Youth Experts Dr. Hina Talib and Meta’s Nicole Lopez Fireside Discussion

I have found approaching this conversation with genuine curiosity and open-mindedness to be the most successful. Here are three tips on having these important conversations. First, be curious and ask them to walk you through a day of how they use their technology, what apps or platforms they use, who are their favorite follows and why, and what games they might enjoy the most. Bonus, if you can even spend some time together looking at their accounts together and playing their favorite games with them. Second, let them be the one taking stock. Ask them, “How satisfied are you with your social media or phone use?” that’s literally what I do when I see teens in my practice. I ask them what parts of using media make them feel good, connected and productive and what parts may feel otherwise.

And third, try asking about their friends and how their friends are using social media. Get the tea! It is often easier to talk about friends than yourselves and in this same vein, be vulnerable and share with your teen how you are managing with the ups and downs of social media yourself too. Other backdoor ways into talking about social media is to not start by talking about social media. Instead, ask about their mental health, school, sports, sleep, headaches or other aspects of their life and weave in how social media might be helping or challenging them. Meta has resources on their Family Center for starting these types of conversations.

Instagram and other social media platforms can be great platforms to find community, connect with friends, learn new skills, and express yourself. Many teens share with me that they “find my people'' online, and especially teens who are from historically marginalized communities. Teens who identify as LGBTQIA+ have shared how they found support, education, and resources through social media. In the last few years especially, teens also talk about the mental health tools or coping skills they have learned online through platforms and folks or organizations they follow and even some health tips! Lastly, advocacy seems to be an area that teens also point to social media as being a place to share ideas and I just love their hope to make changes in their world as they see fit.

For parents, it’s important to learn about the tools the platforms offer to help their teen have a positive experience because of course, it is not all positive experiences. For example, parents can help teens with their content recommendation settings, time management settings, and set up parental supervision if it’s right for them.

From my experience, there is no set age where I would automatically suggest a teen to join social media, but of course all platforms have terms of service with age minimums that are an important guardrail. Similarly, social media is not a monolith, it is not one thing and it is not just Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. I look at the individual teen in front of me because there are so many factors with unique importance to each person. Most importantly I also consider or ask the parent’s to consider the time and availability they have to help guide their teens when I am asked to counsel a family on the starting age of using social media.

Parents of younger kids are often surprised when I share that direct messaging, or iMessage, can carry some of the same considerations as social media. Youtube Kids and iPad or tablet games like Minecraft and Roblox are also social media. So these conversations do need to start among parents of elementary school children and I am living that right now as I have two children in lower school. It’s also important that we start these conversations early so that our kids feel comfortable coming to us when they need support. Lastly, these conversations need to happen in our families, but also with the parents of children in your classroom or grade and with the teachers too. We have to have these conversations in the whole communities kids are living in. This is one part that parents share is particularly hard as families have different values when it comes to devices and social media.

Here are my go-to principles. First, try setting an intention or saying out loud why you are reaching for your phone. It could be you want a 10 minute distraction, could be you want to message 3 friends, and it could be you want to learn more about a cookie recipe. Just saying it loud has power and you can reflect on that after you put your phone down too.

Second, follow your feelings. Pay attention to how your time on social media makes you feel or how the people who you are interacting with make you feel. Notice if you feel energized, inspired or encouraged or depleted, lonely or hurt.

And third, act, speak and share online like you would in real life. If you wouldn’t say it to your grandparent or want it to end up in the news, don’t say it online. This is because you never know where it goes, who sees it and what context it gets taken in. Be kind to yourself and others both in real life and online.

The conversations about what might have happened online that were emotional or challenging to navigate are the best tools to actually inspire a change in habit or give them permission to set boundaries with their use online. The best ideas on how to do this in my conversations with young people have come from them. They know themselves the best and come up with creative ways to right some wrongs or change a pattern of their use to align more with a life or health goal.

It is also so much easier for teens to talk about what their peers are facing online, than themselves. Start there and get the tea. It is captivating, sometimes heartbreaking and they need an outlet to talk about it.

Comparison is the thief of joy, I believe Theodore Roosevelt said. Social comparison can impact self-esteem and teens are developmentally in a fragile phase of life where they take comments to heart and center themselves more than at other phases. So how can we help them, we must do what we can to build up their self esteem in real life as well as online and teach them to guard against those who don’t bring them joy, make them feel respected and valued. Truly, this comes down to feeling like you matter. Fostering a feeling of mattering can be a powerful antidote to social comparison. I recently heard Jennifer Wallace, author of Never Enough, speak about this and it is so powerful. In small or large ways, we all need to show our teens and all teens we interact with that they matter, they have skills, they have value and that they add something to this world.

I ask teens to interact with the content that makes you feel positive. De-friend December is a real thing, and it is good to unfollow people who do not serve you well. Similarly, I will often suggest to teens to turn off likes, restrict folks if you don’t want them to know you are no longer paying attention to them. Most importantly again is regularly checking in with your teens about all this.