Children and adolescents today are some of the first young people to grow up with social media and constant access to one another through smartphones.
While it may be easy for adults to say kids should just put their phones down, logging off isn’t always that easy. The way chemicals in your brain react to notifications and “likes” on social media is similar to developing a habit or addiction, one local neuropsychologist told us.
Even if teens haven’t felt social media impact them, they know people who have been negatively affected by it.
That’s why my colleague Eileen McClory and I recently dug deep into the impact of social media on mental health for our Mental Health Matters reporting project. We’re focusing this fall on the status, challenges and possible solutions in mental health in children.
When talking to teens who have been negatively affected by social media, we found it often worsened the problems and mental health challenges they were already struggling with.
Mental health experts, schools and families in the Dayton region talked to us about how they are fielding problems created by today’s modern world, while others continue to seek solutions.
Please let us know what you think. Email me at Samantha.Wildow@coxinc.com or Eileen at Eileen.Mcclory@coxinc.com.
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