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With around-the-clock phone use, the noise never turns off

Editor’s note: This is the second in an ongoing series about youth mental health. The series will culminate with a Screen-Free Week for the whole community May 4-10.

A survey conducted last fall of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 by the Pew Research Center found that most teens use social media and nearly half said they are online almost constantly.

This number is up from 24% a decade ago, though it has stayed consistent over the last few years.

The social media use has gotten so concerning that the U.S. Surgeon General in 2023 issued an advisory about social media and youth mental health, which stated “while social media may have benefits for some children and adolescents, there are ample indicators that social media can also have a profound risk of harm to the mental health.”

The advisory stated that because adolescence is a vulnerable period of brain development, social media exposure during this period warrants additional scrutiny.

YouTube topped the list of the online platforms asked about in the 2024 survey, with nine in 10 teens reporting using the site. Roughly six in 10 said they use TikTok and Instagram and 55% use Snapchat. The use of Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) has declined significantly in the past decade, with only 32% of teens saying they use Facebook and 17% saying they use X.

The survey also found that when asked about access to the internet at home, 95% of the teens said they have access to a smartphone, while 88% said they have access to a desktop or laptop computer, 83% have access to a gaming console and 70% a tablet.

That is right in line with what Albert Lea High School Principal Chris Dibble said he sees at his school. He estimated 95% of the students at the high school having cell phones and most of the time you can’t walk around the building between classes and not see a phone in a student’s hand.

Dibble said when he started in the education field 28 years ago as a teacher at Alden-Conger Schools, he has always been a huge proponent of technology. He has helped outfit the schools he has been at over the years and was even a technology and integration specialist at one point, putting iPads into the hands of students.

“I saw the benefits of technology when we were allowed to provide guidance on when they can be used,” he said.

But then the forward-facing cameras came out on cell phones in 2010, and it became more of a distraction, he said.

He said while he is still a big proponent of technology and recognizes that it will still be a big part of education moving into the future, he noted it is important for students to know what appropriate use of technology looks like.

Dibble said the software in cell phones has been built to condition its users, and with every notification the user receives, the user gets a rush.

“That builds up in the body and in the brain to where you’re almost expecting the next one,” he said.

When you’re in the classroom, this means not being able to concentrate or be engaged in what you’re learning because you’re concentrating on what’s happening on your phone in your pocket.

And he said it has gotten to the point where youth don’t have the ability to stop that reaction.

“If there’s a buzz or a ding, the brain is conditioned to check it … It becomes such an obsession,” Dibble said.

Sarah Scherger, a pediatrician at Mayo Clinic Health System in Albert Lea and Austin, said cell phones are contributing to what she described as tremendous mental health concerns being seen at younger and younger ages, including depression and anxiety. While these diagnoses can sometimes be exacerbated by things happening in school, social media chronically being on can also play a factor.

Whether it’s texting or Snapchat, the youth are not able to get away from their friends — and those who aren’t kids to them. The situation is made worse for these youth’s mental health when they aren’t able to get a good night’s sleep.

Scherger, who has been at the Mayo location for 13 years, said studies have shown that electronic devices are being given to children at younger and younger ages.

As the mother of a middle schooler herself, who she says has a cell phone, she would advocate for children to not have phones in schools, or if possible, to only use them in communal areas in the halls.

She recommended parents who have children with devices to make sure they have access to them and to regularly check them. She encouraged parents to guide their children in positive internet use and to encourage them to use their devices in communal areas in the home.

“There’s a lot of stuff that happens with kids on those social media apps behind the closed door in the home,” she said. “As parents, we don’t necessarily know.”

She said because the parents of youth were also not raised in the 24/7 era of the current world themselves, she recognized that oftentimes they are learning right along with their children.

And as soon as they feel like they have a handle on one app, then the youth stop using that app and move on to another.

Megan Wilson, detective with the Albert Lea Police Department, said more and more of their cases involving youth include evidence that started on cell phones.

Whether it’s fights among groups, or any other crime, many originated or were documented through messages, pictures or videos on phones.

“Cell phones are very integrated into our investigations,” she said.

She said they get a large number of what she called “child sex abuse material” cases, which is essentially child pornography, in which teens are sending nude images or explicit videos to each other. Whether consensual or not, it is still a crime when under the age of 18.

They also see teens meeting new friends online through different apps, and they have had cases where the youth believed they were meeting another juvenile and then when they went to meet up with that person, it was actually an adult pretending to be a child.

There are also cases of sex extortion, in which a youth is convinced to send images of themselves and another individual tells them if they don’t pay a certain amount of money or send more images that they’ll leak the original picture they sent to social media or send it to their parents.

Nationwide, she said there have been children who have harmed themselves because they don’t know how to get out of those situations.

She advised parents to refer to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children website, which has an area on its page dedicated to cyber security and resources for parents and internet safety.

She, too, encouraged parents to have open access with their child or teen’s phones, to take note of what the apps are on their phone and then to research those apps, as well as parental controls for them.

She said she and School Resource Officer David Huse give presentations about internet safety at Southwest Middle School to help youth learn more as they are having more access to phones.

Up next: What cell phone policies are in place in area schools? Is there legislation being considered to change cell phone use in schools?

 

Read the first part in the series:

Breaking the Silence: In today’s society, many youth in the area are struggling