Q: Can you help put the social media phenomenon in context? How does it compare to previous phenomena that were assumed to have negative effects on children’s mental health, such as violent television programs or video games?
Unlike, say, the video games
of yesteryear, social media follows you from school to soccer practice
to your friend's house to your house; from the kitchen to the bedroom to
the bathroom. This phenomenon can exist and persist in most physical
spaces, as well as in a person’s mental space. Let’s say a classmate is
being mean to a student at school. Well, the student can get away from
that, at least temporarily, by coming home. But if a classmate is being
mean to a student over text or social media, they can’t get away from
it, even if they leave school. They will still be confronted or reminded
by it whenever they turn on or even look at the computer, the phone or
the watch they use to interact with others online. That makes it
uniquely powerful in terms of potential mental health effects. Corrie Pikul, Brown University
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