Source: Liza Summers Pexels

Parents, you likely know that teen mental health is worsening on almost every measure. A recent CDC report found that 42 percent of high school students said they felt so sad or hopeless for the past two weeks that they could not go about their usual activities. Some 30 percent of female students reported seriously considering suicide. The younger generation is not simply more open to discussing mental health difficulties, even objective measures of anxiety and depression have risen sharply this past decade.

Such a national emergency has drastically lowered the quality of life for millions and taken the lives of thousands of others with no apparent end in sight. To prevent this from becoming the new normal, we must confront what is undermining teen mental health.

A major culprit

Parents, researchers, and even the U.S. Surgeon General identify technology—specifically smartphones—as a major source of the problem. Indeed, the progressive decline in teen mental health began around 2010-2014 and coincided with the advent of the smartphone. One recent report based on 27,969 participants worldwide links the age at which kids receive their first smartphone with worse mental health. The percentage of females experiencing mental health challenges decreased from 74 percent for those receiving their first smartphone at age 6, to 46 percent for those receiving it at age 18.

 

Source: Brett Sayles Pexels

There are numerous reasons why smartphones and their never-ending access to social media compromise teen mental health. As psychologist Jean Twenge has noted, they heighten the emphasis on body image (especially for girls), induce a fear of missing out and being socially excluded, encourage incessant comparisons with others, and create constant anxiety about getting likes, followers, and quick replies, to name a few. And that’s not to mention the sleep disruption they can cause.

Smartphones and the Prisoner’s Dilemma

On an individual parenting level, the solution seems straightforward: simply prevent your child from acquiring a smartphone and limit their social media access for as long as possible. But parents face understandable pressure from their children to accelerate smartphone use. As more and more of their peers have access to smartphones and social media, adolescents without devices risk social exclusion and missing out on social interaction, no matter how ridiculous or artificial those encounters may seem.

To help parents better understand the dynamics of the situation, I think it is useful to draw a comparison to the prisoner’s dilemma paradigm (PDP). Like the smartphone dilemma, in the PDP, decision-making pressures often lead to a suboptimal outcome.

Here’s how the PDP works: Two suspects are arrested by police, and each can choose to confess or not to a crime; their decisions will determine the length of their sentences. If both stay silent, they will only be charged with possession of stolen property. But if one person confesses, that individual will be freed, and their accomplice will receive the more serious charge of burglary. The best outcome for both is to cooperate with each other and stay silent, but the possibility that the other will defect and confess often leads both to incriminate themselves.

If all parents delayed giving their children a smartphone until they were 18, everyone would benefit from cooperating as they always do in these PDPs. The teens would avoid the anxiety and depression brought on by intense smartphone use and would be less likely to feel social exclusion and deprivation relative to their peers.

At some point though, individual families may reason that they would benefit from not cooperating and from allowing their child a smartphone a bit earlier than others. Children from the defecting families would gain in popularity and social standing from smartphones and social media and would be able to connect more easily with others. The parents would be reinforced with less nagging from their children about giving them a smartphone. And parents may rationalize that their children are going to have access to a smartphone soon enough and that they will monitor their use closely.

At this point in the PDP, cooperating families are punished. Their kids become lower in status without a phone, are jealous of their friends, and lobby parents with increased complaints. It is easy to see how this would snowball. Soon enough, nearly all parents would defect and acquiesce to their children’s demands. The result is a race to the bottom where children acquire phones at a younger and younger age, experience greater depression and anxiety personally, and are surrounded by peers who also encounter greater mental health problems. As in any PDP, the collective gain from cooperating can be easily undone by individuals undermining the social contract and making a choice that brings immediate, personal gain.

As a parent who is only beginning to face this dilemma myself, I have empathy for those who have already confronted it. I feel essentially hopeless as if I’m being placed in a no-win situation beyond my control.

The Role of Motivated Reasoning in Turning a Blind Eye

 

Source: Karolina Grabowski Pexels

The other aspect of the dilemma, and what I’m especially sensitive to as a researcher of motivated reasoning, is what transpires psychologically within parents after they inevitably allow their children to have smartphones and social media access.

Do they stay engaged, remain cognizant of the disturbing societal trends, and become politically active about the issue?

How do parents react when articles such as this appear, or new studies are promoted that link smartphone use in children to negative outcomes?

Such information potentially creates cognitive dissonance: Beliefs that I love my children and want to promote their well-being are contradicted by the smartphone I allowed them to possess. For parents who are heavily active on social media themselves, the dissonance is likely more profound.

Dissonance creates guilt and shame, and we are highly motivated to rid ourselves of the negative emotions associated with it. But what can parents do at that point? They certainly can’t undo the act of giving them a smartphone.

One primary way to reduce this type of parental dissonance is simply to avoid it in the first place. Parents look the other way when hearing about how bad smartphones and social media are. It is too painful to digest. This is very common in dissonance reduction but has disturbing implications as such parents merely turn a blind eye to the problem.

Another likely option is to distort thinking about the issue, often in the form of rationalizations and justifications. Parents might convince themselves that their children will be immune to the negative effects of smartphones because of other favorable conditions. Or reason that they will carefully monitor their child and contain usage. Or justify that the negative toll of not having a smartphone was too great. And so on.

Avoidance and rationalizations are especially tempting for parents who personally engage in social media because a straightforward review of the damning evidence may be highly threatening.

In the end, my fear is that we are left in a situation where the group with the most vested interest in the issue may become numb, stay quiet, look the other way, and tell themselves lies. If anything, this indicates that legislation to restrict youth social media access is needed from those not in the grip of motivated reasoning to rescue those who are.

The Bottom Line

Parents need to stay engaged, resist the temptation to look the other way or rationalize allowing their child access to a smartphone and must acknowledge that everything is not okay.