When she was in fifth grade, Scarlett Goddard Strahan started to worry about getting wrinkles.
By the time she turned 10, Scarlett and her friends were spending hours on TikTok and YouTube watching influencers tout products for achieving today’s beauty aesthetic: a dewy, “glowy,” flawless complexion. Scarlett developed an elaborate skin care routine with facial cleansers, mists, hydrating masks and moisturizers.
One night, Scarlett’s skin began to burn intensely and erupted in blisters. Heavy use of adult-strength products had wreaked havoc on her skin. Months later, patches of tiny bumps remain on Scarlett’s face, and her cheeks turn red in the sun.
“I didn’t want to get wrinkles and look old,” says Scarlett, who recently turned 11. “If I had known my life would be so affected by this, I never would have put these things on my face.”
The skin care obsession offers a window into the role social media plays in the lives of today’s youth and how it shapes the ideals and insecurities of girls in particular. Girls are experiencing high levels of sadness and hopelessness. Whether social media exposure causes or simply correlates with mental health problems is up for debate. But to older teens and young adults, it’s clear: Extended time on social media has been bad for them, period.
IMHO, this is a very sensitive topic, and I’m glad I don’t have kids for this to be a worry for me.
Smartphones became a big thing when I was already in high school, and social media at the time still wasn’t this aggressive, but my father did monitor my activity on the PC, mostly secretly, and it made me feel anxious. This violation of privacy damaged my already shit/barely existent relationship with him. It’s also why I’m so paranoid of secretly being monitored. You have to already have a pretty good relationship with your parents for this not to potentially mess you up, at least in my experience.
What the solution to this is, I don’t know. Better digital/tech education in schools and at home would be a good step in that direction, but strict ad and product regulations should also be implemented, which - unfortunately expectedly - is being fought against (at least in the USA, according to the article).
The secretly part is the issue. We did not make it a secret. When my daughter was 11, she got a cell phone because at that point all of her friends had them. But we told her that we would monitor her use. She knew about it, so she didn’t feel anxious about it (and she has major anxiety problems). At this point, at 14, we feel we can trust her to be responsible and don’t monitor anymore. But we do still talk to her about what she sees.
Were we able to block her from absolutely everything that might have been risky? Probably not. But I think we avoided most of it while trying to educate her on safe behavior.
It wasn’t just secretly, or that secretly at all, but it still stuck with me. When I was 10, I was texting a friend about having started periods, an extremely sensitive topic, and my father grabbed my phone to read who I was texting. It’s been very long since that happened, and I don’t have the best memory, but things like this I remember very vividly. Some kids are more sensitive, and you have to build a strong relationship with them for these things to potentially work. I think there is even a Black Mirror episode on this topic.
There’s also a problem that if the kid does know they’re being monitored, they can and some will figure out how to get past it. I can’t offer an immediate solution, because honestly, social media scape is severly fucked nowadays, but there’s no winning scenario I can think of that doesn’t require one to have an extremely good relationship with their kid. And even then, it might not be enough.
I’m glad I’m both old enough I didn’t grow up with tiktok and the likes, and that I don’t have kids to worry about. Being a parent in this day and age sounds absolutely exhausting and uncertain from multiple modern-world perspectives.
Kudos to any working parent who manages to handle it well and has a kid with a good head on their shoulders.