#Social media minimalism is only enabling my anxiety it has not made me more functional

[notaqueenaqueer]

[mbti-notes]

Do you have an opinion on the affects of social media on developing cognitive functions, specifically teenagers? I am asking with regard to navigating my son's adolescence. He is 16 and while the last few years have been more turbulent than previous years (with no doubt more to come) I think the road has been made substantially smoother as a direct result of me being able to access your blog, thank you. I don't feel inclined to limit his social media use, it's a part of life now, but it would be

[con’t: helpful to have some signs to look out for. I originally typed my son as Si dom with T preference and was trying to encourage his Te but now I’m thinking he’s more like INTP so I’ve changed my strategy to keep an open mind (and develop the patience of a saint LOL) and help him make the right decisions for himself. He has become more reckless and scattered lately with high value placed on acceptance from friends. Could this be Ne or does social media have a larger influence?]

I’m glad that you find the blog helpful and I admire your devotion to parenting. You raise a lot of interesting issues, though I may not be the best person to ask since I tend to have a negative opinion of social media. Parenting teenagers requires walking a very, very fine line between giving them enough guidance to avoid bad decision making vs giving them enough freedom to learn proper independence. It’s a very hard job. Sometimes, the only way to know that you’ve veered too far one way or the other is by making the mistake and then adjusting your approach - lots of trial and error. Every kid is an individual, so what works for one kid won’t necessarily work for another. Being able to adapt to their needs is the key point. It’s art more than science.

Everything has its positive and its negative side. Human beings tend to be short-sighted and easily rationalize bad decision making. When they really want to do something, they are much more likely to envision the benefits of doing it and this then blinds them to the costs. To be a good parent, I think it’s important to teach children how to recognize negative consequences and navigate them more intelligently (i.e. objective assessment of pros and cons that produces rational decision making). However, this is only possible if parents themselves are capable of it. You can’t expect kids to learn how to do something well without someone to teach them or model it for them. Unfortunately, I know plenty of adults of all ages who misuse social media just as badly as their kids. Kids learn predominantly through example, so you have to be the first one to follow the rules that you set. If you don’t follow any rules yourself, they won’t see the point in following any, either. For example, if all they see of you is your nose in your device, why would they put theirs down?

I don’t believe in banning kids from social media, but I do think it’s a good idea to be smart in limiting its usage. Social media shouldn’t be a substitute for real and meaningful human interaction, it shouldn’t take up so much time that important things get neglected, it shouldn’t interfere with maintaining good physical and mental health, and it shouldn’t be used as an escape. Teenagers become harder and harder to supervise as they get older because they increasingly have their own life going on. At a certain point, there’s no imposing rules on them because violating their autonomy only leads to rebellion.

A better strategy is to sit down with them to talk about the importance of using social media in HEALTHY ways, talk about why limits are necessary to avoid the negative/unhealthy aspects of it, and negotiate with them to come up with sensible limits that both of you can live with. If YOU also spend too much time on social media, then it’s even better to join them in adhering to those limits, to model the behavior that you expect from them and give them the feeling of being in it together. When you place limits on one aspect of life, it’s a good idea to expand yourself in other ways so as to minimize the feeling of “missing out”. For example, if you use social media for social connection, then compensate for limiting social media by making more effort to go out and join interesting social activities. Putting limits on fun means increasing boredom, so make sure that the boredom is addressed with a healthier option.

Social media is relatively new, so there isn’t a big enough body of research about its hidden effects or underlying costs. The few studies that have been done about social media mostly seem to suggest that misuse/overuse has very detrimental effects on psychological well-being. The spread of misinformation is a big problem (i.e. it makes people stupid). Cyber-bulling and violation of privacy are big problems. When you are so plugged in to other people’s lives, it’s hard not to engage in social comparison, and this often results in negative self-appraisals that diminish self-regard. This is particularly destructive for teenagers because they haven’t yet developed a very strong sense of self and are very likely to use other people’s judgment as a barometer of their own self-worth. Adolescence is usually the time that people start to grapple with level 2 ego development. It’s important for teenagers to learn how to socialize well and fit in with others, but it’s also important for them to learn the dangers of choosing the wrong socializing methods.

People at level 2 ego development are very prone to: experiencing shame/anxiety/depression via negative social comparisons, blindly following the ingroup (and rejecting the outgroup), and sacrificing self-care as they succumb to peer pressure. Helping them is not a matter of trying to stop them from doing these things, because you can’t, since doing these things is a natural part of that stage of development. What you can do is offer them guidance about self-care and help them think more critically about the best ways to handle peer pressure (i.e. give them options/strategies for working through real situations), in hopes that they’ll learn how to make better decisions. In the event that they make a bad decision, review the mistake with them. Reflect with them to figure out what went wrong and work with them to brainstorm ideas for how to avoid the same mistake in the future. Ask them what they could’ve done differently (this encourages N development). The PAIN of making mistakes is an efficient way to learn, which means that you shouldn’t be in there “helping” to the point that they don’t feel the pain of their mistakes.

Discipline is necessary for giving kids a sense of structure. To internalize a sense of structure is to possess a mental framework for making good decisions (usually requires developing the judging functions). At the very least, a child should have their parent’s way of critical thinking at hand whenever they aren’t able to solve a problem entirely on their own (i.e. “what would mom/dad advise me to do?”). Always be transparent, fair, and consistent in how you punish kids by explaining your decision, why it’s necessary, and what lesson it’s meant to teach them (e.g. self-care, intelligence, respect, patience, etc). This makes it more likely that they eventually internalize your moral lessons and learn to use them even when you’re not present. If you punish unfairly or disproportionately, if you’re a hypocrite, or if you’re inconsistent with punishments, you risk losing their respect, which, in their mind, means that they no longer have to listen to you.

Unfortunately, some kids don’t learn well the first time around and you have to discipline them to get the point across. You can develop a punishment scale that begins with a mild punishment for the first mistake and then increase the severity of the punishment for every instance of repeating the mistake. While I admire your patience, I’m sure you know that laissez faire parenting also has its problems. Overly permissive parents run the risk of losing their child’s respect because it’s easy to fall into the trap of devaluing your own needs whenever the child tests your rules and boundaries, and they will absolutely trample your boundaries if you give the impression of not having any. When you devalue your position of authority in the relationship, you encourage kids to do the same, and then you become a mere source of food or money and nothing else to them. This also enables them to be narcissistic in their approach to others.

I’m not sure how good you are at communicating, just in case it’s needed, I’ll continue on to say that I believe that one of the most important elements of parenting is establishing a strong sense of trust. If your kid trusts you, they’ll feel more confident about making independent decisions because they know that you’re there to help them should they need it, and sometimes it’s enough that you’re with them “spiritually�� in their memory of lessons learned. The best way to build trust is to keep the lines of communications open. Good communication isn’t about trying to pry information or performing the role of judge jury and executioner. People, let alone teenagers, won’t want to communicate with you if they suspect that all you’re doing is judging them or just looking for an excuse to criticize them (and teens likely get enough of this from their peers).

Communication should come from the heart, use inquiry and sharing of feelings to show that you genuinely care about what’s going on with them. Good communication should work both ways: listen to each other carefully, be transparent about your motives, be honest about how you feel and what you need, negotiate compromises, and respect each other’s individual autonomy. You should model the kind of respect that you want them to give to you (I can’t count the number of times that I’ve seen parents trying to teach their kids to be more respectful… by shouting at them angrily). When they are out of line, remain calm, hear what they’re feeling (validation), then explain to them that you/people are more likely to take them seriously when they express their feelings maturely. Give them an example sentence of how to express feelings or requests respectfully.

Teenagers are emotional creatures, they live in the emotions of now and don’t respond well to appeals to the future. This can’t be helped because it’s part of adolescent brain development, so give them some leeway to get their feelings out, but use the chance to teach better communication methods. Sometimes it’s necessary to give them cooling off time before instigating a serious discussion. Recklessness is usually rooted in emotion. Some kids are reckless out of boredom, some out of anxiety, etc. Try to identify the underlying emotion that’s motivating the problem and then you’ll have a better chance of coming up with a good solution. For example, if boredom (or excess energy) is the motivation, then enroll them in productive activities to fill up their time. If anxiety is the motivation, then they need to learn better emotional management skills, perhaps get them a bit of light counseling on the topic from school or a local community organization.

An important part of establishing trust that is often overlooked is the notion of equality. A parent-child relationship is naturally unequal in power, but it doesn’t have to be excessively and unnecessarily unequal. There are a lot of different kinds of communication, since people communicate with different intents/purposes depending on the circumstances. More often than not, parents only talk to their kids in “parent mode” of ordering them around, interrogating them, or criticizing them. If this is the only mode that kids get to see from you, then they will view you as an authoritarian and their approach to you will be rooted in fear of punishment and the desire for escape. This makes it very difficult for them to trust you because you’ve taught them that your role is to supervise and discipline and nothing else, which means that everything they do will be as far away from your watchful warden eyes as possible.

There’s no avoiding “parent mode” as a parent. However, you can avoid making that the ONLY mode. A better strategy is to pick your battles wisely so that you use parent mode as sparingly as possible, especially with teenagers that are always pressing you for more freedom. But if you’re not using parent mode, then you have to know how to communicate with them in other modes, otherwise, communication tends to dry up quickly. To build trust, do more activities with them and spend more time talking to them in a way that establishes both of you as persons on equal footing. To be clear, I’m not talking about the cliche of being friends with your kids; I believe that you should maintain the position of parental authority until they reach adulthood. I’m talking about communicating heart-to-heart so that they get to know who you are outside of your parental role. Be more willing to share your feelings with them such that they feel encouraged to share theirs with you. Within reason, share with them what’s on your mind and let them in on what’s happening in your private world. You don’t want to let them in completely, however, because you still need to command enough respect to have some authority over them. Talk about problems you’ve encountered or struggled with and how you felt about them, but also talk about what you did to resolve them, which gives them good examples to learn from.

Rebellion is a natural reaction to feeling excessively restricted, and it’s natural for teenagers to feel restricted regardless of whether you are objectively restricting them, because their main preoccupation is independence. Children tend to project their psychological problems onto their parents, and you can make it harder for them to demonize you by humanizing yourself enough for them to empathize with your experience. By communicating in heart-to-heart mode more often than in listen-and-obey mode, they learn that the relationship between you matters in its quality of love and care, not just in whether they follow your rules. When you successfully establish a sense of mutual appreciation for each other, they learn to see you as a person with your own needs and desires, and then they’ll have less desire to rebel against you. If your kid understands that your “parent mode” is just one part of you but that the greater part of you is a fellow human, then their rebellion is likely to take a softer, more respectful form. As a result of trust and good communication, they are more likely to consider negotiating with you first before running off to do something dumb just to spite you. Let them know that you’re always open to calm and sensible negotiations/compromises because it gives them the sense of having some say in the matter. As you gradually “equalize” the relationship through heart-to-heart communication, it’s then easier to transition into an adulthood friendship with them in the future.

From the child’s perspective, I distinctly remember when my parents switched modes with me, perhaps you can recall your experience as well. My mother had a strict rule of never involving kids in adult affairs, ever. Both of my parents come from big families and they all grew up together in a small town (11 siblings between them), so there was always lots of drama going on behind the scenes, but my brother and I were completely oblivious to it growing up. My parents were quite stoic with us and we never really knew what they were thinking, so the relationships were often quite strained because communication was virtually non-existent.

You can imagine my shock when, one day, in my twenties, I was just minding my own business as usual and mom comes into the room and complains about this or that relative. She proceeds to tell me the entire 20+ year backstory of their horrible relationship. I thought she had gone mad for spilling all this shocking info to me out of the blue. Signs of early onset dementia already? But then I realized that this was a role change. I was no longer the kid who had to be kept in the dark. I was now a person who was worthy of being treated as a confidant and even someone smart enough to seek advice from. It was a bittersweet moment. Sweet because, starting in adolescence, people hanker to be treated as an adult by their parents. Bitter because she had decisively given up her authoritarian role and now I had absolutely no cause to keep rebelling against her, lol. The point is, she could’ve given up her authoritarian role more gradually by easing me into the role change in mid-to-late adolescence. We wasted many years being at odds with each other because she couldn’t recognize the ways that I had matured. And some parents aren’t flexible enough to ever make the switch.

In the end, you can only do your best. If I had to come up with a motto about parenting it would be that “Attention is love”. Just be attentive and respond to what’s important to them. Teens appreciate your care even when they don’t show it or claim to not want it, so long as you respect their emotional needs.

PS: There’s already a parenting title on the resources list about teenagers and social media that might be of help.