Digital Well-being for Youth

Into the Fold: Issues in Mental Health

By some accounts, young people's relationship to technology is unfolding crisis. It is now commonplace for adults to lament the “screen time” of young people and worry about its effect on their social lives and mental health. In 2023, the American Psychological Association issued a health advisory focusing on adolescent social media use, and the U.S. Surgeon General has said that social media can have “a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents. There is evidence that social media may contribute to issues like depression, anxiety, toxic social comparison, sleep problems, body image issues, and disordered eating.”

But is that the whole story? And if there is real cause for for alarm, what should be done? Dr. Carrie James and Dr. Emily Weinstein are co-founders of the Center for Digital Thriving at Harvard University. In their book Behind Their Screens, Emily and Carrie draw on a survey of more than 3,500 teens with the objective of adding to our understanding of teens’ online lives. In this episode we explore how young people navigate our increasingly networked world and how we balance safety, empathy, and technology in response.

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