Anxiety & Algorithms: North Carolina Examines How to Rein in Social Media’s Sway

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Here’s a quick quiz: Think back to Thanksgiving. Was your smartphone at the table? Did you scour Facebook or Instagram between courses? Did you post a selfie to mark the occasion?

With social media occupying a bigger and bigger role in our lives, health experts are increasingly concerned about the role it has on adolescent mental health.

“In the span of a generation, social media has really dramatically changed the landscape of adolescents’ development around the clock,” Eva Telzer told members of a North Carolina Child Fatality Task Force committee earlier this month.

Telzer is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at UNC Chapel Hill. She told committee members that several decades ago adolescents were interacting with each other in person. Now adolescent social relationships are occurring largely behind a screen.

“Their posts are relatively permanent and public. Anybody can see them. They have this digital stress to be available around the clock,” explained Dr. Telzer.

Social media has in effect transformed what it means to be an adolescent today.

Seventy-eight percent of 13- to 17-year-olds are checking their devices hourly, with 46% checking them almost constantly.

“This has risen dramatically just in the past five or so years. For example, in 2018, just 24% of adolescents were reporting checking them almost constantly. And so, this is really important to really think about, because adolescent social media use is increasing exponentially,” Telzer told the task force’s Intentional Death Prevention Committee.

Dr. Telzer said that this increase in social media use is happening at an extremely important developmental period when the adolescent brain is also going through dramatic changes.

The brain becomes very sensitive to social rewards and learning to avoid social punishments.

“Social media itself can fundamentally change the developing brain,” she warned. “And what’s even more concerning is that this is all happening at a developmental window when adolescents’ mental health disorders are beginning to show increases that…relate to impulse control disorder, substance use, anxiety, mood and other symptoms.”

Sam Hiner is a junior at UNC Chapel Hill who wants to see legislative guardrails for social media.

Hiner co-founded the Young People’s Alliance to give his generation a greater voice in the issues not being addressed by state policymakers. One area the alliance would like to see addressed is the mental health crisis faced by youth.

Hiner said the simple act of hovering over an image about healthy eating can spiral you down a rabbit hole that was never intended.

“I was literally just looking at it. Next thing you know, you see more and more content like that, and it gets more and more extreme,” Hiner told the committee.

“So, your feed on Instagram or TikTok, you’re seeing more content containing unrealistic body standards, pictures of insanely skinny models that are photoshopped and things like that. And you’re seeing unrealistic dieting standards as well.”

Hiner said the social media stream is being shaped by an algorithm that recognizes where a user may pause or click and then serves up more content to keep the user online for as long as possible.

“But what ends up happening to a lot of these teens is their feeds become full of really harmful content. And that’s all they see anymore because of the way the algorithm works.”

Hiner said the same goes for political extremism.

“People seeing more and more extremist content over time can completely shift their worldview. And that’s something that is really shockingly common among my generation,” said Hiner.

And that steady stream of content can influence how teens or young adults feel about themselves.

One in 10 children in North Carolina aged 3-17 has a diagnosis of anxiety or depression. One in five seriously considered attempting suicide, according to NC Healthy Schools data.

Hiner and the Young People’s Alliance are pushing for legislation in the North Carolina General Assembly that would prevent the data of minors from being used in algorithms that are promoting content or targeted advertisements. Adult users would have the option to turn off that supply of user data.

The Social Media Algorithmic Control in Information Technology (SMAC IT) Act was introduced last May with 62 bipartisan co-sponsors. While House Bill 644 passed a House judiciary committee unanimously, it remains in the House Appropriations committee.

North Carolina’s Department of Justice is also examining the impact social media is having on children’s mental health and overall well-being.

In late October, Attorney General Josh Stein joined a group of 33 attorneys general to file suit against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.

The lawsuit alleges that Meta knew its platforms were harmful for children but continued to market them to young people to increase profits. Teens are motivated by immediate rewards, and Meta leveraged those vulnerabilities to get young users to spend more time online.

“The features like push notifications, infinite scroll, auto play, disappearing content, all of that seeks to keep them on the platforms for longer,” explained Laura Brewer, deputy chief of staff at the NC Department of Justice.

Recently unsealed court documents allege that Meta collected minor children’s data from Instagram accounts without their parents’ consent.

But it could take years for that case to wind its way through the courts.

Whitney Belich, co-chair of the Intentional Death Prevention Committee, believes the negative influence of social media must be addressed sooner rather than later.

“It just kind of makes sense to me that if we’re so concerned about getting help for these kids who need mental health treatment, we should be equally concerned with the things that are leading to them needing it in the first place,” Belich said.

The committee agreed to endorse legislation in 2024 that addresses addictive algorithms in social media.

“I think it’s important before we have a whole nother generation of teenagers and beyond that are dealing with these things,” said Belich.

For the current generation, Telzer, the UNC professor of psychology and neuroscience, said parents must understand that social media is not going away.

She suggests caring adults follow the guidance of the American Psychological Association and engage in social media literacy. Communicate with adolescents what is unsafe about social media, and perhaps more importantly, how to identify misinformation and disinformation.

“We don’t just give adolescents the keys to a car and let them go out and drive in the world. There’s training that happens before we sort of release the keys,” shared Telzer. “Engaging in some social media literacy is really important.”

NC Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. NC Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Rob Schofield for questions: info@ncnewsline.com. Follow NC Newsline on Facebook and Twitter.

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