Brynn was about to fall asleep, phone in hand, still on TikTok. She couldn’t really explain why, but these short videos just keep her scrolling for hours on end. “The app TikTok runs my life,” she reflected. “I can sit there for hours on end just scrolling through this app. . . . I can’t even count how many times I have fallen asleep on TikTok. It has taken over my life.” Brynn has tried to cut back, “but it’s hard,” she explained, because “once you get a notification, you just want to go on it and look at what someone sent you, or what someone liked, or who followed you.”
Today’s technologies are intentionally designed with features that contribute to the pull of the screen. So it’s fair to say that it’s truly by design that Brynn feels like she can’t pull away. Graham shares the struggle. When we Zoomed to discuss digital habits, he wanted to emphasize the extent of his use by revealing how much time he spent on TikTok the previous week—but he worried about even saying the number aloud, lest his mom overhear from the other room. He typed into the chatbox—twenty-four hours—and then gestured as if to say: can you even believe it?
We can. Our research confirmed time and again that many teens feel out of control when it comes to some aspect of their tech habits. It’s not just TikTok. Behind their screens, beneath the explicit pleas for “five more minutes,” many teens worry about what it’s costing them. It’s easy for adults to assume all teens want unrestricted, around-the-clock tech time. The reality is more complicated as the tremendous opportunities of digital life for voice, connection, and more collide with persuasive designs and powerful developmental drives.
Apps, games, social media, and even devices themselves are cleverly designed to hijack focus.1 Features like the buzz of a new notification are strategically iterated to capture attention. As former tech insider Tristan Harris and his colleague Max Stossel like to explain to teens, it’s no mistake that notification flags are red. It’s far more annoying to see little red flags than, for example, little green flags. This subtly motivates the user to attend to them, which means opening the app and, voila!, the screen has won their attention.
Teens fear yet feel increasing dependence on devices. They say things like:
The most tricky part about growing up with social media is how dangerous and addictive it is. People are always glued to their phones, but so am I and I hate that. (fifteen-year-old)
I can’t seem to get off my phone and most of my time is on my phone. (thirteen-year-old)
I feel like I’m too interested in my phone instead of what’s happening around me. I wish that I didn’t use my phone so much. (thirteen-year-old)
These feelings of dependence are no accident. Long before Mark Zuckerberg was at Harvard creating the beta version of what would become Facebook, a psychologist named B. F. Skinner was at work in a lab on the very same campus researching how rewards influence learning. The wooden box he used in his experiments became known as a “Skinner box.”2 The box had a lever his lab animals could press to release food pellets. Skinner experimented with different reward schedules—releasing pellets in different sequences and intervals—to see how they influenced the rats’ behavior. Ultimately, his experiments demonstrated the power of unpredictable rewards. Boxes that were programmed to release food pellets unpredictably (rather than, say, every time the rats pressed the lever or even every fourth time) led to more frenzied tapping at the lever.
Skinner’s experiments demonstrated that rewards shape behavior. This is true not only for lab rats, but also for human beings. Skinner’s experiments are also a landmark illustration of the principle that we tend to pursue rewards vigorously and with intense, enduring zeal when we can’t predict exactly when and how they will materialize.
Technology companies routinely leverage variable rewards to create features that keep teens—and all of us—pulled in by our devices.3 In his book Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked, psychologist Adam Alter describes how the simple addition of the “like” button added the lure of unpredictable rewards to social media. A user never knows exactly how many likes they are going to get when they share a picture. They post and then wait to see their likes and comments amass. Eventually, the post becomes old news. Their followers’ positive feedback slows and then peters out. But they can share another post, which offers the promise of a new infusion. Will they get more likes than last time? Will the feedback feel as rewarding, or perhaps even more gratifying?
Adults are plenty susceptible to the lure of unpredictable rewards. Just think about all the people who can’t resist slot machines despite their accumulating losses. ($30 billion dollars a year is spent in U.S. casinos!4) Yet to tweens and teens, the kind of “rewards” social media promise are even more meaningful. Teens are primed to crave and value social validation, which is part of how they make sense of where they fit into their social worlds. Their biological sensitivity to social feedback5 makes them more susceptible to the pull of social media, which is at the ready with a promise of 24/7 access to likes and praising comments. Capacities for self-regulation and impulse control are also a work in progress during the teen years, which adds to the challenge of pulling away.
Variable rewards are at play in other ways too. Teens describe a “constant bombardment of content.” Apps like TikTok have an endless database of content to offer users. Some videos are pointless or boring or upsetting; others give a fleeting reward in the form of funny, relatable, or compelling content. Powerfully crafted algorithms are also learning with every click, swipe, and pause—taking careful note of what each user likes, what they skip over, and what they watch again. This enables increasingly personalized content.
Features like infinite scroll make for seamless content transitions. Snapchat is “so addictive because it’s so easy to go on to the next thing,” one sixteen-year-old explained, “And you never know what amazing thing could be on the next Story, and all you have to do is tap once and you get to the next thing.” Indeed, users never know what the next video will be, or how many they’ll need to watch before something somewhat “rewarding” comes up.
Similarly, Netflix and YouTube autostart the next video before viewers even have time to consider whether they want to keep watching. This design makes binge watching not just easy, but effortless. Tech companies know that natural stopping cues (like the end of a TV show) can give people enough time to pause and think: “Okay, that’s enough, I have other things to do.” Importantly, there is compelling evidence that teaching teens about “addictive designs” boosts awareness and motivates teens to actively control their social media use.6
Video games leverage persuasive design too. Well-designed games provide players with problem-solving opportunities that are “pleasantly frustrating.”7 The path through a game varies such that challenges are introduced right at the edge of a player’s skill or ability. This set-up is ripe for a flow experience. Flow, the psychological state of being in the zone, involves the kind of full-focus and absorption where one loses track of time.8 Challenge level is a key to finding flow: too easy is boring, while too hard makes further effort feel useless. Video games also typically provide immediate feedback and they’re goal-directed, which also enhance flow.
For developmental reasons, teens are especially susceptible to common persuasive design features. For example, social media exploits natural instincts like social reciprocity.9 In general, when someone does something for us, we’re inclined to return the favor. So, if we’ve gotten a snap or like on our post, it feels natural to want to reciprocate—and we need to keep checking our apps to do so. For adolescents, these digital features again collide with development. Adolescents are inclined to invest in peer relationships and they have still-developing self-regulation and impulse control.
“How do you stop?,” we ask Graham.
“I don’t,” he replies. “Ever.”
Nearly three thousand miles away from Graham, sixteen-year-old Diego is up late, staring at his screen. He’s on Discord, which is a chat app that was originally created for gamers like him. Discord supports multiple modalities: text-based, video, voice chatting, and easy screen sharing. As the pandemic persisted in the fall of 2020, Diego started a Discord server and invited his offline friends who were gamers. As he got more into gaming, he started meeting other teens online and adding them to the Discord server too.
Tonight, Diego is talking to Marcus on a Discord channel he created called “Gamer Minds Matter.” It’s a space for “getting things off your chest,” including “mental health issues, relationships (romantic or with friends/family), [and] sexuality” as well as any everyday thing “that is really bothering someone.” Diego knows from experience that Discord channels like these are a meaningful source of connection and support: “I have seen people who are struggling with something, [and] we’ll talk about it, and then they’re really happy [because] they realize that like five different people reached out. And they’re talking to them about whatever they’re going through, helping them through it. It’s really good . . . I can see it helping people.”
For teens, a powerful pull of the screen is social. Sometimes, using tech while hanging out is a conduit for connection or for creative expression—whether teens are in person and gaming together or mastering a new dance routine to share on social media. Yet two things are true: today’s technologies offer real, unprecedented opportunities for building closeness and their very presence can undercut connection. A key distinction is whether tech is pulling teens toward or away from the people they’re with.
Teens are all too familiar with feeling less important than others’ phones. “People are always just on their phones,” one thirteen-year-old explained, “so it’s practically impossible to have a real conversation without them being distracted.” The feeling is echoed by tweens and teens of all ages.
In real life when I sit next to my friends on the bus, they ignore me because they’re on their phones. (twelve-year-old)
I feel a little slighted if [my friend is] on their phone the whole time. Because I made time to hang out with them. And so why aren’t they making the same time for me? (sixteen-year-old)
There is a person in my life who is really important to me, and we could be out and about doing something and they sit on their phones a lot. It gets really frustrating when I try talking to them and they don’t realize it because they are so into their phone. (seventeen-year-old)
It would be a mistake to misinterpret digital distraction as evidence that teens don’t care about connection. Teens want and value strong relationships. Yet the pull of the screen and the impulse to keep devices at hand can be hard to fight. In some cases, the desire to appear digitally immersed is even strategic, as teens try to look busy rather than lost, awkward, or friendless in certain social situations. When phones are used in this way—like a “digital pacifier,” as some teens put it—they can send a message of unavailability that may backfire by preventing others from approaching.
There’s a term for tech-based interruptions: technoference.10 The cost can be steep. Allowing tech interruptions conveys the message that what’s on the screen is more important than whoever is off screen and in the room. Even diverting attention for just a moment can disrupt the quality of communication. Real people don’t come with pause buttons, so the ways we manage tech disruptions matter. So does the frequency with which we let them happen.
In romantic relationships, persistent technoference is related to lower relationship satisfaction.11 In conversations with friends, technoference leads to lower-quality interactions.12 For parents of young children, technoference is related to increases in kids whining, sulking, and acting out.13 Teens notice parental distraction, too, saying things like: “My parents tell me to put my [device] down and they immediately get back on their own phones.” Notably, adolescent kids whose parents’ attention is constantly diverted by tech describe their parents as less warm, loving, responsive, and comforting than do kids whose parents are less digitally distracted.14 Overall, technoference seems to change the tenor of our communication and, in turn, the quality of our connections.
Notifications are a key culprit in technoference. Constant notifications lead to teens feeling “bombarded with messages and pings.” They find themselves on both sides of this dynamic: struggling over the temptation to check a phone rather than staying focused on the person in front of them, but also feeling slighted by others who do so to them.
Cell phones are ubiquitous. They’re almost always nearby—if not in hand—when we are talking to others. We might think we can simply ignore or quickly dismiss silent notifications. But the beeps, buzzes, and notifications from smartphones are a distraction and a disruption—even if we don’t read or respond to the incoming messages and calls.15
Adults are generally alert to concerns that screens are disrupting sleep. This concern is also echoed by teens. Attention to sleep quality is warranted given its role in healthy development, learning, and mental health. Insufficient sleep puts teens at risk of struggles with emotion regulation and depression, concentration and learning, angry outbursts, drowsy driving, and physical issues that range from skin breakouts to catching colds.16
Smartphones are thought to disrupt the quest for a good night’s sleep in at least four ways:17
Researchers are still learning about the extent to which smartphones cause sleep disruption in these ways. We do know, though, that more than 70 percent of high schoolers in the United States consistently sleep less on school nights than the recommended eight-hour minimum.19 And screen time is, unsurprisingly, associated with shorter sleep duration and diminished sleep quality.20 In our own research, teens indeed describe how smartphones can displace sleep because “You get attached very easily and sometimes you just forget about everything and use it without any sleep.”
But another sleep-related issue is especially salient to teens: feeling compelled to wake up during the night to respond to inbound messages. “I have a tendency to wake up in the middle of the night and respond to people,” one high schooler acknowledged, “No matter what time it is, I will respond and then go back to sleep.” They’re not alone. More than one in three teens wake up during the night to check their phones.21 Some even take active steps to ensure it: “I wake up in the middle of the night to check my phone. I even have alarms set to wake up.”
Why go so far as to set alarms during the night? Both design features and social motives are implicated. Some teens set alarms to wake up because they’re playing online games that have timed periods for in-game tasks; if it’s in the middle of the night, they may set an alarm to ensure they don’t miss the window. Others check messages out of habit, or to ensure they’re sufficiently responsive to friends. As we’ll discuss in chapter 3, some teens feel obligated to be available 24/7. Especially in cases where a close friend is struggling, responding ASAP can feel like an absolute must. And yet, being there for a friend in this way can undercut personal well-being. Teens who sleep with phones in reach—and reach for them in the night—are bound to have low-quality sleep due to the repeated interruptions.
Sleep researcher Lauren Hale sees the importance of talking to teens about screens and sleep in ways that might especially get their attention. For example, adults might point to data showing that late-night tweeting among NBA players is associated with reduced performance (fewer points and fewer rebounds) in basketball games the next day.22
During the day, teens point to a constant influx of notification buzzes and distractions that can disrupt focus on schoolwork and other responsibilities. Just a few examples, in their own words: “You are constantly being alerted about everything, and it can be hard to focus”; “The most challenging part is getting distracted by games or friends when I’m trying to get work done”; “I tend to watch Stories on Snapchat to procrastinate my responsibilities. I do this daily and wish I was doing more productive tasks instead.”
During the pandemic, it was even easier to drift off-task from online school. School rules that prohibited phones on desks during class were suddenly irrelevant and unenforceable; phones could be mere inches away. On the computer screen, other windows, games, and text conversations could be layered behind and competing with Zoom lectures. Michelle, a high school senior, started watching TikTok during class and playing a game called Subway Surfers (reverting, as she put it, to her “fifth-grade self”). She explained: “I started watching TikToks also during class and I was like, wait, I’m supposed to be learning now, and I, like, totally forgot that.” Setting parental controls for herself helped. It wasn’t a perfect fix since she could find other on-screen distractions on apps she hadn’t restricted, or she could ignore and reset the time limits. But it generally helped her keep distractions at bay.
When we asked teens about managing digital distractions during virtual school, some used strategies like Michelle’s screen time restrictions. Others described needing to physically distance from their phones if they wanted to really focus. Still others admitted they didn’t try too hard to fight digital diversions because they were a welcome source of distraction or because they felt multitasking wasn’t interfering with their learning (“Sometimes, I’ll be on the phone with my friends while I’m in class and they are too, which I know is probably not a good thing, but it’s not, like, distracting me from working”).
In general, “successful multitasking” is a myth. Although it may feel effective, research tends to show otherwise. Unless one of the tasks is more or less automatic (like walking, folding laundry, or—in some cases—listening to background music), people are generally fooling themselves into thinking they can do things simultaneously with no costs.23 Instead, teens are actually “task-switching,” repeatedly diverting attention back and forth between (for example) Subway Surfers and their online World History class. In most cases, the price for task-switching is compromised performance on work or learning.24 Even if the same quality of work ultimately gets done, it takes significantly more time.25
Social apps aren’t always at odds with focusing on schoolwork, though. In some cases, they are appropriated by teens to directly support studying and learning. Two examples help illustrate this point: When Mary and her friends started playing Among Us, they downloaded Discord—the platform that Diego and his gamer friends use. They were initially using it to chat while they played the game. Soon after their friend group started using the app, “It’s Big Brain Time” was born.
“It’s Big Brain Time” is the name that Mary and friends gave to the Discord server they set up for study support. They started with a single study chat meant to “help each other with homework and keep each other motivated” as they navigated virtual school during the pandemic. Eventually, it evolved into a series of different channels that they used for different topics—even when some of them returned to in-person learning. Big Brain Time had one channel for STEM, another for humanities, and so on. If someone was struggling, she could post a question and get just-in-time support. It felt good to be the helper too. “I help a lot with AP Gov and English,” Mary explained, “and then a lot of my friends help me with math and science.” The Discord server functioned as a space for both informal peer tutoring and motivational support for staying on track. “Sometimes I go on there and I’m like, Oh my gosh, I don’t want to do school, and then my friends are like: ‘you’re doing school work!’”
A Discord study server is fairly unique, but the experience of leveraging technologies for peer-based study support is not. Allahna, for example, got distracted by her phone and by social media when she was trying to do schoolwork on her own. But whenever she and her friends organized a Zoom-based study group, she was able to focus. The virtual accountability was enough to keep her off social media and other digital distractions. It was screen time, yes, but not the kind of screen time that disrupted focus and learning. Sure, not all teens have friends who nudge them toward studying. But these details and distinctions are crucial if we want to understand when screen time supports rather than undercuts activities that adults agree are important.
These stories also connect, broadly, with studies of how online communities constructed for one purpose—whether it’s gaming, socializing, or pop culture fandom—are appropriated for other purposes that are beneficial to teens. For example: online fan communities for the Hunger Games book series have morphed into sites for “real world” activism and civic learning.26 The virtual study support groups also connect to a finding from developmental science: peer influence during adolescence isn’t just about peer pressure and negative effects, as friends can be good influences too.27
Tuning into the details of what teens see, read, and do in online spaces gives us a different view that helpfully spotlights the positives. We see inventive ways in which teens can flip tech from simply a source of distraction to a support for concentration and learning. These kinds of examples are helpful to bear in mind as we continue to dig into challenges and sources of distress.
As many adults now recognize, social media can serve up a never-ending stream of other people’s best moments. Popular apps can be like comparison quicksand, pulling teens into an envy-inducing scroll hole. Everyone else seems to be happy and thriving, not to mention surrounded by tons of friends.
For some teens, constant comparison to others on social media takes a distinct toll. It “lowers your self-confidence and makes you feel bad about yourself or like you aren’t as good as those around you,” one thirteen-year-old girl explained. Unchecked, these comparisons can even lead to what another teen (a sixteen-year-old boy) described as “a sense of self-hatred.” Girls exhibit particular vulnerability.28 Teens girls explain: “On social media everyone seems like they are far better and far ahead then me, which is stressful and makes me feel behind, unwanted and stupid.” Also: “One of the most challenging things I personally have had to deal with is comparing myself to girls on social media. I scroll through my Instagram and see models with perfect bodies and I feel horrible about myself.” But it’s not just girls who struggle in this way. Boys, too, acknowledge: “I do it a lot, and it makes you feel sad and bad about yourself”; “It gets [to be] too much.”
People vary in the tendency toward social comparison, both in general and in the context of their social media use.29 Teens marvel in describing friends who seem more or less immune to comparing and despairing. Especially in a world of social media, this individual difference holds a kind of protective power. At the same time, others find social media triggers constant comparisons that feel escapable only by avoiding the apps all together.
Essena O’Neill30 was an Australian teen with an “instafamous presence.” When she shuttered her social media accounts, she had a final message for her five hundred thousand-plus followers: “Social Media Is Not Real Life.”31 Essena began a mass deletion of all of her old Instagram posts—but first, she recaptioned her past photographs to admit that they were contrived.32 “Not real life,” she wrote under a beach photograph from roughly two years earlier. “Only reason we went to the beach this morning was to shoot these bikinis because the company paid me and also I looked good to society’s current standards.”33 To a smiling selfie, she added a self-mocking narration: “‘Please like this photo, I put on makeup, curled my hair, tight dress, big uncomfortable jewellery. . . . Took over 50 shots until I got one I thought you might like, then I edited this one selfie for ages on several apps—just so I could feel some social approval from you.’ THERE IS NOTHING REAL ABOUT THIS.” On her personal website, Essena elaborated. She wanted her followers to know that her smiling Instagram photos were false evidence of an enviable life. And she was quitting Instagram because, she said, “I no longer want to spend hours and hours of my time scrolling, viewing and comparing myself to others.”
This is one of the clearest findings about social media and mental health: people who routinely compare themselves to others on social media are more susceptible to everything from minor shifts in mood to depressive symptoms.34 When teens have a habit of comparing their “real” lives to others’ online versions of their lives, it can fuel a vicious cycle. One fourteen-year-old described it as a “dark spiral”: “Comparing your social life to others can make you feel excluded and lonely and that can send you down a dark spiral.” Helping teens who struggle in this way is crucial, whether it’s through helping them shift their interpretations and self-talk, shift the content they’re browsing, or even avoid a certain app altogether. Tech redesigns are warranted, too, since algorithms can propel the spiral.
Why is social media so ripe for comparison? Human beings—adults as well as teens—have a psychological tendency to take thin slices of information and craft bigger stories around them. This is part of how people learn and make sense of a complicated world. It happens even when the thin slices are obviously incomplete and skewed.35 So, a teen can look at a posted picture of someone who is smiling and happy and think “she’s a happy person with a great life,” rather than reasoning that she had a single fantastic day or moment (or that the photo was completely posed, or that its subject wasn’t actually feeling good at all). We tend to lean into the evidence we can see and give comparably little consideration to what we’re not seeing. This isn’t specific to social media. Yet the way people share online often provides a skewed, rose-colored view of their lives that’s ripe for comparison.
With respect to body image, social media creates a “perfect storm” for cisgender adolescent girls in particular.36 As Sophia Choukas-Bradley and her colleagues explain, body image concerns are already at a peak during adolescence. In an era of social media, developmental sensitivity collides with societal messages about gender and beauty on platforms that favor idealized self-presentations. Both teen girls and boys in our own research called out “workout videos” and “diet culture” on social media as key contributors to feeling insecure and like they aren’t “doing enough” to look their best.
Filters and other editing tools play a role in the perfect storm. In one study that compared the impact of manipulated versus unedited Instagram selfies of everyday teens, girls who viewed the manipulated photos reported lower body image afterward. The girls didn’t consistently detect when others’ faces and bodies were reshaped, which may have contributed to unrealistic social comparisons. But once again, teens differed in how susceptible they were to such images: the girls with a higher tendency to compare themselves to others were more negatively affected by viewing the doctored selfies.37
So: can we conclude that social media is always bad news for body image? Not so fast. Emerging evidence from research with youth who are transgender and gender nonconforming suggests an opposite pattern to what is often observed for their cisgender peers: better body image, not worse, for transgender and gender nonconforming youth who are especially tethered to tech.38 Why might this be? One possibility is that social media provides them with valuable opportunities for exposure to identity-affirming content and, as the authors of the study say, “being able to present (and be read by others) as one’s identified gender.” So body image issues are a relevant risk of social media use, but not for everyone.
Interestingly, recent years have seen a shift from predominantly picture-perfect highlight reels toward more authentic posting. Some influencers rise not despite this but because of it.39 Their appeal is relatability and “realness.” Influencers are very much the celebrities of teens’ lives. They speak directly and frequently to their followers, inviting them into the minutiae of their day-to-day lives. They unpack groceries from Trader Joe’s, livestream Fortnite games with funny commentary, show makeup routines (including unabashed, up-close footage of patchy “before” makeup skin), and describe their daily struggles with the kind of openness one might only expect to hear from a close friend.
The sheer quantity of content that influencers generate contributes to a sense of familiarity and closeness. What’s more, as researcher Crystal Abidin aptly describes, influencers build an “impression of intimacy” by engaging with their followers via resharing posts, giving shout outs, and liking or replying to comments. While teens can be heavily invested in the lives of those they follow, these influencers may have little or no idea the teen exists. Researchers refer to this one-way sense of intimacy as a parasocial relationship. If you’ve ever had a personal interest in keeping up with a celebrity, the concept of a parasocial relationship should resonate.
What many influencers have in common, teens explain, is that “they’re really funny and relatable. . . . They’re like, really real.” One trend while we were writing this book involved reposting perfect-looking photos that revealed moments “when you looked happy but were actually struggling.”
If teens are following people who are “really real,” is comparison no longer a concern? For some teens, a feed filled with authenticity indeed seems to provide a source of self-acceptance and inspiration. Watching an influencer post both ups and downs confers a sense that “downs” are part of any life. We also heard teens point to body positivity accounts that really do help them feel more body positive. But other teens say it’s even easier to negatively compare when people seem real. Essentially, if someone is sharing their worst moments and those moments don’t seem so bad—or the person still appears happy and confident despite them—it can create a sense that the poster is even more envy-worthy.
Here’s an example of one teen’s thought process: “Them posting their worst is what I consider my best. . . . Like [an influencer] last night was talking about how bad their skin looks that day. And then I looked in the mirror and I was like, ‘well, that’s what I consider to be my skin on a good day.’ And that didn’t make me feel good. And so, even people trying to be like relatable and like show their real self can still make other people feel bad because their real self is some of our best selves.”
Comparison serves an important function in human development, and it’s much more than just a process that leads to an individual feeling inadequate and insecure.40 Some comparisons are mood boosting and ego affirming: they help us recognize in ourselves particular talents, interests or traits we’re proud of, and qualities that make us unique. Other comparisons are motivating as they help us identify goals we want to pursue. Comparisons often happen effortlessly and even automatically,41 which is developmentally useful in the transition from childhood to adulthood.
The childhood years are marked by age-appropriate egocentrism and unrealistically positive self-concepts. This fuels overestimated beliefs about oneself that can be in turn endearing, frustrating, funny, and wonderful, like: “I am the best swimmer in the whole world!” As social and cognitive development proceed, we gain cognitive capacities that enable more advanced perspective taking and empathy, as well as a more accurate self-concept.42 In the process, though, there’s a new kind of awareness that we’re not actually the best swimmers in the whole world. We must reconcile these changes in self-understanding as we each develop a holistic sense of our identity.
Comparison isn’t confined to adolescence, but social comparisons are particularly stinging during mid-adolescence.43 Self-esteem tends to decline as people move from childhood into adolescence before it then increases from later adolescence into adulthood.44 All of this to say: comparison has a developmental component and there seems to be a predictable spike during the adolescent years.
Periods of uncertainty and transitions can also temporarily elevate negative comparisons, particularly when they’re accented by feelings of self-doubt.45 Being in a bad mood can also prime us for the kind of negative comparisons that leave us feeling worse about ourselves.46 Feeling low and then going on social media can activate the “dark spiral.” Teens described this as a familiar experience. In fifteen-year-old Ashlyn’s words: “I know like if I’m having a really tough day or something like that and I just scroll through my Instagram and I see influencers or my friends posting their happy moments, that just sort of makes me sad that I’m—it makes me feel isolated and it makes me feel like, oh, I’m the only person going through this.”
Jack can relate and acknowledged that it’s important to recognize how feeling down sets the stage for dispiriting social media experiences: “Personally when I’m very emotional and kind of feeling insecure and down myself and I go on Instagram and I see popular guys and girls that I’m crushing on—stuff like that—I get, like, super sad. So, I think that it’s important to know . . . when you shouldn’t [go on Instagram]. You know, you go on Instagram and compare yourself naturally to people you see, and that can be . . . really anxiety provoking if you’re already in a bad state.”
Social media can be the worst kind of magical mirror: reflecting back details that prod directly at one’s insecurities. We heard from teens how this plays out.
What do each of these teens—and others like them who feel the tug of comparison quicksand online—do about their feelings? It varies. Some teens recognize posts that bring them down and become vigilant about muting, unfollowing, or even avoiding certain apps. Some curate their feeds by following more of the kinds of accounts that affirm their identities, engage their interests, and inspire their goals. Some teens intuit the research finding that self-doubt can prime comparative thinking and realize they need to avoid social media during particularly vulnerable moments.
Other teens continue to follow envy-inducing accounts, and to browse through them during low moments, which only brings on more self-doubt. The reasons can range from a sheer lack of self-awareness to more complex relational concerns (social consequences of missing out on content or repercussions from unfollowing, for example). Thus, another source of variation in teens’ behind-the-screen experiences stems from how they navigate their vulnerabilities. What content and online experiences do they seek out, and what do they avoid?
A discussion of worrying content wouldn’t be complete without acknowledging the more explicitly harmful side of digital content. Once easily searchable, many platforms have made real efforts to block or flag self-harm, suicide-oriented, and pro-eating disorder content. Still, it’s possible to find accounts that strategically evade detection. Teens can use creative spelling (like “thi.nsp0o” rather than “thinspo” (thin-inspiration → thinspiration → thinspo) in more public online networks to share images that support disordered eating. Abbreviations and insider lingo facilitate a version of what danah boyd described years ago as “hiding in plain sight” on social media.47 For example, letter combinations like sw, cw, hw gw1, gw2, ugw each followed by a number might appear as gibberish to an uninformed viewer, but meaningful to a group of insiders who recognize markers for smallest weight, current weight, highest weight, goal weight 1 and 2, and ultimate goal weight.
Turning from the psychologically troubling to the ideologically extreme: White supremacist or neo-Nazi groups also hide in public by using certain sequences of numbers in their username or bio, called “dog tags,” to signal affiliation. And sometimes they’re not hiding at all, but instead choosing usernames and posting imagery that are unambiguously hateful.
Hateful and harmful online subcommunities are concerning, full stop. The content can be traumatic for teens who encounter it. And adults need to be on alert for teens who are vulnerable to being pulled in and radicalized. Yet it would be a mistake to assume all teens are engaging with the worst the Internet has to offer. Likewise, we shouldn’t overlook the kinds of screen time that support unequivocal positives ranging from learning new skills to supporting personal health and well-being. These bright spots exist in ways that are both routine and exceptional and emerge both by design and organically.
Health-focused apps fall into the “by design” category. The growing field of mobile health—“mHealth” for short—aims to use digital connectivity to improve treatment approaches and deliver evidence-based interventions to people anywhere and everywhere. User-generated accounts exemplify the latter—sides of social media platforms where wellness-oriented content proliferates (e.g., on Spiritual TikTok, Instagram accounts that promote self-care; recovery-oriented digital communities that support sobriety, eating disorder recovery, and more). Social media sites also become places for celebrating and validating identities, and for sharing resilience, resistance, and joy. Notable research by scholars Jessica Lu and Catherine Knight Steele, for example, examines online depictions of Black joy that counter dehumanizing narratives.48 And as Kishonna Gray’s research shows, for young Black men, online games can be vital spaces for connection and “solace” even as they navigate subtle and explicit forms of racism in larger gaming culture.49
Online gaming is interesting in that it’s alternately framed as a prime example of a “dark pocket” or a “bright spot,” depending on who you ask. Some adults worry that games are timewasters at best and downright destructive or violence inducing at worst. “Internet gaming addiction” is a common topic of adult concern too. Whether its prevalence really merits concern is hotly contested in the research, though. Plus, studies point to positives that range from social connection to improved aspects of cognitive performance.50
What do you need to know? The tailored, immersive experience teens find in gaming is indeed a recipe for prolonged focus.51 Some teens acknowledge this pull and worry about managing it: “It’s just scary to think that I only get one childhood, and I could accidentally slip into a habit where I just waste it away on some pointless game,” one fourteen-year-old reflected. “I am afraid people will lose the real world by spending too much time in the virtual world,” said another. “That terrifies me because we’re destroying our planet, losing our empathy for those around us, and forgetting the beauty of simplicity.”
At the same time, gaming represents a crucial site of social connection and exchanges with friends—a site that teens acknowledged became all the more important in a moment of pandemic-driven social distancing. Dante (sixteen-years-old) explained, “it helped me stay connected with my friends while we were unable to hang out in person.” He noted without equivocation: “gaming has benefitted me with my friend relationships.”52 When it comes to schoolwork, gaming isn’t just a distraction from homework, but also a way to unwind and recharge before digging in. It isn’t just a pull from family time, but also a source of shared play. “Gaming has really helped me relax, like a stress reliever,” sixteen-year-old Pablo explained. “It’s been helping me a lot and sometimes I play with my sister, like you know, connecting more with the family.” Playing together can meaningfully support bonds between parents and kids too.53
Screen time is so often framed as an adults-versus-teens battle that it’s striking to confront the reality of teens’ own worries about digital habits. Yet this we heard clearly: teens do not want to feel like their tech use is dysregulated or like they’re wasting their lives away because of it. Again and again they shared comments like these: “I don’t want to end up being on technology all of my life”; “I want to be able to socialize with people without turning to or checking my phone every minute”; “I want to enjoy my actual life, not be obsessed with what others think about my social media.” Many of our wishes for them are their wishes for themselves.
Like adults, teens struggle when it comes to managing the pull of the screen. They describe feeling pulled from sleep, from quality time with friends, and from other activities. And they worry about wasted time (“it wastes too much time from doing other things”; “you could be biking or hanging out with your friends instead of wasting time looking at Instagram posts”). They also describe valuing time outside yet struggling to get there (“I like to go outside and play sports and sometimes I just can’t get off a computer game”). Adults can help via nudges in the right direction.
And yet, adults need to recognize screen time isn’t always wasted time. Social media and multiplayer games are “important for us.” These technologies help teens deepen relationships, learn, feel connected to the wider world, and relax and unwind. Teens wish adults would acknowledge these benefits, rather than denigrating all screen time: “Just because we’re on a device doesn’t mean we’re wasting our time. We can be productive in other ways.” (With respect to multiplayer games, teens also asked us to please emphasize that these games “can’t be paused!”)
Teens want adults to cast a critical eye on our own habits too. Another repeated sentiment adults should take to heart: “I’ve seen family members get highly addicted to their phone or any device really and what I just want is for them to put their phone down and to actually talk and have conversations.” Teens crave focused attention from friends and family members, even as they may struggle to give it in return. They also see hypocrisy in tech-obsessed adults telling them to get off their phones—yet barely making it through a meal without pausing to check our own emails or “just quickly reply” to an inbound text, even when behind the wheel.
Today’s technologies are vital, valued, and hard for everyone to manage. When adults just roll our eyes at teens tethered to their devices, we miss opportunities to acknowledge what is a shared struggle to disconnect. This doesn’t mean we should just leave teens to their own devices, literally or metaphorically. But when we assume that teens want endless screen time and our sole job is to curb it, we miss opportunities to ask about what parts of their digital lives feel rewarding and what habits they wish they could change. We miss the chance to help them develop digital metacognition: moving from mindless use to more active awareness.54 Managing the pull of the screen requires a mind shift—for us all.