Teens, Social Media & Smartphones
I grew up in the age of social media becoming “a thing”. I’m a millennial, and can remember what my MySpace profile looked like after I first made it and the exact moment in my English class in high school that my friend helped me create my Facebook. At this time, little was known in terms of research on social media, but since then researchers have studied the effects social media has on a developing mind. “A 2023 Common Sense Media study indicated that 43% of children between the ages of 8 and 12, and up to 95% of teens, have their own smartphone, with usage ranging from a few minutes to 16 hours per day. They reported that teens receive an average of 237 notifications per day (with some as high as 4500 a day), and they engage with about 25% of the notifications received” (Constant Companion: A Week in the Life of a Young Person’s Smartphone Use). Shocking, right?