Social Media and Kids - Dr Jennifer Katzenstein JHACH

This past week, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody began issuing rules for the new law restricting social media accounts for kids under 16. Dr. Jennifer Katzenstein,with Johns
Hopkins All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg says teens and tweens know a lot of what they interact with isn't good for their moods. We speak with her in this interview. 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Gordon Bird here with Beyond the News. Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody is starting
to lay down the rules for socialmedia companies ahead of a new law that
goes into effect at the end ofthe year. It's aimed at keeping children
under a certain age off social mediaplatforms and controlling access for other age groups.
It also deals with online pornography.Doctor Jennifer Katzenstein is co director of

(00:22):
the Center for Behavioral Health and directorof psychology, neuropsychology, and social Work
at Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital inSaint Petersburg. She's here to explain how
all this will likely work and what'slikely to be effective for parents, and
why it's important to get a handleon teens and social media. Doctor Katzenstein,
Welcome, Thanks so much for havingme. I'm really happy to be

(00:43):
here to talk about this important topic. Well, the state has been starting
to put out the rules, kindof fleshing out and expanding upon the law
that was passed by the legislature thisyear, and there are a number of
rules that will be involved. Theremay be a hearing at some point.
One of them, for example,will require platforms to verify the ages of
minors, and it allows lawsuits ifsomeone who is not of age under the

(01:07):
law is allowed to get onto thesesocial media platforms. I believe that the
age is fourteen with parental consent andsixteen not needing parental consent, So a
person's under fourteen should not be onthese social media platforms at all, and
it says disregarding the age. Ifthe social media companies disregard the age and

(01:30):
don't try to police it, thatwould be a knowing or reckless violation.
Now we have these we deal withage restrictions and all kinds of aspects of
public non online behavior with smoking anddrinking and things like that. How much
of a handle do you think we'llbe able to get with these types of
legislation on the presence of young peopleon social media, and particularly the harmful

(01:55):
presence on social media for young people, This is a really big challenge for
our youth, for our teenagers,because this is a part of their daily
lives. It's a way that theycommunicate with their peers. Their peers are
communicating with one another, and oftentimesthey're seeking out information from social media platforms
or even platforms that we wouldn't considerto be social media, but do have

(02:17):
interactions with others that could also bepositive or negative. And so as we
think about putting these pieces of legislationinto effect, it's incredibly important to be
considering how we're monitoring, how wellwe'll be able to monitor, because our
kids are smart and they can navigatethese platforms in the Internet far better than

(02:37):
we can, including myself and myown child. And then when we're monitoring
these pieces, also teaching our kidshow to be good citizens online and how
to utilize these platforms appropriately and makingsure we're building up that skill set along
the way. Now it occurs tome I'm thinking about recent coverage as school
districts around the nation, including Florida, are starting to impose new restrictions on

(03:00):
cell phone use that include bands forcertain grades at certain times of day,
depending on the age, depending onthe district, depending on the state.
And one of the items I sawin the coverage of this phenomenon, this
trend that is sweeping the country isthat at first the teenagers reacted badly to
not having access to their phone allthe time in school, and then after

(03:23):
a while after experiencing it, theysaid, you know, this is kind
of a good thing is this.Do you think a similar trend will play
out as far as social media wherethe kids will say, at first,
you know, I'm really deprived,and then say, oh, wait,
I'm doing a lot better. Yeah, I think I possibly could. We

(03:44):
don't often even see the impact onourselves when we are scrolling social media,
are utilizing our cell phones and ourdevices at different times, and then as
you take a step back from itand see that potentially you do feel better,
or you're happy, or you're notcomparing yourself to someone that you're following
online, you might start to recognizeit. I have heard from a number
of the teenagers that I work withthat they call their social media toxic for

(04:09):
them, that they see things,they start to feel negatively, and they're
having a greater awareness of the impactthat sometimes scrolling social media can have on
their mood. There is positive benefitsto social media and electronic device use as
well, and again it's really importantfor us to be thinking about how we're
going to teach our kids to beappropriate utilizers of social media and how to

(04:31):
interact with one another positively and thoughtfullyon social media, just like we would
if we're interacting with someone in person, because when we see the cyber bullying
and the negativity come out, it'softentimes when comments or things are being said
either anonymously or openly that may notbe something you would have said in person

(04:51):
in the first place. Okay,bullying has been around since the beginning of
time, but social media has beenaround less than a generation or just about
it generation, and there really haven'tdeveloped hard and fast rules that are passed
down from parents to children and soon down the generations. So what do
we need to come up with asfar as that guidance to tell kids how

(05:15):
to use social media appropriately in howways to avoid That's a great question,
and our research suggests that over halfof kids have been cyberbullied online. And
it makes it even more complicated becauseoftentimes that bully online is anonymous and we
don't know who they are. Itcould be someone that we know, but
they might have multiple screen names,they might have pictures that aren't their own

(05:38):
that they're utilizing, so we maynot even ever know who it is.
So the cyber bullying piece is incrediblycomplicated to put those ground rules down because
the traditional things we say about bullyingin person are really hard to be able
to apply. Yes, we wantthe teachers to know, Yes we want
the school to know, but wemay not know and are likely not to
know, who the bully is.Beyond that, as parents and as caregivers

(06:01):
for our kids, again, weneed to be talking about those citizenship behaviors,
making sure that our kids are understandingwho they can block and how to
utilize those privacy settings that are onthe different platforms that they may be on.
And then as parents and caregivers,incredibly important for any social media platform
that your child is on to makesure that you are following them, you

(06:23):
have their passwords, and you arelooking at that social media site regularly,
so you know what's on there,You know what people are saying to your
child, you know what your childis saying to others, because they have
to be able to build that trustof their interactions in cyberspace with us,
and we need to be following themalong with other trusted adults so we can
be monitoring that closely. And thatbrings up the question of parental involvement.

(06:46):
One of the rules that is goingto be promulgated under this law is going
to require platforms to verify parental consentbecause the fourteen and fifteen year olds are
allowed to get on these platforms withparental consent. Do you think parents are
going to be ready to follow throughon things like that. I think oftentimes
our parents may be willing to dothat. I think other times if parents

(07:10):
have said no, depending on howthat consent is verified, could be incredibly
challenging to monitor. I've heard somethings where people have said, maybe it
would be like a picture of thelicense of the parent being uploaded, and
then is that something your child mightbe able to just get their hands on
and be able to consent themselves.So I think as parents we haven't had

(07:30):
great knowledge and education of social media, how it works, how our kids
interact with it, and what arethe pros and cons We know from the
literature that there are significant mental healthimpacts, especially to our teenage girls,
when they follow people online that theydon't know, like influencers or others,

(07:50):
and start to compare themselves to thosepictures that they post, the profiles that
they see. When we start tothink about even our mood, you know,
how do we find ourselves interacting onsocial media? Are we as parents
and caregivers being good models for thatpositive interaction and interacting as we would with
others. And then in addition tothat, the access to information is more

(08:16):
than they've ever had before. WhenI was a kid, and I was
in middle school and even high school, I hate to admit, I had
encyclopedias that I had to go toand if I had a question that needed
to be asked, I needed togo home and look at the encyclopedia to
find out the answer. And nowit's a google away, right, It's
an easy enough thing to get onlineand get the answer to that question in
the very moment. And so Ithink as parents and caregivers, we need

(08:39):
to really understand the implications and ramificationsof social media, especially when we aren't
using it in a healthy way,when we're keeping us up at night and
maybe we're scrolling well past our bedtime, or we start to see a social
media or cell phone or device addictionwhere our kids are having significant difficulties putting
that device down and being from it, and then also recognizing that in ourselves

(09:03):
so we can be good models forour teens. If someone asked you what
might be a good idea to includein social media legislation, maybe they want
to do an update a year ortwo down the road, anything that would
occur to you that you might wantto see that maybe wasn't covered in the
first round. This time around,for me, it's really about education and
recognizing that social media and devices aregoing to be a part of our children's

(09:26):
lives for the rest of their lives, and technology is something they're going to
be relying heavily upon. So I'dlove to see an education are required five
or six and pieces of information beforeparents could consent, specifically outlining things like
how much time should your child beon their device outside of education related time
per day, what are some signsand symptoms of anxiety or depression or suicidality

(09:52):
you should be monitoring for, Andthen how are we interacting in an appropriate
and socially healthy way online, sothat we are really setting up our parents
to have some of those rules rightin place that they can provide to their
families, get us all on thesame page before they're consenting and moving forward.
Talking about the new Florida law onSocial Media and Children and Teens,

(10:13):
doctor Jennifer Katzenstein, co director ofthe Center for Behavioral Health at Johns Hopkins
Old Children's Hospital, thank you verymuch for joining us on beyond the news