'Be a parent': Debate rages over how to tackle teen technology use

When Meta, the parent company of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, announced it would introduce Instagram account restrictions for teenagers, particularly those under the age of 16, many viewed it as an overdue response to long-building frustrations from parents, elected officials and public health experts.

Instagram, after all, along with TikTok, is one of the most popular apps among teenagers, commanding significant cultural cache and, therefore, an incredible amount of attention from younger users seemingly glued to their smartphones.

Meta's new account policies will automatically limit who can contact teenage users of the platform and place limits on the content they can see. Users under the age of 16 will need permission from a parent to change the default settings, Meta said.

The move from Instagram came months after the US surgeon general, Dr Vivek Murthy, announced his desire for social media platforms to have a warning label. The call was in part due to increased concerns about the potential effects social networks might be having on teenagers and younger children.

Instagram announced its new policies in a year in which social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation, remains near the top of several best-seller lists. In Mr Haidt's view, smartphones, screen time and social media created a perfect storm, which in turn led to a significant increase in mental health challenges among young people.

Instagram's teenage account protections are to be introduced first in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, while they will take effect in the EU later in the year. The rest of the world, Meta says, will start to see the features in January.

In the meantime, debates about the features have added to overall discussions about screen time, potential addictions among young people, and what can be done to help. In June, entrepreneur and social media content guru Gary Vaynerchuk, weighed in, suggesting social media platforms and major tech companies were not to blame.

“Be a parent and take it [smartphone] away, delete the app, moderate your child,” he said. “I think we have a parenting pandemic. What I'm fascinated by is that we are in a generation of parenting that is not willing to have children face consequences and ramifications for their actions. I think that's our issue.”

Those debates, which show no sign of subsiding, have created something of a conundrum for parents around the world, as they face a balancing act with their smartphone-equipped teenagers who use social media, but also spend a disproportionate amount of time on the platforms.

In the UAE, mental health expert and behavioural scientist Assia Nait Kassi, said there was an increase in concern among parents about how much time children and teenagers spend looking at screens. But at the same time, there is a sense of backlash brewing in terms of smartphone shaming.

"Here in the UAE and in the region, there's a sense that technology is an important part of the upbringing and an important part of the educational journey," she said, noting that many parents view technology as a way for pupils and students to stay ahead in a competitive world. "Technology can create job opportunities in the long run for children."

To help guide parents amid an increasingly noisy debate about screen time and smartphones, Nait Kassi, a co-founder for MentalEdGroup, a mental health education organisation in the UAE, has started hosting workshops called Screens and Scenes.

"We look at it from a few perspectives ... there's more than just one way to look at this issue," she explained. "What we need is digital literacy, we need people to be screen wise and not screen absent."

She noted that the recent collective push around the world for bans on young people using social media and smartphone are not necessarily backed by science.

Some schools in the UAE, and others around the world, have sought to take a more active role in limiting screen time. Gems Winchester School in Dubai has introduced lockers where pupils can store their phones to ensure they are not distracted in class. Raha International School Gardens Campus in Abu Dhabi and Dubai British School Jumeirah Park are set to announce similar policies.

Yet even these actions, Nait Kassi says, have had a ripple effect on parents. "I had a mum say, 'They don't do the phone at school any more, but I used to talk to my child in the car and instead, now he needs to catch up with all of these notifications because he didn't do that at school,'" she said.

Speaking to children or teenagers in this instance, is critical, she added. She recommends that parents potentially block out 10 to 20 minutes for smartphone use, while reserving the remainder of a commute to discuss the school day or other topics.

"You can pick up your children 10 minutes later if needed, allow them to go through phone notifications, and then the car ride home can be yours again," she said.

As for the Instagram teenage user policies, she said some of the features, such as a sleep mode that disables Instagram notifications between 10pm and 7am, are long overdue. She also warned that Instagram is just one app in the overall social media arsenal.

"It's only Instagram and there are so many apps around now," Nait Kassi said. "Parents need to be aware of what apps their children are using and understand why they're using them. They need to have bilateral conversations, it doesn't have to be a unilateral conversation."

She also said there were more simple steps with less nuance, such as parents refusing to allow their children to have a smartphone until they are 14. "Autonomy comes at the age of 14 and they can understand digital literacy better," she explained.

In terms of legislation being proposed in various countries, municipalities and school systems that seek to bar children from using social media platforms or various iterations of mobile technology, Nait Kassi cautioned that bans without much scientific backing could do more harm than good.

"If a ban is paired with a digital literacy aspect in the curriculum, it would be more effective," she said. "Solely, a ban could work against us because they [teenagers] would find ways around it."

Parents, she said, are also facing a completely different world to the one they grew up in, so to think screens or smartphones should not be a part of that world is naive. "Just because someone allows their child screen time does not mean they don't love their children. We need to have a nuanced conversation so we can follow a healthy life with healthy outcomes for all," she said, emphasising the need for digital literacy for both parents and teenagers, along with involvement from schools, government regulators and technology companies.

"We need to listen to different perspectives and listen to each other," she said, stressing that one-size-fits-all solutions, although tempting, are ultimately not the best way to find a balance.