Following on from the first part of this two-part blog provoked by the Netflix series, Adolescence, Gordon Harold reviews the specifics of social media influence on adolescent development in more detail.
While debate rages in the academic world as to the ‘causal’ role of social media engagement and adverse youth mental health and other outcomes, emerging evidence indicates that the specific patterns of social media engagement by children and adolescents are what place them at elevated risk for poor mental health and other outcomes.
However, debate regarding the role of technology and potential risk impacts for young people’s development has raged for decades (e.g., television viewing, gaming and other technological developments). One fundamental difference separates today’s world of digital engagement from previous technological developments and purported risks for youth development – a mobile phone fits into a young person’s pocket and can potentially be accessed at any time without supervision or parental, carer or teacher awareness. This feature separates previous guidance for parents and others when it comes to regulating TV or other technology based engagement.
One additional challenge is the role that the digital world now plays in adults’ and parents’ own lives. Adults and children can occupy the same dwelling, indeed the same room, all engaged in digital device/mobile phone connection with personalised worlds that extend beyond their immediate physical environment; in other words, parents and children can each be physically present, but psychologically absent from each other. The term ‘technoference’ has now arrived in the academic literature, describing interruptions in interpersonal communication caused by attention paid to digital devices, which when left unchecked, can lead to a variety of adverse outcomes including heightened parent-child disengagement and family conflict (a factor long-established as highly significant for children’s emotional, behavioural, social and academic outcomes.
While new research is underway to better understand what places young people at risk in a digital world and how new digital technologies can be engaged to promote positive developmental outcomes for children and young people, one fundamental fact is pertinent today, has been for centuries, and will continue to be a key factor in the future – parents really matter when it comes to promoting healthy development for children and adolescents, even more so in the current digital world. Getting this information to parents in a way that is accessible, relatable and usable is a very different challenge; but a huge opportunity if the correct policy driven strategies are employed.
What really matters for parents of today’s adolescents
The Netflix Adolescence series quotes in the first part of this blog [link] focus on two key moments portrayed in the series. The first represents Jamie’s perspective of his perceptions of his father’s non-verbal communication (body language, facial gestures) as he looked at his dad while participating in an organised football session (at a younger age) which his father had taken him to. The second represents the reflections of Jamie’s dad having just received news that his son intends to plead guilty to Katie’s murder (having previously denied guilt) in discussion with his wife/Jamie’s mother. Among the many points of reflection which summarily focus on what every parent can likely relate to in any moment of contending with distressing child behaviour, the “where did we go wrong” questions emerge.
What is critically important in this portrayal of Jamie’s parents’ reflections is how the examples provided (e.g., buying a computer, understanding that teenagers just want to be left alone these days, bringing Jamie to play football with other young people, etc.,) are wholly relatable to all parents (the series focuses on a working-class, two-parent household).
The synergy in Jamie’s account of his dad’s non-verbal communication relating to Jamie’s proficiency to play football in an early episode of the series and Jamie’s dad’s independent account of his son’s proficiency to play football as described in the final episode is one of the most striking moments in the whole series. Jamie wanted love and affirmation from dad. Dad was trying to communicate commitment to Jamie by bringing him to an activity that worked for Jamie’s dad’s generational, community-based, cultural and traditional gender-based understanding of how to be a good dad (among other factors).
In that reflective moment as communicated by Jamie, there is almost a point of origin, a departure point, for Jamie’s susceptibility to the online world in which he finds himself immersed. If only we could have interrupted that moment with an assuring smile from dad! This is possibly the fulcrum point of the series and a fundamental intervention site that can be targeted to support parents represented by the series and that populate playing fields and other community settings across all socioeconomic groupings and household configurations (single-, two-parent, other family types) that comprise a modern UK.
This is incredibly clever scripting by the writers of the Adolescence series, yet has received relatively minimal attention in recent reviews of the series.
Yet, this is a site of potential huge positive intervention opportunity. Parents matter for children and adolescents, we know this. Their role as supportive, trusting confidants and advisors is especially important as adolescents (of all socio-demographic backgrounds) navigate the normative developmental tasks of exploring and forming their own identity and establishing more independent decision-making from their parents. Evidence highlighting the significant role of parental caregivers (most typically mothers in the established literature) is voluminous. The role of fathers in the context of the parent-child relationship has only really received systematic attention since the late 20th century. Contemporary evidence consistently highlights not only the significance of fathers for children’s positive development but the challenges of engaging fathers in recognising and supporting them in their role as parents. Fathers often report feeling irrelevant when it comes to the role of parent or uninformed as to how best to support their children and adolescents. This qualitative reality was communicated with searing sincerity and pain by Jamie’s dad as he reflected on his relationship with his son. What matters to children of all ages is quality time spent with parents, not what activities parents think their children should be good at. Communicating this knowledge and providing resources to allow parents and carers to understand and effectively implement steps to deliver this experience for their children is fundamental to interrupting the rising rates of poor mental health and other adverse outcomes for today’s generation of youth (tomorrow’s generation of adults).
The looking glass self in a modern world – parents as mirrors
The “looking-glass self” is a concept that was introduced by sociologist Charles Horton Cooley in 1902 that aimed to describe how our sense of self develops based on how we perceive others see us, rather than how they actually view us. Cooley proposed that our self-concept is shaped by our interactions with others, specifically by imagining how others perceive us, judging our appearance, and developing feelings about those perceived judgments. There are three elements to this process according to Cooley; we envision how we look to others, or how they might perceive us, we consider how others might evaluate our appearance or actions, and based on these perceived judgments, we experience emotions like pride, shame, or embarrassment. The metaphor “looking-glass” is used to illustrate how we use others as mirrors to reflect on ourselves, forming our self-concept based on these perceived reflections.
This concept has clear significance in the context of our digital and social media world, and especially for adolescents as they engage in the developmental task of shaping their own identity. The looking glass moment of pivotal significance in Adolescence could so easily have been that exchange between dad and Jamie. If this exchange had been one of encouragement, love, and engagement, rather than perceived shame and distance, the next steps in Jamie’s journey might have taken a very different direction.
What has been made strikingly clear thanks to the series, and the wider debate about social media, is that among parents who want to engage constructively with their children (of all ages) there is a distinct lack of access to information to help them – not just in relation to what works to help their children but what works to help them as parents in order for them to help their children at critical points of development.
This is where research and policy can come together at a time of unique opportunity to support parents at a concomitant time of generationally unprecedented challenge for parents/carers, children and families. Parents want reliable information, but getting that information to them has to recognise the generational and other related challenges that parents of adolescents today experience in understanding how to support and assist young people in a modern and ever-changing digital world.
Changing that reality represents significant policy opportunity. This opportunity however requires a fundamental change in strategy – a move away from a crisis-based late intervention approach to a prevention-based strategy where information and support is delivered early to reduce the likelihood of problems emerging among those at particular risk of experiencing problems – as multiple recent research studies evidence, prevention really can be better than a (late intervention) cure.
Read the first of this two-part blog: Supporting parents in a digital age – helping parents to support adolescents in the era of Adolescence
This article was written by Gordon Harold (University of Cambridge), with contributions from Iris Ji (University of Cambridge), Elizabeth Nixon (Trinity College, Dublin), Xiaoning Zhang (University of Cambridge), and Leslie Leve (University of Oregon) for further information please see https://ruddcentre.com/
References for this two-part blog on supporting parents in this digital age.
The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the Bennett Institute for Public Policy.
