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Church Psychology
Mental Health Professionals looking at the intersections of social & behavioral science and the formed Christian life. Visit us for free resources and more at www.ChurchPsychology.org
Church Psychology
Exploring the Impact of Social Media on Mental Health: APA's Advisory
What if the constant scroll of social media is shaping your mental health more than you realize? What if the very tools designed to connect us are wreaking havoc on our relationships, our self-image, and our mental well-being? This episode explores the murky waters of social media and its intriguing yet alarming impact on our mental health. Drawing from the recent American Psychological Association's advisory, we unpack the multifaceted issues surrounding this modern phenomenon. From our personal experiences to wider societal implications, our conversation aims to decode the complexities without any bias.
The internet's public access since 1995, the dot-com boom, and the introduction of the like button and retweet in 2011 have undoubtedly revolutionized our world. Yet, the rapid, exponential growth of social media since 2007, brings along a mixed bag of impacts. This episode examines the good, the bad, and the ugly - shedding light on the behind-the-scenes psychological tactics that create an addictive environment. But it’s not all doom and gloom; we also discuss the positive influence of social media in our pandemic-stricken world.
The role of parents and youth workers in helping young people understand and navigate the psychological effects of social media is crucial. The APA's guidelines for social media literacy offer a roadmap, but following it and enforcing boundaries can be daunting. Tune in as we discuss ways to break the vicious cycle of seeking dopamine hits from social media, the importance of ongoing conversations with teenagers, and the need for regular social media breaks. This enlightening conversation promises to help you, and your children, navigate the digital universe with wisdom and discernment. Don't miss out!
Show Notes:
- https://www.apa.org/topics/social-media-internet/health-advisory-adolescent-social-media-use
- https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/sg-youth-mental-health-social-media-advisory.pdf
- Jonathan Haidt - https://www.amazon.com/Coddling-of-American-Mind-audiobook/dp/B079P7PDWB/ref=sr_1_1?crid=391YHSRV5FDV2&keywords=jonathan+haidt+the+coddling+of+the+american+mind&qid=1692305709&sprefix=jonathan+ha%2Caps%2C109&sr=8-1
- Scripture reflection: "8 Finally brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable — if there is any moral excellence and if there is anything praiseworthy — dwell on these things. 9 Do what you have learned and received and heard from me, and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you. -- Philippians 4:8-9 (CSB)"
Hey there friends, dr David Hall with Church Psychology. Today Matt and I get into a conversation about social media and mental health. It will certainly not be the last conversation we have about that, as it's a major area of teaching and research for me, but today we're going to particularly unpack the American Psychological Association's advisory, the health advisory for youth and their mental health, well-being and development as it relates to interactions with social media. That's going to be part of the conversation today. Hope it's something you can get a lot out of. Now we're going to drop into that intro music.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Church Psychology, a podcast of the Nagev Institute. We are mental health professionals looking at the intersections of social and behavioral science in the Christian life. Please connect with our free resources in our open community library at churchpsychologyorg. We would be grateful if you would follow, like or subscribe to Church Psychology wherever you are finding us, and also leave us a review as we start. If we are to love the Lord, our God, with all of our mind, it makes sense to work on our head space. Let's get to work. Welcome everybody to the Church Psychology podcast. My name is Matt Schooniman. I'm here with Dr David Hall. Hey, david.
Speaker 1:Hey, Matt. As always, great to see your smile in face.
Speaker 2:I know Through the screen as it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're talking about you know. We'd like to start recording the same room and it's funny, we're in the same building as we record this. We're just a floor apart.
Speaker 2:We can't stand each other, though, so this is why it has to be distanced.
Speaker 1:That has to be. We're working there. It's part of, we're working on that part of our relationship and but yeah, but we're coming off of recording this right after a long weekend.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and Feeling fresh? Are you feeling fresh? Yes, you kind of talked about, but it's funny, I'm not. I just go ahead and say, like long weekends make short weeks tough, yeah. Let's do a whole conversation on the fact that holidays are good in the moment, but it makes everything else hard.
Speaker 1:We can do a whole thing on how Americans do holidays. How well do we really rest as a culture? Well, that could be its own thing. But Spoiler alert not well, yeah but you had some travel and you've got young kids and, as one of our mutual friends says, I think about a lot that when you have young children you don't go on vacation, you go on trips, you go on trips.
Speaker 2:Exactly, vacation happens prior to children and then after they leave. So you've been told the or everyone's, while when you have an outing, that's why I'm, that's why I'm holding onto his hope.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, you know, Kids and speaking to each other through devices. We are. We are coming to you trying to talk about a subject that is present with everybody, but maybe not discussed in the way that we're going to bring it today, and so that topic is on social media and its impact on mental health. This is something, david, that you know that I've been passionate about, at least in the sense of trying to understand it and what's happening. I don't know if I would call myself rebellious or kind of a I don't know the other word I'm looking for but there has been a sense of being skeptical of social media, at least for the past few years. On myself and as I've done my own personal audits of my use of social media, that's come out more and more of my skepticism.
Speaker 2:My question marks my concern, and so I will probably carry a flare of one side of this, but I'm going to try really hard with you, david, to stay centered, because that's the way in in our conversation and with others listening to this. I don't want to come across as a place of like. Now, here, the next 30 minutes, you're going to hear the reasons why you should burn it to the ground, you know. Nor on the other end maybe is to say, like here is why it's the best thing since sliced bread. I don't know. So sliced bread is pretty awesome, yeah, but anyway, so that's it.
Speaker 1:to tease, it is to say we want to bring more of a balanced approach, but I think we want, for those who are checking out this podcast, other resources we have with the Negev Institute. We want people to feel that if we do, every once in a while, we probably will say, yeah, you got to burn this to the ground, but we want to be selective in that. So whenever we do say that, that it feels important and but realizing that so many things are held in intention you know we joke a lot about the classic therapist answer of when asked a yes or no question our answer is often what depends? Because it often does. Yeah, Life is layered and complex and if you want it to be otherwise, then find another planet and may work differently somewhere else. As far as we know our variants on this plane of existence, there's a lot of layers to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, well, in some of this stuff you know is relevant and, again, these are things probably that the majority hasn't like seen but there's been some things released, david, recently, from whether it's the APA or even the Surgeon General, cautioning some of the aspects of social media as it relates to especially younger people and teenagers, adolescents yeah, and so that's somewhat what is spurred, I think, our thoughts towards this, to say, you know what, let's bring the conversation to the table, and social media is such a broad conversation topic that we're not going to cover everything in this podcast episode, but maybe to launch us into the conversation together. What was released by the APA in May I don't know when we're when we're recording this, it's after May, but this was so in May, in May 2023. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:To give some context to this too. So Matt and I were talking beforehand of as we are still in fairly early parts of the series of this podcast. We generally want to shy away from taking hot takes on things. I think there's a lot of podcasting, a lot of just things in the social media space that becomes about that and for one there are some issues with that. Some. It creates this expectation that as soon as you start doing that, then there's the expectation that as soon as there's anything in the ether that's being talked about a lot, you've got to have a take on it, and that's kind of confining and there's a lot of pressure on that. So we didn't want to do that. The other bit is it becomes we don't want people sitting around and waiting to be like well, what are the church psychology nerds going to say about this topic? Before I form an opinion, before I like, because we want to be aids and encouragement in your own journeys and discernment and gaining knowledge and if we can help in that, awesome. But so in general, we're not going to do hot takes, however, as Matt alluded to.
Speaker 1:So the APA is the American Psychological Association. For those who are wondering, it's the main professional body for licensed psychologists in the United States and, like the American Medical Association, of other groups, occasionally they'll put out advisories, health advisories related to issues pertaining to mental health, and in May 2023, they put out an advisory on social media and adolescence and basically setting guidelines for how particularly parents it's geared towards other groups, but mostly parents should consider access and degrees of social media use for early adolescents, with their defining as 10 to 14 years old, and this is a big deal. This is the first time that they've released the APA has released anything like this, and I've met and I've had some time to kind of go through their guidance. They're things that we agree with. They're things that I think maybe I wouldn't say disagree, but I think they have different emphasis on different points.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's go and put it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's the. I mean there is no guidance on kind of the preteen, on the 10 and younger in this, but that's not the point of this advisory. They make some recommendations for later teenagers that I wouldn't necessarily wholeheartedly introduce just more of. They talk about a concept of increasing teenage privacy, which I do agree with in principle. I think some of the implications of their advisory means that they're they pushed it even less interaction or monitoring for later adult lessons, which I don't know if I agree with. Yeah. They often, though, bring up points of just further research of, and which I do appreciate the honesty in, that of saying like hey, we're still, this is based on some early findings, there's still a lot more for us to do.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that's what we're going to talk about Real quick, you know, with that. I think it would be helpful to understand. So, timeframe for this I don't have as much information and I don't want to go too far down a tangent on this, but the reason why we don't have a lot of findings and maybe you could speak a little bit to why empirical data is hard to grab so quickly. But the reality of social media is its exponential curve. It started in 2007-ish, or at least the blow up of it. There were iterations of this, whether it was MySpace or other things, before Facebook kind of really launched.
Speaker 2:But it was around 2007 that the Facebook really kind of took off. In its heyday it was fairly I don't know how you would call it subdued, because it was really just attached to college campuses. I used to enjoy it. I used to call it students. Yeah, I could tell you it started becoming to the more public sphere and then got onto iPhones a couple years later and that's when it really took off. So we're looking at the late 2000s, early 2010s, when it really took shape, and we're only in 2023. Well, when we were-.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's the question of why. What are we still discovering? First off, psychology is a tricky thing to do really in-depth research in because there aren't pharmaceutical companies funding it.
Speaker 2:That's fair, that's fair.
Speaker 1:That's fair. That's fair. So unless the end result of research is a patentable drug in healthcare, it's hard to fund, and so a lot of this gets stuff that's called together by psychology departments, individual graduate students, and so that's just the nature of that versus so many other things. So that's one thing. The other bit is you're highlighting on We've only lived with some of this stuff for so long. So, for the internet went public with access to the Because the internet started to exist in the 80s of the interconnectedness with computers for public access in it began to happen in 1995.
Speaker 1:So we are looking at about 30 years, a little less than 30 years, and that's kind of the first iteration, and then it took several years for it to really build momentum. It was in the late 90s, early 2000s that you ended up with the dot-com boom where people began doing business sorts of things online a lot more. The growth of chat rooms and things and certain people may be listening to that, like I remember chat rooms. And then what you're talking about is the rise of social media as we understand, which was really in the mid-2000s, the oddies, as the kids call it. Is that what they call it? I didn't know that? I think so. Yeah, but with Facebook there were early iterations of MySpace. You may have had a few really cutting edge. You may have had a Zanga site early on, but then it was Facebook-.
Speaker 2:You lost all our population, and that was like-.
Speaker 1:No, the younger Gen Xers, older millennials, will know where I am in this, but you're right, one of the big things that happened was in the late 2000s.
Speaker 1:It's Facebook opened up to the wider public outside of exclusively college students. You began the smartphone iPhone I believe it was in 2007 that the first generation of the iPhone came out and you kind of go into that and then people like the social psychologists, jonathan Hyatt, really focused on things that happened in 2011. Two things big things happened in 2011 that affect the social dynamics of social media. One was Facebook introduced the like button and Twitter introduced the retweet, and that really kind of created aspects of what became viral things in social media, and it continues to evolve, but, to your point, very belaborably. It's mostly shifting, and so how much to do research on something like TikTok? That kind of is very much a thing right now, but it's only been fairly recently and where it will go in, it was fairly recently that the state of Montana passed a ban on it, and so someone might Many- college campuses are closing down on it too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so in a year or two, tiktok may be a thing or it may be everything. And so it becomes harder to test some of these things, because even the parameters of what we mean by social media and what people are doing on it changes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think part of that, too, is that, because it's ever changing, we haven't, I think, until recently, seen that, oh, something could be a miss here, or at least there's question marks of what level of impact does this have on people. And so, until we can recognize a problem, do we then researching what the elements of the problem are? And so you look at the timeline. We haven't had many years to actually consider that maybe some of these things are a problem. I was actually looking back in the I think it was 2021. So APA releases their health advisory in 2023. And I don't think anybody really caught this. But in 2021 was when the Surgeon General released a huge report of some of the advisories as it relates to social media use, and that's right on the heels of COVID, and so we're just now looking at it as, hey, maybe this isn't the most brilliant thing ever. There's good aspects of it, but we've been kind of going at it unrestricted for many years.
Speaker 1:Yeah and or struggling with figuring out how or why or what are the reasons to restrict, and so, yeah, let's get into that and, to give some context, I started teaching a course on social media in 2011. So it's funny, it's gone through different iterations and because social media has changed and how we interact with it and where we're exposed to it, and, as Matt was saying too, there are good and bad this isn't a one-side and let's start with a positive. It's a shorter list in some ways, but like there is. So, you know, as you're talking about the context of COVID, for many of us that was how we interacted with people so much, particularly in the early days of the pandemic, and Matt and I have we experienced that it allowed us to sustain in our livelihoods as mental health counselors that there was the technology available for us to start meeting with people virtually. If the pandemic had happened 10, 15 years before, that would have been a very different thing to navigate and I'm very grateful in that sense for that. And you know, there is research has shown that people, particularly individuals that would otherwise feel fairly isolated, have the ability to connect over distance and even just the process of finding people with other like-minded people.
Speaker 1:The rise of what's often called kind of nerd culture has been very much fueled by this, because you know you might find that you have this really niche interest in something and it's not simply any of your in-person community resonates with quite the same way.
Speaker 1:But the internet allows you to find other people that are also geek out about this thing and I've experienced that to a certain degree. Like I'm involved in certain hobbies and niches and I really appreciate being able to find resources and individuals that can speak into this in ways that I you know I got into one of the things that happened to me in COVID and this shows a bit of my age. I got really into my lawn and grass because I spent a lot of time out walking around and so I started finding like Facebook groups on like lawn maintenance or something. I only got so involved, but it was. I was able to connect with people and if you're somebody and this is important, I can say for friends of mine that have worked as missionaries internet spaces and the ability to socialize in them have, particularly in places of a persecuted church, there's some access to encouragement to connect with one another in ways that would be very difficult to do out in the open.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 1:That's some of the positive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I would agree with those. You know, my mind actually went to more of the devil's advocate as you're talking about these niche places and I was like, yeah, but that also could be really niche places that are bad, like that you can't that are not good for you, and that's also happened, you know, and so I think it's the. The creativeness and in oddity of social media is how well it polarizes in some for good, but also for bad.
Speaker 1:Church Psychology is a production of the Negev Institute, a research resource and teaching initiative that aims to provide Christian communities with practical education and consulting to faithfully speak to our needs in mental health, relational science and human habit and behavior. A great way to support Negev is to start a free membership in our open community library at churchpsychologyorg and then stay connected with our email newsletter to hear about new classes, publications, live forums and in-person events. Again, you can find all that at churchpsychologyorg. So to get into some of the guidelines, I want to look at two areas of the guidelines that I think feel most relevant to unpack and they're most like because it becomes it was associated with me, a man you know like well, like a lot of things depends. There are lots of things in our space of we talk about. Like you know, is it exposing? There's kind of the obvious sort of problems. Like, is it creating issues with people being exposed to material that is overtly problematic? You know people will talk about hate speech, pornography, self-harm, eating disorder. Like there's a lot and it's amazing how much is on social media that targets and encourages a lot of these behaviors and different platforms will the nature of how social media works. There are lots of different ways that the algorithms of different social media platforms work, but here's the basic principle that any parent or someone who's giving guidance to parents or to teenagers should consider is the goal of any social media platform is to keep you interacting with the platform, and so part of how it feeds you information is if it can feed you information that encourages you to continue to engage. That's what it does. It's number one goals to keep you engaged with it, and there are certain emotions that, if triggered in people, some of it is a sense of like joy, like. I get a lot of puppy videos and cat videos in my social media feed and most of us do things like that because it's stuff, will you know, and that will trigger more positive emotions. But anxiety will also do it, and if it, if you're getting exposed to content that encourages anxiety in you, distress, oftentimes, that will keep you engaged in it as a desire or because you're trying to scratch that itch, you're trying to satiate that feeling of anxiety, and so oftentimes you'll keep on engaging.
Speaker 1:The material, those sorts of things I've talked about, feel more obvious. But there's a secondary level, too that sometimes people miss, and this was specifically in the guidelines and this is in comparison sorts of things. Body image comparison ones are very like, and so there's more overt material that encourages things like disordered eating. But they're more subversive sorts of ways, and I think this is particularly important for parents of young girls, though boys are also affected by this. But in talking about, you know, beauty blogging or beauty social media channels or stuff that is overly focused on appearance, this could be your level of physical attractiveness.
Speaker 1:Another aspect of two is stuff that focuses on wealth. There's a lot of, I think, particularly for young men. Sometimes there could be the target of this of here's my Lamborghini and here's often it's somebody trying to sell you something like in a Tony Robbins by my yeah, my product sort of thing. But it's funny. Scripture talks a lot about immodesty and it's funny. We've talked about culturally immodesty being a lot to do with how much skin is showing in your outfit. But if you look throughout scripture, most of the time when immodesty is talked about, it has to do with displays of wealth and how that creates envy, which is an issue that gets brought up and dressed in the Ten Commandments.
Speaker 2:But basically, it's one of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, they're nine others. But you know you look at body image comparison of wealth comparison. You know what are the sorts of things that, by engaging in seeing these other people, causes me to feel worse about me or my experience, how I experience my physical appearance, how I experience my less level physical fitness, the material access I have in my life. Yeah, and I think the reason that's a point thing to highlight is because sometimes those can feel a bit more benign for parents, like, oh, my daughter's really into these beauty tick talks and you know they see some positive videos, she's learning how to do makeup and she's being creative. And the advisory from the APA isn't saying you need to eliminate that altogether, but be very mindful of how much comes in there.
Speaker 2:I would even add to that, like what level of conversation are you having about what's happening? Because the opposite of comparison is contentment, and so there's, if there's a lack of contentment in how they view themselves or even their process of growth, because developmentally you are not at the place of kind of who you are physically until later, past adolescence, early adolescence, particularly I was.
Speaker 1:I grew very unevenly and I think a lot of it did Like I had a lot of years when I was 13 or so.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, I mean so, but the image factors. You know, I actually had a client once that, a young man, teenager, who had a lot of issues with his own image based on the effect of Instagram on him. And you know, this is not. You know, we consider body image concerns so much more with girls, but I think, all the more recently it's been boys as well. There's a I can't remember the term, but there's a athletic type of body that boys is like, and men, young men too, are especially drawn to want to be and emulate. And so there's, you know, it's the six pack abs, it's the fit in it, like, it's just that fit. Look that. You know, you see all these guys on Instagram or TikTok revealing their fitness regimen and all that stuff, so they get caught up in this body machine that looks like health from the outside.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I think yeah or a problematic potential, at least disordered eating, if not a eating disorder. Uh, there's that deeper down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it also. Just it fosters this deep discontentment. I'm not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm pleased. At a base level, you're still dealing with discontentment, and if you live majority of your life in that space, uh, that creates a lot of other.
Speaker 1:No, you bring up an important point in this matter of in the developmental journey, of realizing that. You know the advisory is looking specifically from the APA at ages 10 to 14 and how much physically changes in a person's body in that timeframe and most things like if you go on to the construction site of a house it doesn't look great, and I think the same happens in the developing body of a young adolescent of just like there are a lot of things that are hard in that and and feeling in this, this body, um, dysmorphia is the psychological transport.
Speaker 1:That's it. So it's the comparison aspect of things, is a big part of it. So, as parents to be thinking about, like it may not be overtly problematic or toxic, but the but, what is it fostering? So that's the first thing of looking at comparison sorts of issues and content. The third or the second thing I want to highlight is, and this is in the um, the advisory of looking at the concept of problematic social media use. That's in quotation problematic social media use. Looking at it, and they reference a few different studies that looks at being manifest in five different ways. It is spending excessive effort to ensure continuous access to social media. I'm never disconnecting a feeling, a lot of anxiety from disconnected Uh, a strong craving to use social media or disruptions in other activities If they uh for missing social media. Yeah, it happens too much. That could be sleep interruptions, eating interruptions. That's big factors that repeatedly spending more time on social media than intended. I'm going to get on for just five minutes, 10 minutes and then a lot more time.
Speaker 2:I have a comment on that. Whenever we have a second.
Speaker 1:Sure, so do it now.
Speaker 2:Okay, one of the most recent iterations in social media that causes that very issue um are the new. Well, it's basically what tick tock is is this constant feed of reels, and so Instagram, facebook have implemented and YouTube have implemented reels which are short, 10 to 20 second clips of something Get that dopamine hit, that like go, and you just flip through Um and there's I can't remember the exact term, but there's like Terms, infinity scrolls for what it is it?
Speaker 2:well, that is exactly. But but what happens to the person? When they engage it and I think they're only doing it for five minutes they look up its 30 minutes, yeah.
Speaker 1:There's a time disruption that happens, or a sense of it. I mean, there's so much in our internal clock that gets.
Speaker 2:And with all these things like so, even related to the negative emotions that are experienced that get you hooked in. I think there's research that even says that it's negative emotions that lock someone in more than positive ones. And so why then do we have all these echo chambers and anxiety-driven things from different, not just young adults or adolescents, but kind of the broad variety of ages that use it? Those that are most connected to social media or most hooked, I think, are hooked by a lot of the negative emotion type content that keeps getting given to that person. The reels in their dopamine hit, like you suggested, all of these are not just by happenstance. I want that to be clear is that there's a lot of psychological research that goes into developing these platforms.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's sticky by design, yeah, sticky by design for what has been termed as attention retention, Like if I can get them connected, because that's how the companies make their earnings is by your use of them, and so I just want to kind of bring that to the clarity of like. Some of these things are there because I think the APA is seeing even that there's a level to which these aren't just accidental stuff. We want to make sure you're aware that if left unattended, or at least not even looked at, you could get really kind of lost into the I don't know the rabbit hole, as it were.
Speaker 1:All of it and that's not limited just to young adolescents, but it's particularly susceptible to that because the amount of yeah. So that was number three. Number four it's lying or deceptive behavior to retain access to social media use, the kids saying like how long you've been on, it's only been two minutes, only been three minutes or I'll finish my homework or take your pick, yeah. And the fifth one loss or disruption of significant relationships or educational opportunities because of social media use. So to go through the five again spending excessive amount of time and energy on it, strong, craving for it and it just rubs other activity repeatedly, spending more time than you planned lying or deceptive behavior and it's negative effect on relationships, the disruption on relationships and educational opportunities. And there's a developmental aspect of this too that I think is really significant for the young adolescents, because here's how I think of as an adult. I mean my access to social media as it is today only came to me in my late 20s and 30s and developmentally my brain was done cooking at that point and there's still like there are lots of things in this that resonate with me, I think, particularly kind of the sense of losing time, of getting on and thinking I'm going to spend a certain amount of time.
Speaker 1:And then it and it is what's difficult in this and this is something that I teach a lot in spaces that I try to carry the conversation of social media into is the challenge for parents, is this list of things. I know so many parents that will hear this and be like, yes, this is my child. Yeah, and the struggle becomes well, what do I do with it? Because and there's a paradigm that we live in culturally that I think really feeds into this more than just the technology itself is there's a paradigm of anything distressing is wrong, is morally problematic. If I make, if I do something or withhold something from my children in ways that makes them upset or stressful to them, I'm doing damage, I'm harming them, and so this is the hard sort of place because and there's also this tension of no one wants to be that parent I hear parents say that all the time. Well, I don't want to be that parent, or I'm not that parent.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And by that parent they often mean the person that's overly restrictive. Right man, this is a hard balance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is, and I think that the point of all this too and maybe we'll get into some now what, like we? I think a lot of people see some of the issues. Maybe this clarifies some of the issues, maybe it's even the first time you've heard of them, but up to what next? And or what do we do about it is? I think that, if anything, my hope would be well, let me. Let me lay my cards on the table, just to tell you a little bit about myself.
Speaker 2:I am, as of this recording, 39, it was about two years ago, or maybe about a year and a half ago, that I made the decision, after a long time using social media, to cut it out of my life.
Speaker 2:I found out that, or I had come to the realization that the things that I thought I could deal with I couldn't, and it was making my ability to function outside of that realm difficult, and maybe, at another point, I can go more into that story. The reason I bring that up, though, is one to let people know like I do come from somewhat of a biased opinion. Now, in our family, my wife still holds social media, partly because of her job and for the summer reason it's good that we have a balance to where I learn to live without it, she learns to live with it and then for our children we can use that combined knowledge and bring it to them. And so at some point, at some level at least, I don't want her to remove herself from it, although at times she's like I'm out. But I bring that to you for that reason, to just share, kind of honestly, where I am as I speak to it. But secondly, I think my brain is fully developed. At times I question it, at times David questions it.
Speaker 1:It's fully developed. It may not be fully sanctified.
Speaker 2:It's definitely not that, but either is not. So let's say it was at 37 that I made the decision to cut it out, at 37, I'm struggling with it and I have a fully developed brain. I've lived a lot of life, I've lived through some grief, I think I've matured a ton, yet I was still battling some of these aspects that we've talked about. Now take that struggle and put it on a 16-year-old kid who doesn't have the life experience, the matured brain, the developmental process, all these aspects, the knowledge, the awareness and try to expect them to deal with it on their own. I think it's impossible.
Speaker 2:And so where I want parents or helpers of children, whether it's counselors, teachers, youth workers it's just to recognize that they're going to need guidance on this, and I'm so grateful that major organizations such as the Surgeon General or the APA have started to speak into it, because if I can't do it at 37, a 17-year-old can as well. And so that's part of the reason why we bring this. And so maybe that leads us into somewhat, david, of how do we recommend to leaders of children, of teenagers, what are ways that they can help their adolescents learn to navigate the space. Is it restriction? Is it guidance, and so where should we go with that?
Speaker 1:Yes is the answer. Yes, is the answer to all. Well, some contextual stuff. Yes, I appreciate you sharing, if you didn't mind, because it is as Matt and I come into these conversations as professionals in mental health. We're also still humans who carry our own stories with us Very human, yes.
Speaker 1:And so this is not something we're removed from completely Exactly and I'll share it kind of a little bit. For me, like, I'm still on social media. I'm not on as many things as some of my peers are. I'm not on Twitter, for example, I'm not on. But even the things I am on I try to keep it qualified.
Speaker 1:And one of the things I started doing the other year is I take it six weeks fast at the end of spring, beginning of summer, I call it. I do it from Memorial Day to Fourth of July. It's two holiday bookends to it, so it's at the end of spring, beginning of summer. I call it sunlight over blue light and I do that partly because it's usually at least where we live. April's still a fairly rainy month, like weather can be all over the place.
Speaker 1:It's really May and late May that the warm, clear weather is really here and it's an opportunity to break out of some of my more lethargic rhythms of winter and just have one last thing, and it's really arbitrary of picking a wind to take a break, but I really recommend people think about that and if you think to yourself, I don't think I could give up my social media for six weeks, not to put too fine a point on it, but you may have a problem for anything in a person's life, or at least to assess whether you do have one, yeah, yeah, to say if there's anything in your life beyond, like a core biological functioning of food, sleep, things like that, or a scriptural commendation or something that we're commanded to in scripture not neglecting the fellowship of things like that, outside of those sorts of things I think it's important to look at anything in your life and to say could I give this up for any amount of time?
Speaker 1:I know a lot of people that they drink alcohol and that's part of there, and they feel you know they're believers that feel that it's appropriate and it's appropriate for them. But for many of them too, they'll take extended fasts from them. I think that's important because if you have anything in your life that you'd be like I could give this up whenever I want. I just don't want to. That says something, and so you know. It goes to the third point for the APA's guidelines, and I think this is the one to unpack the most, and it's also one of the things that I think they miss the mark a little bit on. Thank you, but they talk about the idea of education and literacy, of social media, literacy of how to help inform these emerging young adults on just awareness of what's happening, what's going on with them. And let me clarify I think encouraging social media literacy for parents and of teenagers and young kids is hugely important.
Speaker 1:I don't question the APA's recommendation on that. I question its expectations of what it's going to achieve. Here's why. Here's some contextual information. This is where I find a lot of parents struggle is they'll set a boundary with their teenager but they won't monitor the appearance to the boundary. And when, as my role as a therapist, if I bring that up, they'll say well, there are two things that they'll say that I think are hugely problematic. One is well, they know what my expectation is and so they'll follow it, and the other is he or she is a good kid. They don't do, and I find that hugely problematic. And then say well, I'll start with a second. It's this equating that if your kid struggles with this, therefore they are bad.
Speaker 1:That's not necessarily the heart behind what the parents say or meaning that, but that's what its implication is it really discourages honesty from the teenager side, because they find that if they are struggling, if they are kind of bidding these rules, if they are sneaking their iPhone to their bedroom at night and staying up late, if they are kind of all these things, that puts this pressure on them and compounds the shame that they may feel. And do you know what really helps shame feel better? Dopamine. You know what's a great way to get dopamine hits? That infinity scroll you're going through on whatever app you are. So that can create a really vicious cycle.
Speaker 1:But the first statement is well, I've told them once it misidentifies how education works for all humans. Jonathan Swift said we need to be reminded far more than we need to be told, and the learning process for humans is so much about the idea of repetition and returning to the thing In spiritual development and discipleship. It's so much about that. It's going back to the same thing. And for parents, in this you don't get a one and done of like. We had the talk about social media and that it's the willingness to continue to stay engaged in it.
Speaker 2:You could apply that principle to a lot of things, especially sexuality. If you have the birds and bees talk, great, but are you having follow up conversations about all the other things that are now stirring and the questions that they have? Are you a safe place to discuss things that they learn from school or learn from their friends? And so I think that that principle applies to a lot of things, but especially sexuality and social media use and a lot of other very challenging things.
Speaker 1:So many things body image of eating habits take your pick. And that's all of us. And I think sometimes parents have this idea that they can kind of decree something and then it's done and they don't have to revisit again. Or if they have to revisit again it's because of a moral fault in somebody else.
Speaker 2:So I think what people may initially then feel is, if I have ongoing conversations about these things, I have to become an expert on them. I don't have the capacity to do that and I would say to them no, you don't have to be the expert, you just have to be a safe place to talk. You have to have curious questions about where they are, and so to some level that's a very broad statement of the what to do. But to be open, safe and curious, I think, are maybe starting steps for their guidance of how to do it. But then, as we go into some of the APA's guidance, what more do we want to share from there?
Speaker 1:The big thing that they highlight is to have open, ongoing discussions about the impact of what they're saying.
Speaker 1:So you're along with the APA. I'm thinking about tailoring access to your kid based on where they are in their developmental journey and also just where they are as kids. Not everything is equally tempting or equally problematic to all people, and all of us, as humans, deal with temptation. Not all of us deal with the same temptation. I get, for example, for games, particularly freemium games, that pay and you get extra coins to do this thing or things like that.
Speaker 1:I'll do a little bit of that, but I just find it irritating in the end and it doesn't fire off my dopamine receptors like it does other people. And so, for example, my wife will, for Lent, at times will give up games on her phone Because it is something that can suck her in, and it doesn't do that for me and so it wouldn't be a reasonable fast for me to take because it really doesn't represent me giving up a whole lot. But understanding your kid, see, looking at their habits, looking at having ways to ongoing monitor If you're using an iOS system device or an iPhone, there are a lot of built-in things to manage screen time, to manage access to apps, to manage certain timing for apps. There are a lot of outside softwares, because StoDio and Covenant Eyes are ones particularly for they were designed for a lot of things like pornography exposure, but they have the ability to engage with and set limits for other sort of access to things.
Speaker 1:What else does the APA recommend? Looking at you know what are the exposure of things. Looking at you know the navigation of what you know. All apps are equal. I don't spend a lot of time teaching about individual apps, partly because they change and what's kind of hip and hot you know becomes different so quickly and I'd rather teach people kind of a method or a mold to think about things more holistically versus what's the latest thing.
Speaker 2:But I think that's a as far as individual apps go, even back to the developmental stage of your child is to consider what content would they access there and are they ready to have full access to that type of content?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and not all apps are equal. But I think a further thing this isn't from APA, but this is, you know, to recognize the developmental context socially that somebody said I was talking to a parent fairly recently and they were talking about the frustration with Snapchat, because Snapchat one of the things that it creates really bad is a lot of FOMO, the fear of missing out, because the way that app functions in streaks, it really kind of encourages immediate engagement and this idea of being away from it's problematic. But this parent was talking about this was how, like study groups for her child were doing, yeah, like it wasn't over text message, it wasn't over email, they were navigating a group assignment over Snapchat and then it becomes like, well, I don't feel I can take this for my child because they need it in this way and so it's ongoing. Realizing that to really handle this and this is for those who are in church leadership, this is my challenge to you you have to be able to be willing to put the effort to create alternative ecosystems for this to work. It's really hard to do this and sustain it as an island, as a family or as a parent. In this you can do good things, you can do some things in it, but you don't get to step out of this, you don't get the excuse to say, well, they know, they know what they need, they know better. There's so many kids that will talk about and this came out of a lot of the APA's research Kids saying I'd hate this, I don't feel I can stop or I'm also fearful of this being taken away from me, but I hate how it makes me feel. As we're getting close to wrapping up, I do want to end with the scripture, because that feels, and this is Flippines 4, 8 through 9.
Speaker 1:Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever's true, whatever's honorable, whatever's just, whatever's pure, whatever's lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any moral excellence and if there's anything praiseworthy, dwell on these things, do what you have learned and received and heard from me and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you. That's good. These are. And to extend this further to the adults listening to this, think about your own social media use. Does it reflect things that are praiseworthy, things that are good?
Speaker 1:You may not be engaging in pornography, you may not be engaging in things that are more overt, but think of your social media use. What does it do to your soul? Do you come away from how you interact on social media more angry, more judgmental, less patient? Are the fruits of the spirit being manifested in how you choose to engage in things? I think of one person close to me. They spend a lot of time pulling up kind of deep state conspiracy things on YouTube. And my challenge to them and go. I'm not even questioning you if every one of these things true or untrue is you spend so much time doing this? What is this doing to you?
Speaker 2:Is there a level of contentment that you come away with?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's the biggest thing. Do you find that what you're doing does it make you more present in your relationships? Does it make you more content in your physical being? Does it make you more content in your relationship? Does it make you more content in the level of material possessions you have and that goes back to the immobesty connected to well we often. The world is constantly trying to present us with ways to see ourselves and to be dissatisfied because part of the economic systems that are around us is offering us, in exchange for money, the solution to your feeling of discontent.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's what I got on this map.
Speaker 2:Well, so my final thought would be that we, as I was reflecting on my own journey earlier, I did have to remove it to allow space for these things that we're talking about, for me to reflect on this passage and I may never come back to it, but I may come back to it in the future and so I don't want to say that this is totally removed, but I think, for all of us to assess how is its impact in my life? Is it producing the things that are on this, on the scripture? And then, more so, if I have any influence over adolescence, whether they're my child, I'm a youth worker, a teacher, a pastor, a counselor. How do I speak into this to help them understand how to navigate it? So that's the beginning of this conversation for everyone as we talk about it.
Speaker 2:We'll have more conversation as it relates to social media as we move forward, but we appreciate the time that you've given us to talk to you about it today, so we will look forward to talking to you again and until next time, farewell Later. Thank you again for being a part of our latest episode of Church Psychology. If you have enjoyed it, we hope that you will share this episode with others in your life, and please do remember to follow, like and or subscribe to Church Psychology wherever you're finding us and leave us a review. We'll look forward to connecting with you again soon.