Instagram

It’s not just that social media takes up the time that kids and teens used to spend doing healthy, age-appropriate activities.

It’s that social media, for countless kids and teens, has become their social life.

This is why in the book I call it “the phone-based childhood.” Because it’s not just the opportunity cost of five hours on average, per child, per day. Social media shapes how they think, how they speak, how they relate to others, how they sleep, how they pay attention, and whether they read books and develop hobbies.

And most important — it shapes how they see themselves and the world. In contrast to in-person communication, posting on social media is asynchronous, impersonal, and one-to-many. Instead of sharing a secret with a friend, one-on-one, to post online is to maintain a personal brand.

Teens confess they sometimes don’t want to go to parties because they will probably be photographed, and that creates extra pressure. Many kids worry about the permanence of their posts, the possibility that anything they say could go viral, or the risk of being mocked.

In childhood and adolescence, kids are meant to make mistakes — lots and lots of low-stakes mistakes. Social media takes that away, because social media is high stakes. And the pressure it creates is making kids miserable.

✍️ Comment “Time Australia” for my recent article in @time about this.