Social media bans should be for everyone

It was the last day of school before winter break and Aiden and his eighth grade classmates were playing a game mafia. However, after the first round, one of Aiden's friends got bored and stopped playing.

Another friend called him a “screenager,” Aiden recalled — “Your attention span is so short.”

The incident was an example of a larger trend, Aiden, one of several Scholastic children's reporters I spoke to them for this story and they told me: “People have less fun and enjoy being around other people and they prefer using technology.”

Five years ago, the national conversation about young people and social media was dominated by concerns CyberbullyingOnline harassment and Body image. The biggest fear among teenagers and adults these days is… Brain rot: The idea that social media sites, particularly short-video platforms like TikTok, have undermined young people's ability to pay attention to something for more than a few seconds.

But as much as users of all ages seem to agree that the rise of short videos poses problems for young people and society, few agree on a solution. Social media bans like the one, the one came into force in Australia were taken earlier this month There is optimism in some circlesbut many are skeptical.

“That won’t work,” he said Sameer HindujaCo-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center and professor of criminology at the Florida Atlantic University. “The youth will bypass them.”

If anything, the shift to short-form video is a reminder of how difficult it is for parents and policymakers to keep up with the changes in young people's digital lives, and how difficult it can be to solve or even identify problems that arise from a technology as ubiquitous and ever-changing as social media.

The short video revolution

It's not your imagination: young people today are spending more and more time watching short videos on their phones. For children aged 0 to 8, the amount of time they watched content on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts increased from an average of 1 minute in 2020 to 14 minutes in 2024 Common Sense Mediawith older children likely to post higher numbers.

As with all media, these videos vary in quality but have caused particular concern Parents and researchers alike. A recent review Research on short videos found a link between consumption of such content and poorer cognitive performance, particularly in the areas of attention and attention inhibitory control.

Rapid-fire videos accustom young people “to short content,” he said Gloria MarkProfessor of computer science at the University of California Irvine and author of the book Attention Span: A Breakthrough Way to Restore Balance, Happiness, and Productivity. “They don’t have the cognitive stamina to spend longer with the material.”

Educators regularly complain that students no longer have the attention span for it read a book or listen to a lecture. “I had to adapt the way I cover the material in, say, a three-hour course,” Hinduja said.

These complaints are largely anecdotal, but are repeated by young people themselves. “The attention span has decreased significantly due to the short content,” 13-year-old Evy told me. “If you don’t like the video, just scroll until you see another one.”

The problem with banning kids from social media

While most people agree that small video distribution is a problem, few agree on a solution. Australia's new law that supporters hope will be fought Loss of attention span as well as bullying and other problems require platforms such as YouTube and TikTok Weed out users under 16 years old. But teenagers quickly fled to platforms like Yope and Lemon8 that were not covered by the original ban, sparking fears among some an endless game of “whack-a-mole.” when new options emerge to replace forbidden ones.

Mobile phone bans in school that exist received a lot of positive press In the United States, young people told me, they have developed their own version of Whack-a-Mole. Aiden's school in Los Angeles implemented a ban last year, and now he's noticing more students playing sports at lunchtime, he said.

But as kids lost their phones, they also spent more time on their laptops, Aiden said. “They would find their way back to technology.”

Experts are also worried that bans like the one in Australia will prevent children from marginalized groups such as LGBTQ+ youth from connecting with one another or finding resources. “It will deny young people access to certain information that could be useful to them,” Hinduja said.

How can we fix what phones are doing to us?

Every adult with a smartphone knows this scroll often feels bad – but translating that feeling into clear and actionable policy, and targeting that policy particularly at young people, has proven extraordinarily difficult. There isn't even conclusive research showing that social media is harmful to mental health, Mark said, in part because it's so difficult to separate the effects of social media from the effects of all other aspects of modern life.

But as I talked to kids about their phones, one thing became clear to me: Their relationships with social media aren't all that different from ours. They enjoy watching videos that they like. Aiden mentioned sporting highlights, for example. But they spend more time on the phone than they would like and are looking for ways to save time.

“When you first start, you’re happy,” 13-year-old Xander told me. “But when you get out, you're kind of exhausted because you think, I could have done so many better things than scrolling on my phone.”

So the most effective reforms may be those that apply to all of us – not just teenagers or children. Instead of age-related bans some experts recommend broader reforms to social media platforms, such as stronger harassment reporting mechanisms or restrictions on targeted advertising.

12-year-old Leyla suggested an even more radical solution: banning the infinite scroll. “I would definitely hate to see scrolling eliminated because while I enjoy scrolling, it will definitely make people less addictive,” she said. In fact, such a ban has been proposed in the past Republican Senator Josh Hawley.

Such blanket changes would be harder for young people to circumvent than age restrictions and would also benefit us all. Finally, Small videos confuse our brains to.

In the absence of legislation, children and adults alike have tried various tricks to wean themselves off their phones. When Aiden and his colleague Sara, a children's reporter, asked their classmates for strategies to curb phone use, one said, “I set a 15-minute block on YouTube and Instagram every day to keep myself under control.” Another added: “Before I watched YouTube while doing homework. Now I give my parents my phone while I do my work.”

Xander had advice that any psychologist would approve of: “Take a walk, go to the gym, go to the library, do something productive,” he said. “The main reason most people turn to their phones is because they have nothing to do.”

And when parents were asked how they could help, Aiden responded with a harsh truth: “It's important that they don't use social media so much. They shouldn't be on the phone all the time to be a role model for their children.”