As a member of Gen Z, Keegan Lee was born decades after the 1980s public service commercial that compared a drug-afflicted brain to a frying egg. Many audience members during her presentation Saturday at the National School Boards Association (NSBA) Annual Conference in New Orleans likely remember it well. But instead of an egg, Lee provided actual proof — images of a brain scan that showed how the reward pathways of an adolescent brain light up when the child’s social media post received a high number of likes.
“Social media has the potential to rewrite brain circuitry,” said Lee, who recently chronicled her experience as a social media addict in a book called 60 Days of Disconnect — A Personal Perspective of How Social Media Affects Mental Health. Her presentation to NSBA attendees described a campaign by researchers and advocacy organizations for student well-being, using statistics on youth social media use, a list of the mental health resources schools can access to help students who have been harmed by social media, and a summary of U.S. litigation against social media companies.
Lee said she was obsessed with social media during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In early 2021, at age 16, she decided to kick the habit. During her first week, Lee’s father advised her that, even though she was no longer accessing social media on her phone, she was still constantly tapping the device as if browsing and texting, though unaware of her actions.
Sixteen days in, Lee started to feel more positive, even euphoric at times. A month later, Lee observed her peers’ social media habits, and found their actions quite disturbing. They always seemed paranoid about losing their phones. Some reported feeling or hearing “phantom vibrations” from their phone even though the devices were not in their possession at the time. Worse, some of them could not make eye contact or carry on a normal conversation with other people, because they were so much more comfortable communicating by text.
“They weren’t connected,” Lee said.
Credit: NSBA Senior Research Analyst Jinghong Cai
Lee challenges young social media users to give “dopamine fasting” a try with short cleansing periods of a few weeks or months. They can also self-impose daily time limits, move the social media apps to folders on their phone that are less visible, or even move the apps to a computer where accessing them requires more time and effort.
Lee was among the 90 percent of U.S. teenagers over 14 who owned a smartphone in 2021, but she did not join the 51 percent of teenagers in 2023 who reported spending at least four hours a day on social media, said Jinghong Cai, a senior research analyst for the National School Boards Association who introduced the presenters. The heavier the usage, Cai said, the greater the risk of mental and physical health problems and risky behaviors like cyber bullying or sexting.
“We have a long way to go to solve the problem,” Cai said.
In addition to skyrocketing rates of youth depression and anxiety, the increase of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in teenagers is staggering, according to Caren Howard, senior policy director for Mental Health America, a youth advocacy organization that serves 43 states. She implores school districts to establish peer support networks for all grade levels, deploy mobile crisis teams, apply for grants that fund school counselors and psychologists, and consider revising absence policies that provide grace periods for students who have been harmed by social media.
“In the same way,” she said, “you wouldn’t tell someone with a broken ankle to go walk on it.”
Howard’s organization is also calling on the federal lawmakers to update the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 to specify social media concerns. She added that legislators are working on bipartisan bills that would require social media companies to follow “duty of care” standards in future product designs that take youth mental health and wellness issues into consideration.
“We’re sure there is a relationship with mental health and technology,” Howard said. "Waiting, for someone in crisis, is really not a win.”
David Burnett, a Washington, D.C., attorney and partner with the DiCello Levitt law firm, said there are more than 1,000 pending U.S. lawsuits in 43 states and 500 school districts against Meta, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube and other social media companies.
“Litigation can be another way to solve social problems,” he said.
Would you like to read more about news, technology projects and initiatives related to K-12 education? Subscribe to our newsletter here!
