: And all of those behaviors have gone down now, in part because of technology.
Mitch Prinstein: That’s true. In every one of those cases what we’ve learned is you’ve just got a teach kids how to be safe, responsible, to understand how they might get manipulated or how companies are profiting from their own decisions. And I think the same goes here.
We would never let a kid drive the day they turn 16 unless they demonstrated they were competent, and we have tests to make sure they’re competent. When it comes to social media sometimes we’re handing a 10-year-old a totally unlocked device and we just let them got out there and stumble into whatever might happen.
NC Child: Do the safety features we need already exist and parents just need awareness, or do we need more solutions?
Mitch Prinstein: Some of them exist. I wish they were a lot easier to manage and access. I wish there was a single button you could press, and it would say, okay, based on expert’s advice, this is now safe for 12-year-olds. But it’s not that. It’s a thousand little dials and letters and buttons that you have to uncover to do this.
I have a colleague at a foundation called Protect Young Eyes and he’s developed a parent guide for every device out there to walk parents through, how they can set up parental controls to try and make it a little bit easier.
NC Child: Tell us about the work of the Winston Center at UNC which you help to lead. What are y’all hoping to impact?
Mitch Prinstein: So, the Winston Center for Technology and the Developing Mind is really looking across the lifespan, although a focus on younger folks at the moment, on how it is that technology … and not just social media, but devices, smart speakers, watches, AI, your Alexa that’s sitting in the corner of the room, how those might be helping or creating risk. We look at that and all the things of the brain is responsible for overseeing, including our health and our mental health as well.
NC Child: And you present this information too to various audiences. What has the reaction been from parents and from teenagers when they learn about these effects?
Mitch Prinstein: There’s a lot of information out there but what we’re finding is that the information we’re sharing still surprises people. Interestingly, we’ve been doing a lot more recently in talking with middle schools and high schools directly, and when we talk with kids, we ask them a very simple question, why do you think social media was invented?
And what we find is that they know that it wasn’t a bunch of millionaires who decided just to be nice to children in their spare time. They know it’s a business, but they have no idea in most cases, how the money is being made. So, we simply show them.
NC Child: What advice do you have for parents? Do you have children of your own and if so how do you set boundaries for them?
Mitch Prinstein: I do. My wife and I have a 13 and a 15-year-old and we’re trying to figure it out just like everyone else. We don’t have all the answers. No parent does. There are a few things we talk about both in our research and that I’m trying to figure out at home. One is if you have given your kid access to something already, it’s not too late to take that back. Take it back, put limits on it. Expect a tantrum sure, but it’s still our responsibility as parents when we learn along the way this is causing harms. Take it back, put limits on it, enforce moderation. An hour a day might be appropriate.
If you haven’t yet given your kids access, maybe it’s a good idea to scaffold your kid into it. Maybe start with an iPad or a tablet at home if that’s something that’s possible, where they’re only using this under your watchful eye, and you’re not going to watch them every minute, but you might be able to ask them about it. Maybe graduate over time and slowly take off those restrictions so they feel pretty competent by the time they have totally unfettered access to the whole worldwide wide.
NC Child: Are there reasons to feel hopeful about these issues and how they impact young people?
Mitch Prinstein: I think the most hopeful thing here is that kids are getting pretty tired of social media for not giving them fulfilling interactions. They actually tell us they feel more lonely rather than less after they’ve spent time online. So, I think there’s a natural push to start using some of these platforms with more moderation and even some great child led groups trying to push back. That’s a really good sign.
If we can provide places for kids just to interact offline, there’s a natural tendency and instinct for them to be able to do that. So, we just have to create more opportunities, maybe in school, maybe during recess, where we’ll see some of those normal human traits kind of come back pretty quick.
You can check out more of Prinstein’s research and the work of the Winston Center at UNC at Teensandtech.org.