Interviews by Amy E. Schwartz
DEBATERS
Russell Shaw is head of school of Georgetown Day School in Washington, DC.
Anya Kamenetz is a journalist whose books include The Art of Screen Time: Digital Parenting Without Fear. She writes The Golden Hour, a substack about parenting.
INTERVIEW WITH RUSSELL SHAW
Should there be broad limits on teen social media use? | Yes
Should there be broad limits on teen social media use?
Yes. Collective action around social media can be tremendously important for kids. There’s research suggesting that if you ask students what they would pay to keep access to their social media, they’ll name a price; but they’d pay even more to lose access to their social media if everyone else lost it too. The implication is that they feel trapped—they don’t want to miss out on being where everyone is, but they can clearly see the benefit of global disarmament, so to speak, if everyone had to interact in person and not online. Face-to-face interaction is incredibly healthy for kids, and the skills to make it happen are waning.
There’s a growing understanding of the ways in which social media and cell phone use are harming kids, and it’s good that parents are coming together to problem-solve. We’ve begun talking to families about a program that’s catching on nationwide called “Wait Until 8th,” specifically aimed at having a large group of parents agree not to give their kids smartphones before they finish eighth grade.
We’ve clamped down on their freedom in the physical world but given them free rein in the virtual world.
It’s fascinating that some of the most draconian responses to kids having access to cell phones and social media come from among parents in Silicon Valley. They understand the technology and the way it is masterfully designed to addict kids to spending time and attention on screens, so they don’t let their own kids have access to it.
Should schools ban social media use during the day?
We just made the decision this year at Georgetown Day School not to allow phones in the high school. We had had a lot of requests from parents to do this, since many wanted their children off social media and smartphones but worried about isolating their child. Of course, kids can still get on Instagram and other social media via their laptops, and they can be pretty clever about finding ways around bans to specific sites, but it’s not a bad idea to create hurdles and obstacles to that behavior.
What do you think of Australia’s new law saying no one under 16 can have access to social media?
It’s interesting. Sure, you could go online and say you’re 17 even if you’re not, but the law creates a shared norm about what’s acceptable, which the community can try to uphold. I’ve never been to Australia, so I don’t know the cultural context. But we need to figure out a healthier relationship to technology than we have, and some kind of regulation absolutely makes sense, and experimentation until we arrive at what works. So I don’t think it’s a terrible idea.
If you could magically turn back the clock for teenagers to before social media, would they lose anything?
I think there would be far more gained than lost. That said, there are kids with unique life experiences, passions, identities, struggles, who can connect online to other people who share their struggles. If you are a 13-year-old in Duluth, MN, with cystic fibrosis, you can find countless other 13-year-olds wrestling with the same condition around the country and the world, and that can be very affirming.
What should we be offering teenagers aside from social media?
Purposeful work in the real world. Jobs, internships, opportunities to do oral histories with senior citizens, to serve in communities where kids need educational support—there are a million ways in which we can engage young people with work that creates a sense of pride and authentic learning grounded in real human interaction. I’ve seen the number of hours kids spend scrolling through TikTok, and it’s just lost time.
Has social media changed childhood’s essential nature?
Yes. It’s a far more mediated version of childhood and a far less tactile, sensory, in-the-world experience. Most profoundly, it has taken the exploration of freedom and autonomy in the real world—riding your bike in the neighborhood, meeting your friends—and moved that experience into a virtual space. Some kids don’t have confidence in navigating the world—how do they solve a problem, or even go to a store? Meanwhile, in the virtual world, many parents have no idea what kids are seeing and engaging with. There’s early exposure to pornography, violence, all sorts of things.
Research suggests that kids are using illegal substances less, that there’s less teen pregnancy, less drunk driving—risk-taking behaviors that have diminished because the kids have moved their risk-taking behavior online. But the mental health consequences are arguably more dangerous online, or at least it’s a different kind of danger. I think we as parents have made a mistake. We have worried far more about safety in the real world, about kids walking to the park or taking the bus on their own, and so we’ve clamped down on their freedom in the physical world but given them free rein in the virtual world. We should try to fix that balance.
INTERVIEW WITH ANYA KAMENETZ
Should there be broad limits on teen social media use? | No
Should there be broad limits on teen social media use?
No. It definitely shouldn’t be banned by law. I don’t have any problem with individual parents restricting their kids’ social media use or forbidding it; that’s for parents to decide. There might be cases where specific kids are having a problem, where it might be useful to create a rule. But it shouldn’t be done as general policy.
Should schools ban social media use during the day?
Everybody needs to do what they can to find balance. It’s OK for schools to say, “We don’t want to have this fight with you, we just want you to pay attention in class.” There’s no reason to be on Instagram in math class. But that doesn’t mean a school has discharged its responsibility to teach responsible digital behavior. Students are still on social media and doing these things out of school, and they need to learn to do them responsibly. I’m writing a white paper now on best practices for schools for teaching good digital citizenship and social media use, and it’s really difficult. Schools are perpetually understaffed, to begin with; it’s just one more thing for them to do. Often the school librarian will end up teaching digital citizenship, or it’s put in the health curriculum. Some schools that are doing the best job are enlisting the kids in the conversation, through student councils or student-teacher dialogue. Kids have lots of ideas about what they want their digital lives to look like.
What do you think of Australia’s new law saying no one under 16 can have access to social media?
It’s the classic moral panic, and the evidence base for it is not there. So it’s not good policy from that perspective. The platforms will probably be responsible for “age gating,” or age verification, which will place red tape between people who want to use social media and their ability to access it. Will that prevent all social media use by teens? Obviously not. There’s impersonation, lying about your age, taking your parent’s driver’s license, and so forth, so kids who are very motivated will be able to get on. On the flip side, people who aren’t under 16 but are undocumented, or for whatever reason don’t want to share their ID with the platforms or the government, will also be stopped from using social media.
If you could magically turn back the clock for teenagers to before social media, would they lose anything?
Kids who are queer or neurodivergent, or isolated for some other reason, or who may have trouble making friends in school, often find friends and community through social media. We tend to assume that every student has an ideal family life, with parents who will ensure they will be safe. But in fact, lots of kids are cut off from their parents, or not communicating well with them. So being able to be connected with people online can be a true lifeline. There’s also a civic engagement dimension—teens can discover new passions online, and can end up making dance videos or designing video games.
For teens, being able to be connected with people online can be a true lifeline.
Bans on social media for teens reduce those opportunities. They also may deny kids the chance to explore social media while they’re still under the guidance of their (hopefully loving) parents. If they start using social media at 16, they’ll be unleashed on it completely naïve, at a time when they’re not living at home as much or are about to move out, and they might plunge right into the worst impacts of social media because they don’t know how it works. Social media is about how to be in communication with other people, and there’s an argument that that’s best learned gradually over time.
What should we be offering teenagers aside from social media?
I’m a huge advocate for kids having autonomy in their lives and in physical spaces. We should figure out ways for kids to have more control over their world, instead of social media being the only place they can be together. They need to be less circumscribed and have more agency, so they’re not just doing scheduled activities.
Has social media changed childhood’s essential nature? I’m wary of claims like that; we’re so blinkered by nostalgia and moral panic. As a teen and a tween I probably watched 40 hours of TV a week, and I grew up totally fine. I’m old enough to remember the panic about violent video games, and we don’t talk much about those now. A hundred years ago, “teenager” wasn’t even a recognized life stage. The high school graduation rate didn’t pass 50 percent until after the Great Depression. People just went out and started living their lives. So I don’t know what the “essential nature” of childhood is.