The Internet can be a risky place. There are endless feeds filled with posts that contain graphic sexual and violent content, glamorize eating disorders, encourage self-harm or promote discriminatory and offensive diatribes. People often share too much personal information with a too-public audience that includes cyberbullies and strangers with ill intent. And they also risk losing time: by spending hours online, they might miss out on experiences and growth opportunities that can be found elsewhere. These problems are particularly acute for children and teenagers, and new laws that attempt to protect youth from the Internet’s negative effects have their own serious downsides. Scientific American spoke with experts about the best evidence-backed ways to actually keep kids safe online.
Young people spend a huge chunk of their lives on the Internet. For most teens in the U.S., the bulk of their waking hours play out in front of network-connected screens, according to surveys from the nonprofit organization Common Sense and from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Kids younger than age 13 aren’t that far behind; they spend upward of five hours online daily.
Though the exact impacts of online activity aren’t yet well understood, it’s clear that what happens on the Internet does matter for young people’s well-being. “I don’t know that we can say ‘cause and effect’ at this point,” says Mary Alvord, a practicing psychologist who specializes in treating children and adolescents and is an adjunct associate professor at the George Washington University School of Medicine. “But we can make correlational statements,” she adds, noting that excessive time spent on social media has been associated with poor mental health among kids and teens.
Both the U.S. Surgeon General and the American Psychological Association issued health advisories earlier this year about potential harms of online social media to youth. Each advisory is clear: online activity carries benefits and risks, and more work is needed to understand and mitigate the downsides.