Aitana Talens, 20 years old, does not want to make a revolution against technology. She is not furious with Meta, Instagram's parent company, for not having reacted despite knowing for years the impact of her algorithm on the emotional stability of minors, especially girls. Aitana's thing is pure pragmatism: she has deactivated her Instagram account because she felt that her plans were conditioned, that if she did something and did not upload it to the network it was as if she had not done it. “My self-esteem was affected, there is a lot of pressure, you compare yourself and I didn't like how it was affecting me.” She downloaded the application at the age of 15, and once she was 19 she began to see that it created the need for her to do “a thousand things”, she felt manipulated. “You seek constant social validation, you lose focus on what is important… in my last trips I saw my friends all the time taking photos and seeing which one to post, do we seriously go to the sites to see who uploads the best photo? ? It's difficult to get out of that inertia, but I don't want to live like that.”
The discomfort of young people and the possible relationship with the use of technology have been in the spotlight of academics and healthcare professionals for a decade. The scientific debate on whether the correlation between growing mental health problems and the use of social networks is cause-effect still not resolved, more research is needed. The United States leads the way in this search for answers, and also in demanding accountability from the platforms.
The most recent fact is the lawsuit filed last October by the attorneys general of 41 states against Meta – which includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger – for developing products consciously designed to engage children, despite the company declaring that its social networks They are safe for minors. “He scroll infinite, ephemeral content, automatic playback, quantification and visualization of I like and disruptive alerts, all used unfairly and/or unconscionably to extract additional time and attention from young users whose developing brains were not prepared to withstand these manipulative tactics,” the lawsuit describes as compelling reasons.
In the field of research, Mitch Prenstein, member of the American Psychological Association and co-author of one of the most recent studies on the impact of social networks on minors through brain scan tests, recognizes that “it is still not known what implications there are between the use of technology and brain development,” but it does make it clear that there is evidence that children under 12 years of age who regularly check their notifications show a hypersensitivity to reactions of their peers. “The region of the brain that appears to be activated when using social media is full of dopamine and oxytocin receptors. The functions like I like and the new followers activate that region,” he says in statements to this newspaper.
Last May, the main health authority in Joe Biden's government cabinet, Dr. Vivek Murthy, recommended restricting the use of social networks to adolescents and detailed in a report his concern about the possible effects of digital abuse on development. brain of minors.
Sandra Gómez, a 20-year-old from Madrid who is on a university exchange in San Francisco (USA) this year, is one of those young people who temporarily disables her Instagram account for periods of three or four months. “If people look for you in the magnifying glass they don't find you, if they have tagged you in a photo that information disappears, as well as the comments you have published… it is a way to detoxify yourself,” she says. Instagram causes emotional problems. “If you look at my profile, I look like a super happy person, with many friends, no one would think that I have been diagnosed with depression and chronic anxiety disorder… Waves of sadness come to me, I see everything black, and my profile is super colorful, everything beautiful , very nice photos… I feel like I'm fooling the world and then I disable it.”
In addition to consuming a lot of his time – in exams he has accidentally dedicated nine hours a day to the social network – it has led him to toxically compare himself with others. “You are not satisfied with your life, you do not value what you have and you want what others have, it is absurd.” Another effect is the “productivity syndrome”, being at home lying on the couch, seeing photos of what others are doing, and feeling that you should be on the street, that you are wasting your life. When a user tries to disable Instagram, several tabs appear, Meta wants to know the reason: do you need a break? Personal reasons?, she reads among other options. “You never take it off completely,” Sandra admits.
Incapable of self-regulation
Researcher Mitch Prenstein, who spoke last February before the United States Senate to expose the online dangers to which minors are exposed, he demanded more funding to analyze the impact of social networks on the mental health of adolescents – recently, the US Congress allocated 15 million dollars, but in the opinion of the psychologist A minimum of 100― and new regulations are needed that allow independent researchers to access data to understand how algorithms work. “Interactions during the adolescent stage with peers are not only for fun, they significantly affect cognitive development, through them they learn social codes and rules, norms and expectations, they develop their moral sense and to the extent that these behaviors are reinforced or corrected, this influences the development of their behavior in adulthood,” explained the researcher from the University of North Carolina before the Senate, after emphasizing that these experiences with technology involved can change the development of their brain structures, and even how their nervous system responds to stress.
“Receive feedback constantly, comments, approval metrics, and the possibility of being connected with others 24 hours a day is an unprecedented fact in our species,” explains Prenstein, who highlights that “teenagers are especially motivated to seek social rewards.” , and they are still not 100% capable of self-regulation.” “Research suggests that social media can exploit this biological vulnerability among young people,” she told the Senate.
Regarding the effects on mental health – in 2021 almost a third of adolescent girls in the United States thought about suicide, an increase of almost 60% in 10 years, according to the US Centers for Disease Control -, Prenstein points out that There is already scientific evidence that in the hours after using the networks, adolescents report an increase in feelings of loneliness. “Relationships between young people based on emotional support, transparency, esteem, or trust are beneficial, but those are not precisely the functions promoted by the platforms, which praise anonymity, depersonalization, and interest in one's own metrics instead of relationships with third parties.”
Need for disconnection
In Spain, since Ministry of Health They consider that “the psychological and behavioral consequences that problematic Internet use causes in younger people demand an effective response,” but they admit that “one of the great challenges” is “having data available.” At the moment, the responses of minors between 12 and 18 years old are available as to whether they make “problematic” use of the Internet: 18% of the 12 and 13 year old girls surveyed said yes, compared to 11% of the boys. In the case of those between 14 and 18, 25.9% of them said yes, 20.5% in the case of boys.
María Salmerón, from the digital health group of the Spanish Association of Pediatrics, says that in Spain there are few pediatricians and psychiatrists dedicated to measuring the impact of technology on the health of minors. “It is not a profitable topic and the concern arose about five years ago, resources and clear lines of investigation are clearly needed.” In consultation – she works at the Ruber International Clinic in Madrid – they are increasingly seeing pathologies in younger children related to the consumption of online content. “We are talking about self-harm, porn consumption, or compulsive online shopping… now that we are clear that there is a link, issues such as the viewing of self-harm videos on a loop, or the abuse of drugs, are beginning to be investigated on an international scale.” social networks and the increase in depression.”
Alicia Banderas, health psychologist and author of Talk to them about screens and social networks (Lunwerg) has as its reference a 2017 study from the Royal Society for Public Health from the United Kingdom in which it was recognized that the exact effect that social networks have on the mental health, emotional and physiological well-being of young people is not clear and much of the available evidence is contradictory. In that same document, some effects observed in consultation were referred to, such as the increase in feelings of anxiety and depression – in the last 25 years it has increased by 70% among young British people – and sleep disorders.
Most of his patients are girls, who suffer from overexposure on social networks. “All the cases have a common characteristic, they are people with a basic need or lack, adolescents with a propensity for anxiety since childhood… in all of them, the networks have a multiplying effect of many symptoms and disorders, of emotions that they already brought with them,” explains the psychologist. In all of them she sees harmful feelings emerge such as envy, hatred, resentment… Instagram leads them to devalue their lives, which will never live up to the publications of others. The pattern is similar: they upload a photo, they do not feel comfortable with some part of their body and an anxiety crisis appears, with palpitation and even crying. “Some suffer from body dysmorphic disorder that leads them to a search for perfection, always unattainable. They may start with their nose and then change the focus.”
A recent study of the FAD Youth Foundation ―born in 1986 to prevent drug consumption among young people and currently focused on sociological research into their way of life and habits―, points out that the majority of young people between 15 and 29 years old recognize that, in the last year, Have you ever felt saturated or fed up with the use of the Internet or social networks to the point of needing to “disconnect.” A curious fact emerges from this report: the youngest (15-19) are the ones who feel the least saturated. “It seems that at this stage they increasingly show more tolerance for spending time on social networks, from 23.6% in 2015 for the 16-20 age group, to the current 37.9% for those aged 15-19,” says Beatriz Martín. , general director of FAD. Her data confirms that it is girls who report spending “too much time” on social media. 23% reported constant anxiety about receiving likes to assert oneself.
“In our studies we see an impact of the filters on self-esteem, physical attractiveness is confused with personal worth… A scientific-medical or neurological analysis is not needed to understand that there are psychosocial effects, we already have them here,” Martin ditch.
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