Kids, COVID, and our loneliness epidemic

We’ve been living in groups for about 300,000 years, and yet we still don’t fully understand the complex role that facial expressions, body language, and even smells play in our well-being. Before adopting practices that violate our groupish natures, we ought to think twice. Researching my last book, I came across a study of the importance of mother/infant physical contact. Premature babies had routinely been placed in temperature-controlled incubators until a study of premature infants found that preemies with their moms were better able to regulate their body temperatures than those in the incubators. There’s something about skin-to-skin contact.

For adolescents, loneliness is not relieved by social media; in fact, social media makes it worse. A Wall Street Journal report on Facebook’s internal memos revealed that “Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse,” and “[a]mong teens who reported suicidal thoughts, 13 percent of British users and 6 percent of American users traced the desire to kill themselves to Instagram.” Other surveys have found that social media time, rather than total screen time, is most associated with poor mental health. For teenagers in particular, the ceaseless exposure to images of others’ supposedly active social lives can increase feelings of rejection and isolation. Girls are also deluged with feedback about their appearance and popularity at an age when they are highly sensitive and insecure.

A number of scholars and researchers have proposed reforms to the way we raise kids and the way we use social media. Jean Twenge, Clare Morell, and Brad Wilcox have recommended a series of steps state legislatures should consider to limit the harm social media does to children and teens. One is to mandate age verification for porn sites and social media. Another is to require that social media platforms be shut down for all kids overnight. Sleep deprivation from social media overuse is a real problem, which can itself contribute to depression.