TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTWO/WAWV) —Social media is something most of today’s youth is on and grew up on. It can help people reach others throughout the world, but it can also sometimes do more harm than good.
There was a time when children got their information from their parents informing them it was time to come home or talking to their buddies on a landline, but now they can connect with anyone thanks to social media. Naveen along with Harsha Behavioral Center held a symposium shedding light on what social media has and can do to today’s youth and their mental health. Dr. Darla Hinshaw, a psychiatrist with Harsha Behavioral Center and Gibault Child’s Services, mentioned the changing of how people interact these days can affect mental health.
“Mental health is a big issue in our lives right now,” Hinshaw said. “Our children are getting more and more mentally ill. As we move forward, that type of play and learning, which was important for our development, started to decline in the 1980s and by 2010 it’s become pretty much nonexistent because of social media.”
Social media has forever changed how children connect these days.
“Kids these days don’t have the skills to be able to know how to interact with each other,” Hinshaw said. “It leads to anxiety and depression and suicide, and all of those rates have increased over the past probably five to ten years.”
Stacy Whitacre is a license social worker and youth therapist with Harsha Behavioral Center, and she mentioned how social media can have the same effect on children as some drugs can.
“Not only do electronic companies but especially social media companies understand the addictive qualities of their systems they’ve targeted towards those children,” Whitacre said. “Adolescents are susceptible to the reward part of their brain and getting likes comments. Shares of their post goes to feed that reward system, so it creates that addiction to social media.”
There are ways parents can help their children overcome the addictive behavior that can come with social media.
“There’s the cold turkey method,” Hinshaw said. “You can just take it away and it’s gone. That usually causes a lot of problems. So probably more along the lines of having a set schedule, and you’re only allowed a certain amount of time, and your behavior dictates whether or not you get that time.”
The symposium also highlighted some of the tools parents can use to help keep an eye on their children’s social media to make sure they are not facing the negative sides of social media.
“An app called Bark that parents can put on their phones and it will alert the parent if the child is talking anything negative,” Whitacre said. “Drugs, alcohol, suicide, sexting, those trigger words will immediately alert the parents phone to let them know that their child is looking into things that they shouldn’t be.
Officials with Harsha also saying having no phone zones or times like at the dinner table can help encourage kids to not always be on their phones and limit the time they are on social media. To learn more about how social media can impact someone’s mental health, click here. To learn more about Harsha Behavioral Center and the programs and services they have to offer, click here.
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