Episode 4: The Smartphone and Social Media Dilemma

Mar 30

Most of today's children, teens and young adults barely remember—or never knew—a world without smartphones and social media. Whether we like it or not, these devices and apps are a part of life but they don't have to control us. In this episode of Inside The Mayo Lab, David, Alexis and Meagen discuss their own challenges with smartphones and social media, as well as ways they've used them to find connection without sacrificing their peace of mind.

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David Magee: I am David Magee, and this is The Mayo Lab Podcast.
When we talk about the student mental health and substance misuse crisis that teens across America are facing these days, the quick one that everybody comes to in conclusion as a cause is Covid.
Teens, like many families, suffered during covid. And that's an easy place to put your finger and say that's the culprit. But I don't think it's that simple. Because something was happening in the lives of teens and their loss of happiness and joy, and struggling in mental health, before Covid. It certainly might have been an additional ingredient to what became a perfect storm, but we have to take a look at social media.
And when I'm in schools and talking to parents, social media, smartphone use, it comes up repeatedly, over and over and over again. That is the topic we are going to delve into today in the studio, Alexis Lee, welcome.
Alexis Lee: Hello.
Magee: Hello. And Dr. Megan Rosenthal. Thanks.
Dr. Megan Rosenthal: Hello.
Magee: Thanks for being here, as usual.
Megan, we can't just pick one issue, really, if we want to look at what goes on in teen mental health challenges. Because it's a myriad of things. But if we have to find one entry point, we really cannot ignore the fact of smartphones and social media. Because the mental health of teens has changed. And one thing we know that's changed is 15, 20 years ago, they didn't even exist.
Dr. Rosenthal: That's right. And in anticipation of our conversation today, I was thinking about that. I mean, I was probably amongst one of the last generations for whom this kind of access to the world didn't exist. I mean, I didn't have a computer in my home until I was in 12th grade, and then we had dial up internet.
So for those of you who too young to remember what Dial up internet was like, nobody could use the phone. And then you had to work through this really long process to get online. And then the best you could maybe do is maybe check your email if the stars aligned and everything was in order.
And I think about that in relation to this generation of young people right now, who've never not had that kind of access. And when this was all kind of coming forward and working through, we thought, how amazing is this? You're going to have access to the world's knowledge, and the world's information.
And then when Facebook, and social media, and Instagram and all of those things kicked off, how amazing is it going to be to get connected to all of these people that you maybe aren't regularly connected to? And it's like one of my colleagues at the university always talks about, the law of unintended consequences.
So on one hand, this amazing opportunity, and all of these really great things, and access, and connectivity, and fostering different kinds of friendships and maybe you could otherwise be able to do. And then there's the dark side of it, and we're like, dun, dun, dun. Okay, now what? And I feel like that's where we are in a lot of these conversations around social media right now.
Magee: Yeah. I think we are there. Now I'm guessing in high school, first of all, you're young, so the fact that you're on a dial up and you didn't have a computer until 12th grade, I think you've told us before you lived in a pretty rural area.
Dr. Rosenthal: I did, I did.
Magee: Yeah, yeah. So there wasn't exactly high-speed internet running through there in those days. But I'm guessing it was easier, perhaps, to focus on homework when you didn't have this inundation of distraction.
Dr. Rosenthal: Right. Well, and you weren't worried. I mean when you came home, short of somebody like calling you on the phone that was connected to the wall kind of thing, you didn't know what anybody else was up to. And so I think about this now in relation to this generation of young people, you have easy access, pick up your phone, pick up your computer, and then you know what everybody else is doing.
And this, they call it the FOMO, right? Fear of missing out. And well, why didn't I get invited to that? Or why can't I go do that? Or now I'm here doing this boring thing, homework, whatever, being with my family, blah, blah, blah. They're off living this amazing, incredible life.
And we hear often on people thinking through and talking intentionally about social media. It's only 1% of your day, or it's only ... But if that's all you see, right?
Magee: Right.
Lee: It's really hard to remember that in the midst of all of that.
Magee: Sure, yeah. And you're watching curated lives. In the Instagram world I mean, I'll see people I know on vacation. And I know they're going through a hard time, and they deserve that vacation and they want to do it. But it's a curated life. They're not showing you their bleeding edge, so to speak.
But on the ... I'm a writer, and I look at my life in a smartphone world. So I don't get even notifications from apps. I don't allow that because I don't want distractions. So I get no notifications. But in a daytime or early evening, if I have a moment and I'm trying to write, and my smartphone is nearby, it still has enough things going on that it is a constant distraction. And I kind of can feel some anxiety welling up that, wait, I need to write this. And I'm just now getting creative in a sense that this person needs to talk to me.
Or I see that there's something I need to do, and my anxiety starts to feel uncomfortable, that I need to write. And so I try to picture a young person. And Alexis, I mean, you're young still. You are actually still a student, as we've noted on here before. I mean, you have graduated from college, but you're now finishing up your MBA. And the concept of trying to be a student in a smartphone world is not that easy.
Lee: It's not that easy. And we reach for our phones so many times a day just out of habit. And sometimes it's like when you walk into a room, you forget why you're doing it. I pick up my phone and I forget why I was picking it up, or what the point of it was.
But studying with a phone near me, I cannot do it anymore. I have to put my phone in a different room, or I have to put it on airplane mode and just get it ... I can't see it. Because it is that, what's going on? Does someone need me? Just this looming idea of, it's still alive and the world is going on without me.
Magee: Yes, the world is going on without me.
Lee: And I think we get uncomfortable with, it doesn't matter what I'm doing. It doesn't, in the grand scheme of things. But the world is moving on and that that's okay, but we're not okay with that.
And I think we've talked about a little bit of the highlight reel of everyone's life is kind of what Instagram has become. And just, someone else is on spring break right now while I'm studying at home. That's this week for us. For us.
And so it's just, what does everyone else have that I don't? And doing anything with a smartphone in your room, sleeping, studying, even trying to have a conversation with people. We'll get all of our friends around, and I'll look up, and everyone's on their phone sometimes. And I'm like, this is quality time.
Magee: Yeah, or the family at the restaurant and everyone's on their smartphone. But the challenge we face is that studies show that the average junior in high school today spends nine and a half hours on their smartphone a day.
And I'll tell that to classrooms or when I'm speaking in high schools, and you should see their response, which is, oh, that sounds like it's too small of a number.
And think about it. The iPhone, the Apple iPhone was not released publicly until 2007. And that's predominant, there are other Android phones that are in the marketplace. They're more popular in other parts of the world here, but let's take the iPhone as an example.
It doesn't come out until 2007. And yet here we are in 2023, and a high school senior that was essentially born into that device, or junior, is using that nine-and-a-half hours a day on average. And it's not the device, it's all of the applications that are on it, and how they interact with them.
And so when I talk to high school students, they speak of things like sleep interruption. Because they'll sleep, say, with a smartphone in the bed, and they can't help but look at it. And they will talk about difficulty doing homework.
And so I'm not sure, it's a big surprise that we don't really understand, Megan. I mean, there've been a lot of studies trying to figure this out, but I'm not sure we actually understand what's going on. And if so, I'm not sure we know what to do about it.
Dr. Rosenthal: That's right. I think looking across the literature research that's been published so far, we know, okay, smartphones, screen time, that is a problem. It's bad, it's having negative consequences for everyone. Not just our young people, it's the whole gamut. And anybody who touches one could face negative consequences as a result of that.
But we don't have a good appreciation yet for why that is the case, and what is the mechanism. And I think about it like this. I have a bad back. I know that since I spend 99% of my day sitting in a desk looking at a computer, that's contributing to that bad backness, right? What do I often do? Well, take a Tylenol, put a heating pad on it, go to bed.
Is that solving the problem? No. I know that I need to get up, and move, and do yoga and do all of those different kinds of things. But we don't know what is causing, what is the thing that results in the negative outcome for students. We just know that it does have a negative outcome, that social media use, that smartphone use.
And so there's a lot more work that needs to be done in that space. And then if you flip that on the other side, so we know it's bad. So what? What do we do? How do we start having those conversations, and what are the interventions that we can develop?
And on that front, the only thing that we hear regularly in the media, and from literature right now, is well, stop using it. Okay, well, how? What does that look like for a generation of young people, and their parents now, who've really never not had access to something like that?
And how do you have that conversation with your teen who is seeing that if, well, I'm not on here all the time, my friends don't talk to me anymore. Or I don't get invited, or they say mean things about me.
Magee: The conversation continues without me, that's what I hear.
A young woman shared with me recently, if I remove myself in the conversation, I feel like it will go a place that it may turn on me. I'm not comfortable not being present because I'm not sure what they're going to say about me, let me be blunt. That's what she said.
Now that's a very dangerous ... So when you look at the issues, smartphone today, the data shows, are a primary tool, a primary way that teens are making illegal drug deals. It's no longer on the street corner. That deal is brokered, they are pitched drugs through that smartphone device. And it makes sense. I mean, they're accessible.
If somebody were to look at, say, a site on Instagram, for example, let's say a 15-year-old looks at a site on Instagram that is selling mail-order pills. And soon the mail-order pill site gets that person recommended as a friend because the algorithm picks that up. So then they suspect that person has looked, so they start firing them messages. Would you like these pills? And so this is how that thing happens.
Other apps, Snapchat, WhatsApp, whatnot. I mean, look, they have benefits. They're not all bad. But they've proven to be pretty effective tools for young people to have conversations that they don't want others to know. And so that has become a predominant source for buying drugs. So it is a very complicated situation.
Let's add into the fact that we're seeing drastically rising numbers in, we're seeing increases in male eating disorder, and we're seeing shocking numbers from the CDC about the mental health of young women, as we've discussed on here before.
So let's say an eating disorder, for example. You can go to apps like Instagram, and you can search for what I'll call people deeply in emaciated bodies, deeply in eating disorder, and get all the imagery you want. And it's right at the fingertip. And then you're likely to get fed more of that.
So it's easy to see the problem we're in. The challenge is, the average 11-year-old already has a smartphone. So just the simple thing of just telling them use it less is not so simple.
Dr. Rosenthal: No, and I think the thing to think about, again, I'm kind of in anticipation of this, is how are we as older folks using our phones? Because our young people, and we've talked about this before on here, are watching us. Watching us so closely every single day as examples of how to be in the world.
I'm totally guilty of this until I made a fix on my phone so it yelled at me when I got too...
Magee: When you've gone too far?
Dr. Rosenthal: When I've gone too far, have a time limit on there. I'm totally guilty of sitting on the couch after work, eating dinner, and then just being like scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. And not really, am I enjoying it? No, but what else am I going to do? And so you just spend all this time.
And then if you have young people around you watching that, or like you said, Alexis, with your friends, and everybody's got their nose in their phone. And my youngest brother, he's 10 years younger than I, I was at my mom's house, and this was a long time ago now. And him and his friend were on the couch opposite ends of the couch at my mom's house, and they were actually literally texting each other.
I was like, "Or you could turn your head." And I felt like such an old person, "Or you could turn your head and talk to each other." But that's totally normal for them.
And so thinking about, okay, how am I engaging in this? How am I working with this phone? Is this doing the things that I wanted to do to help me live the kind of life I want to live?
And then start kind of backing it up from there. Okay, well, maybe, is this really what I want or not? And then there have been increasing numbers of programs, kind of settings that you can get into start to do that. But we really, as the grownups, need to start first, right? Because I think we download a lot of responsibility for these things onto our young people, but they've never not known this.
Magee: Yeah, they've never not known it. But increasingly there is a change.
When we look at this mental health issue that young women are going through, that is far more significant, the CDC says, than what young men are going through. And that's significant, what teenage young men are going through. And that's significant.
I mean, I'll be honest, I'm not just bashing social media, but I can't help but put my finger right there. Because I've just seen and heard so much from it. And is it as simple, as clear as just don't do it? No, because it's not going away. And that is the world they live in.
But there is some significant impact that is ... Something is shedding a negative light, that is giving young people, and a larger number of young women in particular, a false negative impression of themselves. That's lowering their self-esteem, that is putting them into a situation that they feel alone. They feel lonely, they feel depressed. And I would say that the social media concept of connecting you to others is doing the exact opposite.
Lee: It is. And last year I had to go through a spree where I just unfollowed a lot of people. And I really had to curate my newsfeed. What do I want to see? Who do I want to see? Do I really care about people from high school who I will never see or talk to again, what they're doing? No, I don't. Truthfully, I don't. Maybe curiosity, but that would be it.
And so I just sat there and was like, I don't need this. What do I want to see when I log on? Who do I want to follow when I log on? And at the end of the day, if your friends and people in your life are going to, if you have to take a step back and those people and friends in your life are going to continue to move on without you, are they really your friends? No, probably not.
And that's really hard for people to hear, because they want a lot of friends. We want a lot of following. We want to be be surrounded by a lot of people. We've gotten the idea of quantity over quality. And so it's just really taking time of putting settings into place.
I know for me, I have to hide my likes on Instagram. And so in my newsfeed, I can't see anyone else's likes. But there's also a setting where my personal account, I don't see how the count of likes I get on photos.
Magee: Nice.
Lee: And some of my...
Magee: That's a good strategy.
Lee: Some of my friends are like, that's such discipline. And I'm like, but I know the repercussions if I don't do it. It's worth it for me to have that discipline to press two buttons to hide likes on photos for me.
And it's just, what can you do? And if some people are like, well, that's just really unnecessary. That's a lot of work. However, we obviously, there's repercussions and there's consequences that are happening. Is that worth it? Is that worth it to you?
Magee: Yeah. I'm on Instagram and I actually like it, but I totally see the issues. Because certainly, if you want to go down rabbit holes, the rabbit holes are there. And those rabbit holes are typically going to be unhealthy for people because that's how algorithms are designed.
They're going to take you to your worst spot because you're likely, if you get drugged down that, to spend some time doing that. And I made a decision. I actually was off social media for a very long time, and it stunned a lot of people. Because at large media companies, I was in charge of social media. And I remember the president of a company saying to me once, "How do you think you can manage these accounts with hundreds of thousands, if not millions of social following, and you're not on it?"
I said, well, I'm not saying I'm not monitoring it and participating it, but I just didn't personally want to be on it.
I've changed in that. But what I decided is, through an Instagram, for example, is I'm not going to curate my life. So you'll see I write a lot about personal challenges and failures, and I will celebrate something like a grandchild. Or maybe overcoming, but also just sometimes saying it's hard. And we've been through a lot, and that's okay, and leaving it at that.
So I think the key is, as you say, Alexis, it's managing your expectations. So therein lies what I think we talk about The Mayo Lab work we do here within The William Magee Institute for Student Wellbeing at the University of Mississippi. I think that leads us to a point in thinking, look, it's not going away. It's not going away.
And maybe, Megan, it's twofold. One, there are some good studies out there that I've seen, that reveal some of the issues. The question is how do we start bringing that education in? So at an early level, if you're going to be born into the culture of a smartphone, can't you also be born into the culture that immediately, not your parents when you're 16 telling you you're doing too much of that, can't you immediately born into an educational process where you are learning from day one, just like you learn your ABCs, what this involves in how you can best interact with it, and how it may impact your life.
Dr. Rosenthal: So I think you're absolutely right. I think, thinking about it as, and as you were talking, what I was thinking about was seeing behind the curtain of The Wizard of Oz. Once you unpack how the algorithms function, then it becomes really obvious. If I do this, then I'm going to get more of this. Or if I do that, then I'm going to get more of that.
And so having that intentionality, like you talked about Alexis. And young people and children are super smart about that kind of stuff. We put that in front of them, they're savvy consumers. They're kind of some of the most savviest of the consumers, because they've always had access to these things.
And then once you understand how those things function and what the intention of them is, because the social media apps, they make money when you play with them.
Magee: Well, that's right.
Dr. Rosenthal: That's the point of them, right? These are businesses, these are not...
Magee: They often make money the more you go to your worst spot, frankly.
Dr. Rosenthal: Right, exactly. But when we know that and understand that, then we can start to take that pause, and start to make good informed decisions about how we engage with that. And I definitely believe that we can do that with our young people as well.
And this is hard for, I think this would be hard for parents, the earlier, the better. Right? This is problem...
Magee: Well, if they're getting a smartphone by age 11. Hello.
Dr. Rosenthal: Exactly, right? So in anticipation of getting the smartphone at 11, why not start to have those conversations? And understand more about, okay, what is the right language to use with an eight year old about these kind of things? What's the right language to use with a 10 year old?
Because those things, developmentally you change really fast at that time. But get that in front of parents so that they can have those conversations with their youngest of the young people, and then suddenly you have a thoughtful set of consumers coming into the market to engage with this material in a different kind of way than maybe, certainly, I did. And had to learn it the hard way.
Magee: Still learning the hard way.
Dr. Rosenthal: Exactly.
Magee: Not speaking of you, but me and the rest of us. I mean, yeah, you have to take hunter's safety to get a hunter license. You have to take driver's ed to get a driver's license. I think that the concept of handing this weapon over to 11 year olds ... And look, I get it. Sometimes you live in a bigger city, parents feel like I need some connectivity.
And there are very real social pressures, and they're going to have one anyway. But the concept of handing a smartphone to a young person without education, so to speak, is, they don't need instructions to know how to work it. They actually don't even come with instructions.
They know how to work it, what they don't know, what they don't know is how it's working them.
Dr. Rosenthal: Yeah.
Lee: I remember when I got my first phone it was, I couldn't even remember tell you what it was. It wasn't a smartphone, but it was one of those that you could flip open and had a full keyboard. And it sat on top of our cabinet at home, and I had to work for it. I had to do so many chores, and I had to do things. And there was a timeline of, I had to do this to get it.
And I do remember sneaking up at night, my parents would put it away and hide it so I couldn't get into it. But when I got it, the rule was like you had to call your grandparents every week, and do things for it. And I still remember that, and just using it for its, to be connected to people. Using it for what it's supposed to be used for, connecting to people, reaching out to people.
Because there's genuine enjoyment when you do connect with people, and can see your family members doing things. I'm originally from Wisconsin, so I don't see my family every now and then, or all that often. And so being able to see what they do every day, be connected, there's joy in that to still remember, what is this intended use for? And remembering that at its core too.
Magee: Yeah, there's value in it.
Lee: Yeah.
Magee: And it's important. When I'm with young people in schools, I always remind them, there is value here. Because it's just like the substance conversation, just telling them what not to do doesn't work. And there is value. I logged into social media this past week, Alexis, and for example, saw a picture of your grandfather. We know you, we enjoy working with you. That helped give me a depth of your family, an appreciation of your family. And I enjoyed that fact, and I enjoyed seeing him. And without it, I wouldn't get it otherwise.
And we could all go on with so many benefits. So it really though, comes down to the fact that there's a balance in life. But I don't think we're teaching that, and I don't think people really understand it. And I have a family member, I have multiple family members as I've shared before on here, who have gone through particularly around eating disorder.
And I always want to be careful because it's just not that, and it's just not women. Male eating disorders are on the rise. But I can tell you, some of these women in my life have been through an absolute war. And even in their recovery with eating disorder, as they've matured, and gotten older, and higher emotional intelligence, and being able to understand it, they often at times, are still at war with social media and how they feel it frames them with others.
And it's not a case of what they feel like they don't have. They often express, it makes them just sometimes feel alone and isolated. That others in their lives are moving in places and ways that they're not. And so it's not coveting, that gets oversold. It's more just a feeling of loneliness.
And as we look at the study of young women today and how they're suffering, alone-ness is one of the big challenges they're feeling. And I cannot help but think social media has a significant role in that.
Lee: Right, and I think we've valued that connecting, it can just happen over a phone or social media, instead of going the in real life way of having conversations with people. And valuing the experiences you get in real life.
And yes, social media is not going away. We know that. We're going to have to find education and tools. But it requires sacrifice at the end of the day to know that you can continue to live your life, and so can everyone else.
And you don't know what's going on behind their screen. They could be absolutely suffering from the worst divorce, or they have their own eating disorder happening, or other things going on that they're not going to talk about and put on social media. Because that's not a highlight reel for them that they want people to know about.
And so it's giving others grace in that too. Of there's, they probably have something else going on. Or, why do they have to post so much? What are they hiding behind?
Magee: Yeah. Well, in human nature, and psychological study says when somebody's projecting the most, typically they're going through something. And that's what I always try to remember is having empathy for that fact.
This is a subject we'll delve into in a future episode this season on The Mayo Lab Podcast, where we bring in some experts, and we'll dig deeper into this. I'm David Magee for Alexis Lee and Dr. Megan Rosenthal. Come back and see us next time.
Lee: The Mayo Lab Podcast is produced by Dr. Natasha Jeter, Dr. Megan Rosenthal, David Magee, Alexis Lee, and Slade Lewis.
This podcast was recorded at Broadcast Studio in Oxford, Mississippi. The show was mixed in mastered by Clay Jones, and our original music was composed by Slade Lewis.
The Mayo Lab podcast is brought to you by The William Magee Institute for Student Wellbeing. For more information on The Mayo Lab, head over to themayolab.com, and follow us on social media at The Mayo Lab.
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