Q&A with Dr. Michael Silverstein: How social media can impact child health, and what to do about it

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] - No adult who has tried to compete with social media for a child's attention will deny that the platforms hold powerful sway over today's hyper-connected, always-online generation. Yet the precise nature of that influence, and what to do about it, is a matter of not just debate but vast confusion, said Dr. Michael Silverstein, director of the Hassenfeld Child Health Innovation Institute at Brown University.

"There's been so much out there lately about the impact of social media use on kids' mental health, and social media is largely assumed to not only be 'bad' but also to have a 'causal' relationship with mental health problems," said Silverstein, who is also a professor of health services, policy and practice at Brown's School of Public Health. "We just don't know for sure that either of those things are true."

To better understand the impacts of social media on children's mental health, Hassenfeld Institute leaders are hosting a conference on Thursday, Nov. 14, in Washington, D.C., that will bring together researchers, medical professionals, scholars from across the country, advocates for parents and children, and policymakers to examine children's social media use, including benefits, challenges and opportunities for change.

"The goal is to foster collaboration across sectors and identify opportunities for shared action to improve children's mental health in the digital age," Silverstein said. "That includes innovative research strategies that focus on outcomes that matter to families and ultimately allow us to test the effectiveness of mental health promotion approaches."

Silverstein, whose research focuses on preventing mental illness and who is a vice chair of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, spoke in advance of the event about social media and kids' mental health.

Q: Can you help put the social media phenomenon in context? How does it compare to previous phenomena that were assumed to have negative effects on children's mental health, such as violent television programs or video games?

Unlike, say, the video games of yesteryear, social media follows you from school to soccer practice to your friend's house to your house; from the kitchen to the bedroom to the bathroom. This phenomenon can exist and persist in most physical spaces, as well as in a person's mental space. Let's say a classmate is being mean to a student at school. Well, the student can get away from that, at least temporarily, by coming home. But if a classmate is being mean to a student over text or social media, they can't get away from it, even if they leave school. They will still be confronted or reminded by it whenever they turn on or even look at the computer, the phone or the watch they use to interact with others online. That makes it uniquely powerful in terms of potential mental health effects.

The other difference, related but distinct, is that social media is often experienced through this particular device, a smart phone, that fits into a pocket and has been integrated into the way children are educated in school today. Giving up that device and that technology can have a negative effect on a student's ability to learn. Many things, both beneficial and negative, co-mingle on these devices and on these social platforms, which makes understanding their effects, and addressing the negative effects, to be very, very complicated.

Q: What do you hope a conference like this will add to the conversation?

We're hoping to expand our insights and question our assumptions around both what the problem is and what the solutions are. I think we, as people who genuinely want to help improve children's mental health, are locked into a conversation loop, which goes from thinking that social media is bad and calling for limits on use, to saying that there's both good and bad about social media and we don't know enough yet about either to limit use.

While there are many groups working to better understand and act upon the effects of social media on the developing brain and children's mental health, they typically take a binary 'either/or' approach. That leads to either urging restrictions, or telling parents or teachers to take the phone away (without explaining why or how to do that) or it focuses on the technical aspects of social media platforms that warrant government or industry regulation. Our top goal for this conference is an expansion of perspective that merges and integrates these approaches with new ways of thinking.