Instagram has rolled out huge changes in a bid to protect teens, but these measures alone aren’t enough to tackle the dangerous consequences screen time can have on the adolescent brain, experts warn.
The social media platform, owned by Meta, has introduced a string of changes to account holders under 16 in a bid to better protect them from excessive usage, including new Teen Accounts. But Kris Perry, Executive Director of Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development, has raised concerns about the long-term effects of children and screen time as she says that on average, teens spend 8-10 hours a day of their free time staring at a screen.
The 60-year-old, who has worked in the industry for 30 years, has warned that this can have an overwhelming impact on crucial stages of their development – with their brains constantly evolving and absorbing new information – as interaction with the outside world is replaced. In the long run, the professor forecasts more crime and disruption as she argues that a child being glued to a device can have extremely damaging effects on their level of empathy, which could risk society lacking key values such as community, harmony, and cohesion in future.
It comes as a new Channel 4 documentary explores just how bad mobile phones can be for children in terms of their mood and sleep patterns. Two-part series Swiped, hosted by Matt and Emma Willis, tackles the timely issue of the impact of smartphones on children’s behaviour as the channel’s own bombshell research found children got an extra hour of sleep each night after giving up their devices.
They didn’t feel any less socially connected during the ban, but instead commented on having richer interactions with their parents and friends. Meanwhile, children reported a 17 per cent reduction in feelings related to depression and an 18 per cent reduction in feelings related to anxiety.
As of last month, Instagram account holders under 16 are automatically placed on Teen accounts, which means they are faced with restrictions by default. They’re automatically private, with their interactions limited, so only people they follow can tag or mention them.
There are also limits on who can message them, along with sensitive content settings limiting the type of content they can see. Teen accounts are also subjected to time limits, where they are sent notifications telling them to leave the app after an hour’s use, along with reminders to turn off the app to go to bed.
The changes come as former teacher and MP Josh MacAlister introduced a Private Member’s Bill on protecting children from harm caused by excessive screen time as he warned that children who are “doom scrolling” for hours a day on smartphones are at risk of widespread harm. Among his demands include raising the age of internet adulthood from 13 to 16, introducing statutory rules to ban phones in schools, strengthening Ofcom’s powers to protect kids and considering the design of phones for kids under 16.
Kris insists it’s too early to say how effective Instagram’s limits will be on a child’s development and safety, and has called for an opportunity to work with the platform to be able to study the change. “Are these changes enough to help kids 13 to 15? Maybe,” she told the Mirror.
“But then if you really pull back the lens and you think about childhood as being 0 to 18 or 0 to 25, it’s absolutely not. Because we know that that stickiness, that the device and the platforms have so expertly perfected, is impacting children of all ages. These changes don’t necessarily go far enough to address why a toddler is so glued to a screen and how it’s disrupting the developmental effort.
“The child should be expanding around self-management, self-regulation and, as an adult, these are critical skills to have to manage yourself in the workplace or in your relationships.” Reports show significant increases in screen time among teens, and in some cases, it’s as much as eight to ten hours a day.
“One thing that researchers have been pretty vocal about for a while now is how that displaces other developmental activities that are critical for children’s success,” the mum-of-four said. “Adolescents are replacing sleep, physical activity, and real life social interactions with a screen.
“As teens get older, that personal time becomes, like as an adult, a big part of how they metabolise the information they’ve been exposed to that day, how they reorganise their thoughts to prepare for the next day or exams or a relationship challenge or something like that. So if you’re on your phone, it might be very difficult to also manage all of the developmental challenges that are coming your way”.
Kris says displacement can exacerbate problems such as cyberbullying, harassment, mental health issues or hate speech, arguing that between the ages of 13 and 15 in particular – which she says is a very sensitive development period – teens can be more susceptible to peer-to-peer acceptance. “If your brain is sensitive and what’s being fed to you is disapproval or a sense of being left out, that can really be something that children are really not equipped to manage that well and might end up feeling really negatively impacted by it,” she explained.
“Your ability to discern whether something is truly negative or not or even true is still quite underdeveloped. And so your ability to say, ‘I’m being bullied’ versus ‘I feel left out, there’s something wrong with me’ is such a fine line. It would be challenging if you felt criticised.”
So why is social media so addictive for teens and adults alike? Kris says it’s the ‘sophisticated’ design features that keep users returning. For a start, there is the algorithmically curated content that serves users even if it’s not necessarily what they want to see. “But then they do see it, and it trains the algorithm to provide them with more and maintain their attention,” Kris added.
Then there is the device itself and how enticing it is to have a touch screen and multiple apps running at once, Kris says. The expert also cites a ‘reward mechanism’ in the brain, which is overused when a child is on a device, with a subset of children who are more susceptible to that experience. “They’re very motivated by the attention economy – that is their primary overarching objective when it comes to creating content and feeding content to teens. So when I see Instagram say, ‘here’s what we’re going to do now to mitigate some of the harms caused by our product’, it’s a step in the right direction.
“But we know how big the problem is and we don’t know if these few changes are sufficient to roll back what’s been done.” Kris’s fear about dependency on devices is that it can have a catastrophic effect on society as a whole. She worries that relying on a smartphone for engagement will underdevelop empathy, which is critical for cooperation, collaboration, and support.
“Instead, this time can be spent online feeling hurt, harmed, left out and aggrieved,” she began. “What I think could happen is over time is that our empathy is less than it needs to be to help us be resilient and cope with life and more importantly, even become a productive member of the economy, this greater civil society where we work together to create our lives in our communities.
“Without greater policy control on the platforms, we run the risk of children not having access to the developmental activities that might help them become the most productive adults they can be, and we might see shifts in the future around the ability to solve conflicts and analyse hard problems and support each other.”
She added: “You just feel a little heartbroken over what’s happened in these last ten years without all of us having a little bit more of an opportunity to think together about what we did or didn’t want kids to have before they had it.” Her hope is that more children and young adults will speak out about what they want from their apps and devices, as they have done on social media with other issues like climate change, where positive change has been made.
Her plea is also for tech giants to allow researchers to study activity to produce vital studies on the relatively new phenomenon of screen time. “We’ve seen children be leaders around particular issues so it’s really good to be reminded that there are ways teens can interact through social media in very positive, inclusive ways,” she said. “Instagram’s changes were not made unprompted.
“They’re the result of experts and advocates and policymakers and parents calling for change for years, with regulation being slower to come into place. I think we have to give some credit to those folks for working this hard for so long.” The parents of Molly Russell – who took her own life at 14 after being exposed to a stream of dark, depressing content on Pinterest and Instagram – are just some of the prominent voices in the UK on online safety.
Earlier this year, her dad, Ian Russell, warned about “unintended consequences” of the Government rushing to introduce “poorly thought-out policies”. Kris says his daughter’s death is “just heartbreaking”, adding: “Sadly there are so many other cases like that.” The expert highlights that the use of social media and smartphones places parents into a “very challenging role” – where they feel like they need to survey their child’s usage, usually at a time of adolescence where one of the hallmark features is becoming more independent.
Advice for parents
Kris says that organisations like the World Health Organisation have only provided guidance for very young children, meaning parents can’t always turn to trusted bodies for advice on how to handle screen time with their teens. “The best advice we have is balance and indication and thinking about how you not only protect but support your kids and give them room to build their own skills,” she said.
“Oddly enough, this challenge is really no different than any other parenting challenge that you face when you slowly but surely hand the reins over to your child to manage their own lives. And you do that knowing they’re going to make mistakes. Yes, they’re going to fail. They’re going to hit bumps. You have to be very patient and aware that their digital life is a very big part of their life and that you have to be their advocate and supporter, but also very open to hearing what it is they’re experiencing so that if they are hitting choppy water, you can help them with it.
“I don’t think taking an extreme stance – no phone, no technology – is realistic. Instead, you have to incorporate your support of their digital life into all of your other parenting efforts. You can have the conversation at a very young age about what this is or isn’t doing yet with their brain and why that may or may not be pleasurable and how you can manage that better.”
When asked how many hours a day is considered a ‘safe’ amount of time, Kris says she cannot say exactly for definite, as “every child is different.” Instead, she advises paying attention to how much free time, including sleep, is displaced by the use of technology.
“You’re looking for balance with their free time but not at the expense of schoolwork, family time, sleep,” she says. “It’s really important to make sure you’re prioritising the activities and personal needs of the child”.
And when it comes to an appropriate age to join social media, the expert says again that individual children have different responses and relationships with platforms. “With the right controls and parental supervision, a child at 13 can have a safe experience online. By the age of 16, their brain and their ability to manage their time online is greatly improved and so it does seem reasonable that they would be on social media.”
Kris also advises parents to be in the know about what websites their children are using and how much information about themselves they are sharing online, as another major concern lies with children’s data and privacy. If you’re concerned about how long your child is spending on their phone, she recommends using tools to manage their time and usage, such as turning off push notifications and, as Instagram has introduced, setting limits on their time on apps.
For help and support, you can read several guides produced by the institute linked here. Common Question – Are some types of screen time better than others? Common Question – How much screen time is too much? Common Question – Is my child addicted to screens? Parenting Tip Sheet – Digital Addictions: A Family Guide to Prevention, Signs, and Treatment