A new study suggests that using Instagram or Snapchat before age 11 is significantly linked to more problematic digital behavior compared to those who join these platforms later in life. Parents’ restrictions on phone use and checking social media, according to the study published in Computers in Human Behavior, ameliorated some of the negative effects.
‘Social media sites all require a minimum age of 13 to register, but the reality is that many users are younger than that: one-third of our sample had already started using social media at age 11 or 12 and another one-third had begun at age 10 or younger,’ said the study’s lead author Linda Charmaraman, Ph.D., director of the Youth, Media and Wellbeing Research Lab at the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW). Researchers hope that this study will help policymakers and parents to make good decisions regarding the well-being of kids and tweens.
Charmaraman and her co-authors surveyed 773 middle schoolers in the Northeast U.S. regarding social media use, digital behaviors, and parental restrictions on phone usage. Researchers found that having online friends or joining social media sites parents disapprove of before age 11 was significantly associated with having problematic technology behaviors, having unsympathetic online behaviors, and experiencing more online harassment and sexual harassment victimization. Some of these effects were mitigated when parents limited their children’s phone use and how often they checked social media.
The researchers also found that regardless of when they joined social media, early adolescents engaged in more positive digital behaviors than negative ones. Social media users who started using the platform as children (age 10 or younger) are more likely to engage in supportive or civic-engaged online community behaviors, such as posting socially-supportive articles, fostering an awareness of social issues, or organizing events through social media. Due to being socialized at a young age, they may understand both the positive and negative potentials of different platforms.
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‘These findings suggest that the industry-based age minimum of 13 for social media users may potentially be a good standard if it can be enforced,’ said Charmaraman. Children, tweens and teens may benefit from a strategy that involves tracking and limiting their use of social media, monitoring their frequency of checking, and setting rules about screen time on school nights. Additionally, Charmaraman and her team are conducting a study to determine if the age at which users first use social media has an impact on their health and wellbeing over time.
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