Friendship in the Screen Age: What is it, and How is it Changing?

00:00:12 – Introductions by Executive Director of Children and Screens Kris Perry

00:01:46 – Moderator Eileen Kennedy-Moore on friendship development across childhood.

00:14:03 – Mitch Prinstein on changing friendship dynamics in the digital age.

00:30:20 – Chia-chen Yang on the impact of digital social multitasking on adolescent friendships.

00:41:29 – Moderator follow-up: What recommendations do you have for a teen that wants to connect but is seeing phones as interfering with their ability to do so in real world social settings?

00:45:03 – Riley Scott on the benefits and risks of online friendships.

00:58:15 – Moderator follow-up: How can parents best bring up concerns about online social interactions with their children?

00:59:42 – The panel addresses questions from the audience.

01:00:19 – Q&A: What is most important for parents to understand about AI companions?

01:02:57 – Q&A: Has there been an overall negative impact of digital media on children’s health and wellbeing?

01:07:18 – Q&A: How a parent can know if their child’s digital media use is helping to expand their social world, or causing increased social anxiety?

01:09:43 – Q&A: How can a parent support children experiencing FOMO (e.g., “everyone else has a phone”)?

01:13:07 – Q&A: What is the role of online gaming in children’s social relationships?

01:14:17 -Q&A: What gender differences are there with regard to online socializing?

01:16:12 – Q&A: What does research say about children’s online social conflicts?

01:20:08 – Q&A: What kind of digital media limits or monitoring should parents be doing?

01:23:26 – Wrap-up with Children and Screens’ Executive Director Kris Perry.

[Kris Perry]: Good afternoon and welcome to Friendship in the Screen Age: What is it and how is it changing? I’m Kris Perry, Executive Director of Children and Screens. We’re glad you can join us today. Friendship has always been essential to children’s development, but the ways young people connect has changed dramatically. From video game chat streams to social media DMs, many friendships now unfold through screens, and this raises important questions for parents and caregivers, such as how is technology reshaping what it means to be a friend? What does the research tell us about closeness, conflict, and well-being? And how can adults support healthy relationships in this digital landscape? To explore these questions and more, we’re joined by leading experts and researchers who study children’s and adolescent social development. Now, let’s get started. I’d like to introduce you to today’s moderator, Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore. Dr Kennedy-Moore is an author, clinical psychologist, and mom of four, based in Princeton, New Jersey. She is the creator of Kids Ask Dr. Friendtastic, a weekly five-minute podcast where she answers questions from children about making and keeping friends. Her TEDx Talk, “Conflict Resolution on the Playground: Is It Bullying or Ordinary Meanness?”, has over 1 million views. Her recent books include Moody Moody Cars, Growing Feelings and Kid Confidence. Welcome, Eileen. 

[Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore]: Thank you, Kris. I’m delighted to be here. I’m going to give you a super speedy overview of the ages and stages of children’s friendships. So this will – the framework we’ll use is based on research by Robert Selman, who interviewed a whole bunch of kids from ages 3 and up. The first stage is what I call the “I want it my way stage and –  stage”. And this is approximately ages 3 to 6. Selman calls this “level zero – momentary playmates”. It’s not. These kids definitely do have friends. It’s not a zero. They show preferences for certain peers. The focus of friendship is on having fun together. They like the idea of having friends, but they’re not so good at being good friends. And that’s mostly because of their limited perspective-taking ability. They tend to assume that their friend thinks and – and feels exactly the same as they do. And they can be very upset when they realize the kid, the other kid sees things very differently or wants something different than what they want. But they also love their best friends, and they can be very tender when their friend is hurt or upset. If we observed these kids, what we might hear is them saying things like, “you’re not my friend today” just because they want to do a different activity that day. Or sometimes the scenario is we’ve got two kids playing, and then a third kid comes over and they say, “no, you can’t play with us”. And sometimes adults think, “oh, they’re excluding. They’re bullying.” But no, this is what’s really happening. That child, those children are right at the edge of their cognitive ability in coordinating their action with just one person. So another person coming in, that blows their mind. They can’t do it. What do we see in terms of screens at this stage? Well, by age 4, more than half of kids in the US have their own tablet, although mostly they’re using the devices on their own for entertainment or education or listening to a podcast before they fall asleep. The next stage is what I call the “What’s in it for me stage”, and this is about ages 5 to 9. Selman calls this “level 1 – one-way assistance”. Friends at this stage are people who do nice things for them. That’s how they think about friendship. They’re less concerned with what they do for their friends, but they care very deeply about friendship. And they may put up with a not so kind friend just to have one, just to have somebody that they can call their friend. If we observe these kids, we might hear them using friendship as a bargaining chip. So, they might say, “I’ll be your best friend if you do this”, or “I won’t be your friend if you do that”. In terms of screens, by 8 years of age in the US, the majority of kids own a tablet. And this surprised me – nearly one quarter of kids have their own cell phone, and those who don’t have their own cell phone are constantly nagging their parents to use their cell phone. Okay, that’s not the research, that’s just an observation. In the “by the rules” phase, which is our next stage. This is about ages 7 to 12. Selman calls it “level two – two-way fair-weather companions”. The kids are very concerned about fairness. And by that, they mean fairness to me. So they tend to emphasize turn taking and reciprocity, but in a very rigid way. So if they do something kind for a friend, they expect that the friend had darn well, better do the same thing for them or they’ll be upset. We see more in the terms of the play. We see them playing games with rules like sports. Kids this age are also very concerned with fitting in by being exactly the same as everyone else. This is the age where we see secret clubs with elaborate rules and long discussions of who’s in, or who’s out. But these clubs tend to be short lived. A friend of mine told me that when her son was at this stage, he and his buddies would spend all of recess for weeks on end discussing the band that they wanted to start together, and they would talk about who was going to play what role. Now, the plot twist is that not one of these kids knew how to play an instrument, so it was all just in their imagination. In terms of observation, the “by the rules stage” is also a time when children are able to compare themselves to other kids in a realistic way, and that leads to a big drop in self-esteem. They tend to be very judgmental of both themselves and others, so we might hear them say things like, “no one will like me because of my stupid haircut”. And they’re also judgmental of the others. So they’ll say “he’s always bragging” or the big one, “you cheated”. At this stage, in terms of screens, about half of US children get their first smartphone by age 11. And playing video games is also a very popular activity, playing either on their own or with friends. And both girls and boys do that. The next stage is what I call “caring and sharing”. So this is about ages 8 to 15. Selman calls it “level three – intimate, mutually shared relationships”. At this stage, kids confide their thoughts and feelings with their friends and they help each other solve problems. They can compromise much better than younger kids can. This is also when we see more friendship groups. It takes cognitive development to be able to coordinate that activity with more than one person. At this stage, kids will do kind things for their friends without keeping score because they genuinely care about each other’s happiness. Among girls in particular, but also sometimes among boys, this can be the “joined at the hip” stage, so they may have a best friend and expect to do everything together, and they can feel deeply betrayed if the best friend chooses to hang out with another friend. If we observe these kids, we might hear them saying something like, “she stole my best friend”, or “they got together without me”, or “she told my secrets”, or “he kicked me out of the group chat”. Group chats tend to be fraught. In terms of screens, we see a lot of hurtful behavior online, calling mean names, being left out of a group or activity on purpose, lies and rumors, unwanted pictures or videos posted of them. And this really surprised me, 1 in 4 kids in the US sleeps with their smartphone in their hand, or in their bed with them. This was a study based on 11 to 13 year olds in Florida. The final stage is what I call “friends through thick and thin”. This is about ages 12 plus. Selman calls it “level four – mature friendship”. At this stage, kids place a very high value on emotional closeness with their friends. They can accept and appreciate differences between themselves and their friends. They’re not as possessive and less threatened if a friend has other relationships. And there’s a big emphasis on trust, support, and staying close over time. If we observe these kids, we might hear them say something like, “my friends and I are there for each other”. There is also a big concern about authenticity, so they might accuse other people of “she’s so fake”, but they also spend a lot of time ruminating and thinking about, “am I really lazy or productive?” And it’s not until about age 17 that they realize you’re both, everybody is. This is also an age where we see more boy-girl friendships, and they can be general friendships, and talking about “we’re just friends” as opposed to romantic interests, but they can have romantic interest too. There is a lot of online drama. There’s a study called the “Being 13 study” that found that 42% of 13-year olds in this study report at least monthly conflict online. Now, does anybody want to speculate what percent of 13 year-olds report at least monthly conflict in the cafeteria? 80%, 90%? I have no idea, but it’s a lot. The kids are learning, so they are going to make mistakes and they are going to make less kind choices. Now I’m a clinician, so I’m always thinking about, okay, what’s the practical takeaway?I have three takeaways for parents. The first is that children are not just short adults. There are qualitative differences in how children at different stages understand friendship, and some kinds of bad social behavior are developmentally typical. They really reflect immaturity rather than character flaws. The second important takeaway is that the stages reflect wide, overlapping age ranges. So there can be big differences between kids of a certain age. There can also be big differences within one child at different times if they’re upset or stressed, they’re not necessarily going to cope with their best maturity. And the third one, which is really important, is that what fuels the development of children’s friendships from those love the one you are with friendships of the toddler years to the more intimate and lasting friendships of the teen years, is an increasing ability to understand other people’s perspectives. This is really important. Conflicts are typical for kids, but they’re also learning opportunities. That’s how we understand, “oh, they see things entirely differently”. So when, not if, your child faces a friendship rough spot, start with empathy. The kid is struggling socially, they need some extra loving at home. And then try asking questions to help your child imagine the other person’s perspective and imagine likely reactions to whatever action they might think. You can help a lot in letting them think things through with you. So I’m just going to show two quick resources. My website, it has a whole bunch of things. Those are my books. There’s also articles and webinars and two -minute videos. And there’s my podcast Kids Ask Dr. Friendtastic. You can find it on every podcast app, or you can look at DrFriendtastic.com/podcast. So I’m going to stop my share now and introduce our next panelist. So our next speaker is Mitch Prinstein, PhD, ABPP. He is the John Van Seters distinguished professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the senior science advisor of the American Psychological Association. He’s a board certified clinical psychologist and has published over 250 scientific manuscripts and 12 books. Dr. Prinstein has consulted with numerous government and international agencies, non-profits, institutes, and the entertainment industry. He is regularly featured as an expert in psychological science, as a witness testifying before the US Senate, in TEDex talks, and within hundreds of media appearances around the world. So Mitch, take it away.

[Dr. Mitch Prinstein]: Hey everybody, thank you so much. And thank you for the intro and for having me as part of this important webinar to help people understand how the concept of friendship is changing these days. Thank you so much. I’m going to dive right in by talking with you a little bit about what we know in the scientific literature about friendship, and I think this will compliment what Eileen was just talking about a moment ago. Of course, we have all observed that friends seem to be interacting in very different ways in the last 20 years or so, compared to when many of us grew up. No longer do we see as many opportunities for kids to be interacting with one another, face-to-face or voice-to-voice. And even when kids are spending time with their friends, they are often engaged in what we might call parallel play, where they are each looking at their own devices and kind of simultaneously discussing their online experiences, despite the fact that they have an opportunity in proximity of one another to have an offline friendship experience right then and there. So I’m going to very briefly just review a little bit about what online relationships are like, and also how online experiences might be changing our offline relationships. And as you can imagine, this is an emerging area of research as we are racing as fast as we can among scientists to understand things as they are changing so, so rapidly. I will mention first that the way that we define a friendship within the scientific literature is typically a relationship that is close, mutual, voluntary, dyadic and bilateral. And the reason why I bring up that very basic definition that probably makes sense if you think about your own friendships, is because some of these are not the ways that kids talk about friends anymore. When we think about social media, we are often talking about people who you might invite or have as a quote unquote friend, but it might not actually be someone with whom you have an emotional intimacy with, where you actually share information or secrets or knowledge about your life. The mutuality of friendships is sometimes also not the case on social media, because your followers don’t necessarily need to -you don’t need to follow them back. So there’s not that sense of mutual relationship. Similarly, social media very often now recommends to us different friendships, that we didn’t pick or they might put their information in your feed or show them information that you have shared that you didn’t necessarily ask to have shared. So those are not necessarily volunteer – voluntary relationships anymore. And if we really think about what these relationships are like for kids, most of their interactions with their quote unquote friends are also consumable by the entire world wide web, or at least everyone on that platform. So only within the direct messaging kind of feature, might there be the opportunity for that dyadic or one-on-one, you know, interaction. And just last year, we’ve seen a real proliferation of teens’ interactions with chatbots. it’s hard to know whether we should call that a close relationship or not. That bot is, in fact, not capable of emotions, despite the fact that it might discuss its own emotions. That’s fake. Computers can’t have emotions. Those are also hard to really describe as being mutual or voluntary or bilateral relationships with equal power or equal contributions to the relationships. So, the ways the kids talk about friends has changed quite dramatically when we start thinking about the online environment. And I just have here on the right of the slide for you to see, the ways in which we measure the quality of a friendship within the scientific literature is to really consider the ways in which a friend should provide you with both positive and negative relationship experiences. And that’s critical. We don’t expect relationships to be 100% positive. We expect them to also give us the opportunity to work through things like critique or conflict. But when we think about a friend and its affordances for our psychological development, we are thinking about opportunities, particularly in middle childhood and up, when there should be times, as Dr. Kennedy-Moore was just describing, that we should have some companionship, some cooperation, and intimacy and so on. So, these analog friendships that we used to study and that still exist, off the digital platforms are really important. They are not just for amusement and entertainment. We know that language and intellectual development is absolutely critical within human interaction. And kids are getting some of those lessons from not only adults, but also from their interactions with friends and, remarkably, the ways in which we develop an emotional response and then cope with that emotional response with our peers at very young ages, has a remarkably important role in how we develop a stress regulation system and an immune system in our bodies. In adolescence, of course, your friends are the ones telling you what’s cool, what’s not, what you should be doing more of and less of, helping you to monitor and fit in. And that’s important for helping us to understand when we adhere to social norms and when we don’t, and when that’s not appropriate given our identity or our interests. So, that’s a very important learning experience. And what we find is that, once parents become totally uncool, when your kids become 11 or 12 and they’re turning just to their peers, those peers play a remarkably important role for social support. So, when kids are having their major life stressors, they are turning to their friends foremost, before their parents. So, across the lifespan, friendship interactions are shown to influence the size of brain development, the functionality of the brain, and whether that’s working effectively and so many aspects of our social, and psychological, behavioral, emotional development. I mention all of this because some of these friendships that we’re talking about in the online environment are not able to provide the same thing, at least not yet. There’s not an app or a way to do that yet. And what I’m talking about specifically, and chatbots are a good example, is that we to date cannot get touch and comfort from an online platform or an online friend. From chatbots in particular, we don’t get the scaffolding that’s so important to teach young children, not just giving them the answer, but meeting them at their developmental level and teaching them only what they need, so they can grow and they can try out and experiment and get things wrong sometimes themselves. We also, with sycophantic chatbots, don’t get the opportunity for critique, correction, challenge, that’s so critical for development. And it’s really important that replacing or displacing human interactions for digital interactions risks the loss of these really critical ingredients for development. I’ll also just mention that, you know, we have now many, many, decades of science telling us that human relationships matter. You know, again, it’s not just for fun, but when you look at relationships in children and adolescents, it’s actually remarkable. There’s been some studies now that have followed kids up for 40 years after those school-aged years. And what they find is more than IQ, more than socioeconomic status, more than the grades that they got, it turns out that relationships in childhood and adolescence are remarkably strong predictors of whether they complete school or not, what grades they get, whether they engage in risky or illegal behavior, and so on. In adulthood, it is related to all of these outcomes, including our actual physical health, our early death or, our morbidity with major diseases, particularly inflammatory diseases, are remarkably all related to the youth friendships and relationships that we had. So, it is, in fact, really critical for health or if your frame of reference is to think about the economy, it’s incredibly important to think about how treasured and important these childhood relationships are, and why we must make sure that we’re not displacing those for relationships with non-humans entirely. I will mention that there are many, so there are many different ways in which these non-human relationships, therefore, could present some risk. There are some ways, I should say, that these relationships on social media or with chatbots could be beneficial. However, I don’t have a slide for that, so let me just mention that. It’s important to know that some kids do develop emotionally intimate relationships with others online that they are never going to meet offline. We call those in the literature “online only friends”. They might be with someone around the world, but using direct messaging and other ways, they can establish a true closeness. There is research that shows that those kinds of interactions can be beneficial to kids who are experiencing stress. So if kids are online, we want to direct them to that DM feature and talk about “don’t just post things to get followers”, “don’t have relationships with numbers, have relationships with people online”. Now again, we have to be really careful though, that the people that they’re having relationships with are who they say they are, and they’re not predators and they’re not bots, but these are actual age-mates. We also know that kids who are experiencing challenges developing friendships, maybe due to social anxiety or maybe they’re on the autism spectrum, might find that chatbots or online experiences can be helping them a bit in learning how to be friends. And that can be good if it’s done to help them with their offline worlds, not to fully replace their offline worlds. Anyway, I’ll very briefly just mention that the flip side of this is how are these digital interactions changing what kids do when they do get the opportunity to interact with humans? And you’re going to hear about a bunch of these over the course of the remaining presentations today. So I’ll just talk about a couple really briefly, that I don’t think will be covered otherwise. One is the question as to whether kids are learning the social skills that they need to succeed in increasingly complex friendships, as you just heard about, as kids are aging. The frictionless aspect to these chatbot relationships in particular are really concerning, because we’re hearing in the literature now that kids are saying that they trust chatbots more than they trust their parents or their teachers, and many of them are spending so much time that it’s giving them less opportunity to have interactions with human age-mates as well. That’s really concerning. We do show that some of the critical social skills they need to develop are not developing as much as they should, because they’re spending so much time online, posting for followers instead.  Interestingly, a lot of kids are also saying that they feel that they can’t spend time looking away from their phone because they experience so much concern about what they might be missing on their profiles. This is referred to, in the literature, as digital stress, and the idea is that kids are getting just constant notifications from so many platforms, even chatbots writing to them and saying, “why haven’t you talked to me today?”. They’re really concerned about what they might be missing out on in those interactions online, because this is the fodder that will be discussed the next day. And in some cases, it’s about them – they may get a notification saying someone just posted a comment or a picture and tagged you in it. So, they feel very much inclined to want to go online and see what’s happening. Their friends might bully them or be very disappointed with them if they don’t approve of posts that their friends put up there right away. So, if your friend posts a selfie and you don’t go up there and tell him or her how great they look within just a few moments, that’s a major friendship violation these days. So you have to be on there to like your friends posts. And if you post something, we actually heard from undergraduates that even at the age of 21, they spend about 30 minutes staring at their own post and doing nothing else, just to make sure their post is getting favorable comments and they’re not getting canceled online. Well, altogether, this creates digital stress. And among young high school kids, we learned that 45% of them are experiencing so much digital stress that it’s interfering with their daily roles and routines. And that’s causing them so much distress, in fact, that the more digital stress you report in one year, the more depression you’re reporting a year later. I’ll just end by mentioning that there are lots of research studies that are coming out, even just recently, demonstrating how it is that screen use and online interactions are changing the way that the brain is growing and developing. And some of this is our own findings. We’re seeing that this is related to changes in the brain’s capacity for inhibitory controls. So, another way of thinking about that is that it’s kind of like ADHD type symptoms, where the more kids are spending time interacting with others on screens, the smaller, the thinner their cortical volume in their brain during this critical time of adolescent brain development, which is leading to difficulties with attention and also difficulties with addiction-like symptoms. And our own research, we’re seeing this as well. Kids who are picking up their phones a lot for social media in sixth grade are showing very different responses in their brain over seventh, eighth and ninth grade compared to those that are not. And just briefly, what this slide shows is that kids are having over-activation of the kind of the brain that makes them very focused on themselves and on getting more and more attention and reward to themselves. You can imagine that this would then be related to things like increased desire to be online, so that could lead to more addictive-like qualities, but also less empathy, less perspective-taking that they need to have successful friendships offline. You can see that the kids that are not picking up their phones a lot are showing exactly what we would want instead, which is this movement away from constant reward seeking for their own attention and moving towards others, which is what we’d want to see as adolescents progress. So I will stop there. I hope that that’s a helpful, very fast, but very dense overview of what we’re starting to learn and be concerned about when it comes to online experiences and friendships.

[Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore]: Okay, great. Thank you very much, Mitch. I have so many questions and so many comments. You raised lots of great points, and we’ll follow up with them in the Q&A part at the end. But I want to make sure that we have time now to turn to our next speaker, which is Chia-chen Yang, PhD. She’s an associate professor of educational psychology at Oklahoma State University. Dr. Yang’s research centers on the psychosocial development of young people in the digital age. Specifically, she studies the role of digital media in young people’s identity, social relationships, and social emotional well-being. Based on standardized citation metrics, published by Elsevier and Stanford University, Dr. Yang has been ranked among the world’s top 2% scientists in developmental and child psychology for five consecutive years. So, we’re very honored to have you here. Thank you.

[Dr. Chia-chen Yang]: Thank you, Eileen, and thank you Children and Screens for hosting this important webinar. It’s a pleasure to be here. Today, I’d like to talk about digital social multitasking and adolescent friendships. Now, the term digital social multitasking is probably new to many of you, but I’m sure you’ve seen this in action. These are examples of digital social multitasking, DSMT, defined as multitasking on a digital device during a social interaction. A common example is using a phone in the middle of a face-to-face interaction. It’s multitasking because one needs to respond to both what’s happening in the physical environment, and also what happens on the phone. Now, when two or more people are in the same physical space, but everyone is glued to their devices instead of interacting with one another, then understandably, the device has become an interference. Scholars refer to this as technoference, technology as interference, or phubbing, phone snub. Now, as you can imagine, if teens phub their friends, it hinders relational closeness and friendship quality. However, it’s important to note that this is only one type of DSMT. While it’s true that teens phub their friends, at least from time to time, they also frequently use their phones and devices to facilitate peer interaction, which looks like this. In these pictures, these teens are also engaged in DSMT, but because everyone is involved in the phone-based activity, so no one is left out of the scene, and this is actually a healthy type of DSMT. Teens frequently share interesting or funny videos and photos on the phone with their friends, and if they’re talking about something and they want to figure out the answer or solution, they also use the phone as a tool. So, in these cases, the phone becomes a facilitator rather than an interference. So these examples tell us that DSMT is not inherently a bad thing. Then the next question becomes, so how do we know if a teen’s DSMT is healthy or concerning? Here are several factors we can consider. In a DSMT scenario, a person and/or their co-present communication partner, let’s say a friend, would use a device during that interaction. So, the first thing we can consider is the level or extent to which they use the device during that interaction. But what’s more important is to consider their perceptions of the multitasking behavior. The perceptions can be negative and/or positive. For example, teens have reported negative perceptions. They acknowledge that “if I use my phone while hanging out with my friends, sometimes I feel distracted”. And when their friends do it, sometimes they feel ignored or dismissed. These negative perceptions are well aligned with phubbing and technoference I just mentioned. But teens have also reported positive perceptions, they say that DSMT is fun and entertaining, and it allows them to get things done more efficiently. And we should also consider the motives driving this behavior. Teens perform DSMT for different reasons. Sometimes, it’s because they want to quickly get some kind of information. Other times they want to use DSMT to enhance their social experience. And still others, they just want to use the device to alleviate boredom. Finally, the context of DSMT matters too, what’s the nature of that social interaction that’s potentially disrupted by the device? Are we talking about something important and serious, so, I would expect your full attention? Or are we just hanging out? So, I wouldn’t mind if you scroll through your phone for a couple of seconds. And what about how you’re doing this? When you’re on the phone, are you completely consumed by your device and ignore me, or do you share the funny things you see on your phone? These details matter. So by considering these factors, collectively, we start to get a better idea about what’s healthy and what’s concerning DSMT. For example, there are teens who feel moderately positive about DSMT, but they keep their own DSMT at a low to moderate level, and when they do it, there are usually clear motives and social goals. We refer to these people as intentional social multitaskers, and they usually report pretty positive social emotional outcomes like good friendship quality, lower levels of loneliness, and fewer depressive symptoms. But there are also teens who feel very positive about DSMT, and they frequently engage in this activity. When they do it, a lot of times it’s because they’re bored or simply because multitasking has become habitual. These teens are more likely to confess that “yeah, when I use the phone while hanging out with my friends, I feel distracted, so I frequently miss out on what my friends are saying”. Now, these are also the teens who may be facing a higher risk of developing dependent technology use, which then is related to a range of negative social emotional indicators. A concept related to healthy DSMT is called co-present phone use competence. This is a kind of social competence that’s getting increasingly important in the digital age. Teens with this competence engage in DSMT in a more mindful manner. For example, they understand that when “my friends are talking about serious and important things, I should give them full attention”, so they would put down or put away their phone. Or when they use the phone, they understand that this should be used for shared activities. So they wouldn’t just ignore their friends, they’ll involve the friends in the phone-based activities. Now, simply because a friend is talking about important or serious things, doesn’t mean a phone should automatically be forbidden. In fact, if a teen picks up the phone because they want to try to find out a solution for the friend, that’s acceptable, that’s counted as use the phone for shared activities as well. And also, it’s usually helpful if the teens explain reasons for being on the phone. For example, if they say, “hey, sorry, I really need to text my mom or my dad back right away. Otherwise they feel worried or mad”. And usually those reasons would be excusable. And finally, these teens are attentive to co-present friends’ feelings. They are sensitive if their friends feel irritated or offended or annoyed by their phone use, and they would apologize and put away their phone immediately. So, drawing on these findings, I have a few recommendations for adults. Number one, I think we can start conversations with teens about media use by recognizing the potential benefits of DSMT in particular, but really about digital media more broadly. Research consistently shows that teens actually want guidance from adults when it comes to digital media use, but they tune out when they feel like, “you’re just here to judge and dismiss my digital lives”. So if we can start the conversation by recognizing potential benefits, it would give them the impression that, “oh, okay, you actually get it”. And that would open the door for a more productive conversation. Number two, encourage teens to practice mindful and intentional media use characterized by moderate use for social purposes. It’s actually okay to use digital media to facilitate social interaction, but teens should regularly reflect upon their digital practices and ask themselves the question, “in what ways have technologies really supported making meaningful connections, but also in what ways have technologies become an interference?”. Number three, address boredom driven multitasking by building teens’ social skills. We know that teens who frequently multitask when they’re with friends because they feel bored, are the ones who report more social emotional challenges. But these findings are correlational, so it doesn’t mean that these motives cause those problems. It’s more likely that these are the teens who don’t know how to steer their conversations in the way that interests them. So if we just tell them, “hey, you shouldn’t use the phone when you’re with your friends”, it’s not going to be sufficient. Instead, we should help the teens first of all identify this pattern like, “hey, it looks like you have the pattern of using your device to avoid meaningful interaction with your friends”, and help them see how that’s a problem. And then, importantly, practice social skills with them so that they can engage with their peers more effectively down the road. Number four, model full attention when interacting with teens. If adults are always on our devices, teens notice that very quickly and they mirror that behavior. So, if we want teens to become mindful and intentional media users, we need to be a good role model first. And finally provide space for teens to discuss digital media use with peers and draw boundaries. Teens today experience strong peer pressure to immediately respond to text messages and social media posts. Which resonates with what Mitch just shared with us. This digital stress is a main reason why teens constantly check their phone and therefore DSMT. So, if we want to reduce disruptive DSMT, it would be helpful for adults to create opportunities, like teachers can host a peer discussion for teens to start sharing their digital experiences and digital stress, and then start drawing boundaries. They can tell their friends and peers like “it’s really too much. It’s overwhelming. There’s no way I can respond that quickly, especially when I’m having meals, doing homework, and when I am in bed”. And hopefully those conversations will help teens, well, first of all, recognize that “I’m not the only one who feels overwhelmed”, and then collectively develop a healthier peer norm regarding digital media use. And in this norm, hopefully, delayed responses will actually become acceptable. That’s all I have for now. I look forward to our discussion.

[Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore]: Thank you Chia-chen. We’re just going to do one quick question now because we have so many, so much good information coming and we’ll have more time during the Q&A segments. So as a clinician, what I see a lot is kids feeling very anxious about, you know, wanting to connect with their peers, but they go into the cafeteria and everybody’s on their phone, or they’re waiting for class to start, and everyone is on their phone. And like, I love the idea of, “oh, let’s all come together and talk about this”. But they’ve got notifications interrupting them and telling them to pull off, and they’ve got the anxiety of like, “I’m the lone person and everybody’s on their phone”. What recommendations do you have for an individual teen who wants to connect but feels pulled in many directions not to?

[Dr. Chia-chen Yang]: I think it’s really hard to change individual behaviors because, like you already pointed out, it has become a cultural and peer norm kind of thing. Which is why the last point on my slide is we need to have a conversation that targets changing peer norms. And that’s also why I think, you know, in some nations they start to have this school-wide, nation-wide school phone ban, in Australia for example. And there are emerging results showing that, both teachers and students report that once phones are not allowed in school, they experience more face-to-face interaction. Now, for other areas of results, we’re still waiting for more research to come in. So whether it’s definitely a good policy or not, I think we need more studies to draw the conclusion. But in the US, before we have that, I do think we need to have those peer conversations, like when you go to cafeteria, we need everyone to be mindful of – we want to create a space where face-to-face interaction is encouraged. So yes, it’s daunting if everybody is on their phone and you don’t even know if you should disrupt them. Because we know from research that if you see someone is on their device, you feel like you should not interrupt because it’s just against the norm. So I think we might need to start by changing the norm there. And that should start – that could start within the classroom. Start by talking to your friends about how important it is that we have face-to-face interaction. So next time when you go to the cafeteria and they’re on the phone, maybe you’d feel more comfortable approaching them and say, “Hey, what’s up? What are you doing?”. You wouldn’t feel so worried that, “Oh, if I approach them now, would they feel like I’m the person who doesn’t get it? Who doesn’t understand? You shouldn’t even talk to me if I’m using my devices.” So I think that might be helpful. 

[Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore]: Yes, yeah. That’s very true. Thank you so much. So our next speaker is Dr. Riley Scott. She’s a lecturer in psychology, based in the School of Applied Psychology at Griffith University in Australia. She teaches developmental, social and cultural psychology, and her research focuses on contemporary youth friendships across online and offline settings, well-being and digital literacy, particularly in the context of emerging technologies and policy shifts such as the recent changes to the minimum legal age for social media use in Australia. Her research has been cited in global reports, she routinely presents to caregivers, educators, and practitioners through conferences and invited presentations both nationally and internationally. Thank you.

[Dr. Riley Scott]: Thank you, Eileen, and thank you everybody, for having me join this incredibly important webinar and discussion today. I’m thrilled to be part of this conversation. So what I’ll be talking about today is actually a little bit – kind of to do with what we’ve touched on already. I’ll be touching on the benefits and risks for young people of having friendships in the screen age and really trying to understand particularly what this looks like for young people who might experience some challenges in developing relationships in face-to-face settings, for a variety of different reasons. And where I thought I would start this conversation today is really first by acknowledging that much like any other developmental context – so school, home, work, extracurriculars – digital contexts in and of themselves aren’t inherently good or bad. They’re actually different because they’re shaped by really unique features and affordances of digital settings that open up the doors to a whole range of different interactions that can determine whether, you know, well-being and mental health is positive or negative for young people. And there’s a lot of different elements and factors that we need to consider at an individual and context level here. And as you can all probably understand, the impacts of media use on youth mental health and well-being has been a huge topic of conversation and research now for several years. And we do see both benefits and risks of interacting through screens and spending time online with other people. And some of the more notable risks that we’ve touched on today, and especially in the social space, include intensified social comparison, experiences of heightened anxiety, fear of missing out, cyber victimization, and even the potential displacement of really important health behaviors like exercise and sleep, and spending time with family and friends in face-to-face settings. But at the same time, it’s really important that while these risks are real and they are concerning experiences for some young people, online spaces really do allow young people to build and maintain friendships, a sense of connectedness, and even to explore their identity. And these are all really important developmental tasks of childhood and particularly adolescence. So my key focus in talking to you today is understanding those benefits and risks. And I won’t spend too much time talking about them because we’ve touched on a few already. But particularly looking at young people, like I said, who might find it difficult to develop or maintain those really important relationships in face-to-face settings. And in the context of this discussion, I do want to acknowledge that it is important to consider the impacts of those pre-existing vulnerabilities – so things like anxiety and chronic health and mental health conditions or isolation – on whether or not young people are more likely to experience the negative outcomes of internet and media use. And yes, there is research that shows that some young people are at a heightened risk of experiencing negative outcomes because of those pre-existing vulnerabilities. But vulnerability doesn’t clearly map on to harm. And the really important narrative that I want us to keep in mind as I work through this presentation today, is that the outcomes that young people experience when interacting in online settings really depends on who they are. And, you know, as people living with or working with young people, you know, the young people in your life best, so you can think about things like their age, maturity, the social needs that they might have, but also how and why they are using online settings. So the different platforms that they’re using, the motivations that they have, and whether, like Mitch said earlier, that they’re interacting through direct messages that we know foster that intimacy, more than things like just scrolling through different platforms. So it’s really not a simple answer, unfortunately, as to whether social media use or media use in general has benefits or risks for friendships and interactions for young people. And that’s because these online spaces are incredibly complex, and so are the young people that use them. But in particular, we know that for some young people, online spaces can lower the social barrier to engaging in those really meaningful interactions. So through a range of different features and affordances that are unique to online settings, these spaces can lower that barrier. And that’s through things like increasing our sense of control over interactions, or the sense of protection that we might have when interacting behind a screen, which can be a really good thing or a really negative thing, and foster some more negative interactions, as you can imagine. But these settings really do allow young people, when used intentionally, to practice social skills that can transfer or translate into online – offline settings. So there’s quite a bit of research, including some that I’ll present on the next slide, that highlights that things like the absence of facial expressions and gestures and tone can be really beneficial for some young people. It causes a sense of frustration for others. But some young people will feel more comfortable, open and at ease online when we remove things or have a lower instance of things like non-verbal cues. And not only that, for some young people, online friendships aren’t necessarily what we would call a lesser option, but they might be the only available space for connection with or access to people with similar and shared experiences or backgrounds, or to access support that isn’t necessarily available in face-to-face settings. And so there’s research, for example, that shows that this is particularly true for adolescents who identify as LGBTQIA+ who see benefits of social media for accessing emotional support or for finding education and information and entertainment, as well. And there is a lot of research to show that online interactions and friendships can be particularly beneficial for young people who live in regional and remote areas, who might attend school online, for those who have other chronic health and mental health conditions, and for young people who are neurodivergent too. So these young people, for example, report using social media, in particular, to promote their health and well-being through positive relationships, emotion regulation, and to develop their disability identity. And I wanted to show you one example of a study that I’ve conducted here at Griffith University in Australia of the differences between groups of young people in how they describe their interactions across online and offline settings. And so this is a sample of young adults aged between 17 to 25. So a slightly older age group. But there is a lot of research to show that this holds for some young people through adolescence. And what we did in this study was we asked these young people to describe the differences in their interactions with close friends online versus offline. And before I get into, kind of, some of the results that we had here, I will acknowledge that most young people don’t actually differentiate a lot of the time between those contexts, because they do interact so seamlessly across online and offline settings. But when we actually asked young people to tease apart the differences for us, we did see overall that most young adults describe their interactions as being more meaningful, enjoyable, authentic, and engaging in face-to-face settings. So that’s where, as Mitch mentioned before, for example, there’s that sense of closeness and social presence. And we did find that a lot of young people described their online interactions as being quite short and shallow or purposeful for the meaning of actually setting up face-to-face interactions with friends and finding a time that they could catch up together. But when we were looking through the results in the ways that young people described their relationships and interactions across contexts, we did notice some tendencies for young people to describe a sense of preference for interacting online, or that online spaces made them feel more comfortable or safe in some way. So we decided to look at the individual differences that might explain this. And in this study, one of the differences that we looked at was young people high versus low in social anxiety. So what we did was we had a measure of social anxiety in this survey, and we were able to use a clinical cut-off to identify people who were higher in social anxiety and those with low to moderate. And you can see, hopefully, in the quotes on the slide here, these are just two quotes that kind of illustratively show the difference between these groups. On the top left, we have a young woman who had high social anxiety, and she described this real sense of control in her interactions with friends online – having the ability to think before she spoke, to not be placed on the spot where she had to reply immediately, and to have the opportunity to reply within her own time. Whereas the young person with lower social anxiety on the bottom right basically described that face-to-face interactions were easier because they didn’t have to think about what they wanted to write. So between the groups, we were able to identify some really clear differences, especially in those feelings of confidence and feeling less awkward in online interactions – even with close friends – for young people who had higher social anxiety. But you can probably imagine, even within that group of socially anxious young people who were more likely to report the benefits and preferences. They also identified some things, like if they were left on “read”, or if their messages were misinterpreted – those kind of ambiguous social cues tended to drive some more social anxiety as well. So by no means am I saying that all young people with social anxiety do benefit. It is really person specific and we need to understand the social needs that young people are bringing to these contexts and to these interactions at any time. So that kind of brings me to my next point of where is the tipping point? So at what point do the potential benefits of online spaces turn into harm to young people, especially for those more vulnerable or isolated youth. And this is essentially when online interactions, online coping, and screen time crowd out other interactions and activities. And like I mentioned earlier, that’s things like using the phone so much that it interferes with sleep or with exercise, or it actually becomes the only space that young people are interacting with others. And it’s important to think about whether online use is potentially scaffolding and supporting offline relationships. So if it’s increasing that sense of curiosity and confidence, or skill, or being used to maintain relationships that we have in our offline lives, that is a really beneficial way for young people to be using online interactions. But if online interactions are reducing all other forms of engagement, they may be functioning as a way to avoid our face-to-face lives – or what a lot of people refer to as the “real world” – and to escape from those responsibilities and stresses of offline life. And the last question that I have here is that we kind of need to keep in mind – and living and working with young people, it’s really, really important to understand – are these interactions expanding or narrowing a young person’s world over time. And so that brings me to my last slide as well, on things to keep in mind, which is first and foremost, looking at the impact and not just the time. We all use digital technologies and online interactions for a variety of different reasons. So just looking at the amount of time that people are spending on screens, yes, it can be an indicator of how much it is interfering with other activities, but what’s more important is looking at the impact. Is a young person using a screen and walking away feeling a sense of validation and companionship, or intimacy and support. Do they feel good? Do they have that sense of connectedness and that’s really important. But at the same time, encouraging that balance between in-person and online or digital contact. Not necessarily just in terms of the time being equal across contexts, but really ensuring that young people have a range of different social experiences that they can work through, or that they have the opportunities to engage in, not just a range of online experiences, for example. And the biggest recommendation that I have for anyone working with and living with young people is asking them what needs they are trying to meet in online settings, and coming into that conversation with a real sense of curiosity and empathy. So trying to take away the judgment that we all hold at some point of, “Don’t you think you’re spending a little bit too much time on the phone?”, but really asking, “Who are you connecting with online? How does, you know, Instagram or TikTok work? How do you feel when you use it? What do you think it’s doing for your sleep at the moment?” Whatever it might be. But if they express at any point that they’re trying to, you know, make a friend, brainstorm how we can meet those needs online. It’s really important to give young people that sense of agency and confidence to actually know that they can take those social needs into online settings and meet them in really important ways. So that kind of brings me to the end of my presentation as well. Just highlighting, it’s really who, how and why we’re using digital technologies as to where the benefits and risks lie. Thank you. 

[Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore]: Thank you so much, Riley. So a quick question that I think a lot of parents have grappled with is, let’s say you thought about all of this and you’re just really worried about your child’s online interactions with – or digital friendships. How do you bring this up? With – the first impulse might be, “That’s it, everything’s gone!” you know, but, how do we bring this up in a way that kids can hear, as opposed to just rolling their eyes and saying, “Ah, you don’t know anything”? 

[Dr. Riley Scott]: That’s a great question, Eileen. And I think one of the biggest points I’ll come back to is that curious communication that we have with young people. And definitely not trying to focus as much as possible on restriction, because that really restrictive behavior and over monitoring young people, can lead to a sense of kind of reduced disclosure if something goes wrong online. Young people will be less likely to come to us as a safe person to talk to if they’re kind of fearing that they’ve done something wrong or that their phones might be taken away or whatever it might be. So I think just making space for those open conversations, as we would if we pick them up when we’re driving home from school saying, “How was your day?”. You know, at night we could just say, “How’s your, you know, how’s your Instagram today?”. I don’t know if they’re the right questions, but just making space for those conversations and coming in with that sense of curiosity really will allow us to build those kind of trusting, open relationships and discussions there with young people in our lives. 

[Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore]: Great. So I want to ask questions of everybody here because I really enjoyed the presentations. I’ve got lots of notes here of things that you said. And it’s wonderful to have some science behind these issues that parents are grappling with every single day. So, Mitch, I know that in – you have given testimony before Congress about AI companions. I’ve written about it from a clinician’s point of view. Check out the resources that Children and Screens is going to send you, because we’ve got a lot of good things there. What do you think is most important for parents to understand about AI companions? Because most – in my practice, the parents are oblivious, and I’ve heard third graders saying, “Oh, it helps my social skills.” No, it does not. Okay, go ahead.

[Dr. Mitch Prinstein]: Yeah, I think it would be really important for parents to realize that the – first of all, these are not regulated in any way whatsoever. I mean, there’s literally, in the United States, nothing to stop an AI chatbot from pretending that it’s human, from claiming that it is a trained mental health professional – and that’s also happening – from offering or requesting pornographic material or other kinds of things that are, potentially incredibly dangerous and harmful. There have now been some cases of chatbots encouraging kids to die by suicide, teaching kids how to do so, writing a suicide note for them, explaining to them that their parents don’t trust them or love them, and only the chatbot does. These are obviously very extreme cases, but they’re very real with very real victims that have suffered, and we just do not have any regulations to stop that from happening again, continually. So really do be careful about that. I would just say that, and as several of the presenters talked about, I think it’s really good that we have a non-judgmental and open-minded conversation with kids about their digital experiences. It’s very easy for us who didn’t grow up with this to just wave our hands and say, “I don’t know why you’re dealing with that stuff. You know, I grew up without it and everything was fine”. But it is very hard for kids to not be tempted or involved in some of these online interactions now. So instead, having a, you know, weekly or even more often check in – “Tell me what you’re learning, tell me what you’re seeing. How do you make sense of that? Explain to me why it’s so important and how you are getting something positive and valuable from it.” So they feel that the door is always open to talk with you. And you will always be receptive if they have questions or experiences that are disturbing online. 

[Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore]: I think that’s really important, that, to say, often, early and often, that, “if you run into a situation online that feels overwhelming or upsetting in any way, come to me and you will never be in trouble.” Like, set that up very quickly and then you got to follow it up. You know, “No matter how bad it is, I’m on your side. We’ll figure it out together.” So Chia-chen, there’s a lot of alarmist stuff about, “Oh, the online stuff is turning kids into pumpkins.” And we know that there are positive things. Like, I had a kid once who had cancer, and that group was, it was really important that he had that connection there because his peers at school, they had no idea. But I’m wondering if you have any thoughts about, has it really impacted our kids in a negative way overall? Are we really living with the “anxious generation” that we should all be like, “oh my gosh”. What are your thoughts?

[Dr. Chia-chen Yang]: Well, thank you for this question. The book “Anxious Generation” has caught a lot of attention, but it has also received a lot of the criticism. I’m not going to get into details here, but I’ll say in general, if we just look at amount or frequency or intensity of digital media use, it’s not consistently or strongly correlated with most of the social emotional outcomes that have been studied. Which I think is why all the presenters today, clearly point out that it’s not so much about the amount of use. We really need to get into the – how people use it, with whom you’re using it, why you’re using it. It’s those things that matter. Now, there are some, specific ways of media use that indeed could be harmful. For example, we know that when you browse social media, because people selectively post only the highlight reels in their lives, so it’s more – it’s easy to trigger your social comparison. You’re going to look at everybody’s social media and feel like, oh, “Everyone else’s life is better than mine. Everyone else is more popular than me. I’m missing out on something important.” So that FOMO kind of there. So browsing, in general, is related to more social emotional concerns like lower self-esteem, less, lower life satisfaction. But direct messaging provides opportunities for teens to stay in touch with their friends even after school. So you can think of that as an extension of peer interaction. Now, so all the good things and bad things you can imagine in face-to-face interaction are still out there. It’s a way to provide validation and support. But yes, conflict can emerge. And of course there’s cyber bullying. So it – I wouldn’t – I would, stay away from the alarmist perspectives because as adults, if that’s how we see digital media, again, it can close the door of a productive conversation. If I could also mention one thing, we often assume that digital affirmation and validation can be superficial, and it can be, yes. Imagine if you are going through something challenging, and someone just hit a like button or heart button on your social media post versus if someone calls you or sends you a heartwarming private message. The weight and meaningfulness is different. However, I would also argue, in some cases, that heart button carries actual meaning. We’ve interviewed Asians and Asian Americans, and when they post about their experience of being discriminated online, they really welcome all types of social support, comments, private message, and that heart button matters because they often feel so invisible and that little thing makes them feel validated. And also it’s understandable that when people post about those things, if you’re not a member of that social group, you may not feel like that’s a place for you to say anything. So the like or heart button might actually be the perceived most appropriate way to show them that you are seeing, and I’m giving you my support here. So in general, yes, social media brings both pros and cons, and it really depends on how we use it. Thank you. 

[Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore]: Okay. Riley, a lot of my practice has to do with anxiety. And the thing, the theme that I keep hammering home is that avoidance makes anxiety grow, avoidance makes anxiety grow. So how can a parent tell whether the texting – or whatever they’re communicating online – is a form of reaching out that’s going to expand their social world. Or if it’s “Oh, I just have to fret and I can’t. I can’t say anything unless it’s perfect. So it’s going to take me an hour to write this text. And I certainly couldn’t say anything in person.” Like another thing that I’ve talked about is the “magnet myth” of friendship. Which is the belief that, “I have to be so amazing and wonderful that I draw friends to me, the way a magnet attracts metal.” No, that is a myth. That’s not how friendship works. But I could see how this performative aspect of communicating online could amplify that anxiety. What are your thoughts? 

[Dr. Riley Scott]: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a really important question. And without having that communication and even sometimes without that monitoring, we can’t really tell what young people are doing online. And whether or not it is practicing those social skills or using, you know, online spaces to create relationships that may give us that sense of confidence to translate the skills offline and things. So it’s really important to have that conversation as a first point of call. But also what I would say is that parents and carers can really focus on the skills rather than the format in some instances, and help young people to scaffold and build that into offline interactions. So maybe starting with the question of “Did you start any conversations with people today?” and seeing how the young person reacted to that and whether they felt okay starting a conversation and then like, you know, reinforcing that positive behavior of, “Wow, you’re really good at starting conversations online. What do you think about practicing that in this setting?” So it’s kind of that exposure slowly over time to offline interactions that we can help young people build into. And ensure that it’s not just narrowing the interactions and only focusing on browsing, or only focusing on talking to one person that is an exclusively online friend, for example. But ensuring that the online space is opening up doors to other possibilities of interactions and giving a space to practice those skills, I think is really critical.

[Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore]:  So I’m going to throw this out to anybody who wants to answer, we’ve got a lot of questions from people about “My kid –”, according to them, “– is the only person who doesn’t have a device”. And – go for it, Mitch, what do you say? 

[Dr. Mitch Prinstein]: So the number one reason why most parents end up giving their kid a device or access to some of these platforms is that they fear that their child will be the only one. So techniques that seem to work really well is, first of all, to band together with parents of your kids’ friends and see if you can have a little local agreement that, you know, “We won’t do it if you don’t do it. And let’s all kind of lock in together.” So you always have an answer to that child that says, “No, actually, I know that these two friends of yours also don’t have it.” The other thing to do is, remind kids that there’s no data, that at least that I’m aware of, that I’ve ever seen to show that kids who are off of phones or social media are having long term negative consequences in any way whatsoever. So, it is still okay. You can still exist in this world without a smartphone or without access to these platforms. I have found a tremendous amount of success, working with middle schools and showing them the privacy parts on the App Store, on many of these platforms, to show and teach them that many of these devices – what data they’re using and how they’re using it. Once kids understand that, that seems to work really well. And I will just say, for what it’s worth, and our recent data, we’re actually finding that some of the most popular and competent kids are getting off of many of these platforms. They find them tiresome, fake, really frustrating and annoying sometimes. So, it may be that the scale is starting to tip in the other direction.

[Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore]: That would be exciting. Anybody else have a tip for parents who, the kid is the only one who doesn’t get to do whatever it is.

[Dr. Riley Scott]: I can jump in just to offer an Australian perspective here on things like our recent age restrictions on access to social media. That was one of the big points that parents really wanted the support to say, “You know what? Nobody under 16 has social media right now.” So that’s one space where, you know, it offers that sense of support, like Mitch was saying, to have people around you that have kind of come together. But at this point, it’s a policy level for us. We do know that it hasn’t been effective in terms of removing all young people under 16 from social media. But during this time, we’re seeing a lot of people, parents and carers and even schools and things, putting in programs to allow young people to interact more easily or more openly in face-to-face settings with friends. So really, like I said earlier, diversifying the social experiences that young people have so it doesn’t feel so necessary to do them through a phone, which I think, over time we’ll be able to see how that plays out. And I know there’s conversations happening around the world now about age restrictions and things. So yeah, I think that’ll be something to keep an eye on and watch what happens in terms of that space. But it’ll be really important to ensure that there’s a diversity of interaction opportunities for young people as well, to help assist with that.

[Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore]: Yeah. So one thing that somehow didn’t come up in the talks is gaming. So any thoughts about the role of gaming – positives, negatives and parents’ role? Mitch, go ahead.

[Dr. Mitch Prinstein]: Sure. We are looking at some of the ways that gaming can have aspects of social media built into it. Do keep in mind that some platforms allow for any other participant playing a game to interact through chat or in other ways with a child. So if your child is playing video games, there are ways, I wish it was easier, but there are ways to set blocks or limits to make sure your kid can only interact with other gamers who are known friends. And that might be worthwhile considering or having a conversation about, but it can be a really helpful way to create community. Or have a sense of companionship with friends. It’s just that some of those social media aspects of it or some of the more addictive-like qualities to it, needs to be on the lookout for. 

[Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore]: Yeah. Chia-chen, what have you seen in your research about differences between how boys and girls are, enacting their friendships online?

[Dr. Chia-chen Yang]: So research shows that girls seem to be more drawn to social media, and boys seem to be more drawn to gaming. But in terms of impact, I’m not sure that there are clear gender differences. A lot of the research I’ve seen is that their frequency, or amount, or pattern of use might differ, but when you correlate those things with friendship outcomes or social-emotional outcomes, there isn’t always a clear pattern that the relationships differ. So that’s what I know. And I welcome feedback from other scholars here.

[Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore]: Did anybody else want to add anything about video games? 

[Dr. Riley Scott]: I can talk a little bit. So in the same study that I presented where we looked at high and low social anxiety, we actually looked at people who identified as women and men in our study and were able to look at the differences that they described in their interactions across settings with friends as well. And what we noticed, like Chia-Chen just said, the young people in our sample, the men were more drawn to gaming, but they also used online interactions in a way to really facilitate those offline catch ups with friends. So to make a time and place to catch up with friends because they were drawn to that. However, the women in our study really kind of, more used online spaces really intentionally to offer that support to young friends where they felt like they had the time to construct those supportive messages and things. So there wasn’t, I mean, I can’t speak for all boys and girls and young men and women, but that was a clear difference that we did notice in our study.

[Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore]: So in my practice, I’ll often hear a kid come in and they say, “oh, I had a big argument with my friend”, and they’ll go, “and I said, and she said then I said, and she said”, and it turns out this is all, usually Snapchat going back and forth. And I’m like, “have you thought about talking to them?” And, you know, because they’re really missing all of the important communication of the, you know, the facial expression and the body language that can really, that can make a big difference in interpreting and understanding what the other person is saying. Do any of you know, research about online conflicts? Like, I know in adult spaces, the Facebook chat group or whatever can explode in nonsense. How do kids manage this?

[Dr. Mitch Prinstein]: Yeah, there is some research that’s looking at the ways in which kids are being exposed to things like cyber hate and whether they’re intervening or not. It seems that kids are most often likely to withdraw in that situation, which makes it even worse for the victim, unfortunately, because they feel really isolated with no bystanders or upstanders. But that’s a great area for more research. I think that there are, of course, great ways for kids to handle that, in that situation, you know, and, try to establish a new norm and be brave enough to say something about that being inappropriate and getting lots of likes for doing so. But it’s very , very hard, even harder perhaps online than it is for them to do that in person because they are being exposed and they’re very afraid of the negative repercussions.

[Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore]: Chia-chen, I see you nodding. Do you have any thoughts you want to add about online conflict? 

[Dr. Chia-chen Yang]: Yeah, I have a couple. So, I think we need to differentiate online conflict and more public or semipublic space versus online conflict that happens through private chat. So private chat in a sense might be easier to handle because it’s between maybe just you and me or maybe a small group of friends. And like what Eileen already suggested, “Have you thought about talking to the person in-person?” Now, a reason why they don’t do it is because they don’t necessarily have enough experience handling conflict face-to-face. They are so used to communicating a lot of things through private chat, and there’s a good reason for doing it because they have the time to think about what to post, and they don’t have to face that strong emotion right away. And so maybe we start by helping them recognize “Why you’re doing this. You’re trying to protect yourself. You’re avoiding that – more real time strong emotions. But hey –” I think it was Riley or maybe Eileen who talked about, “– but those are the important things we learn through friendships. You have to learn how to deal with that in-person.” So, like what Mitch said, “Be brave and go out there and talk through this.” So that’s how I would recommend that the young people resolve private conflict. Public conflicts are even more complicated. One reason why it’s so difficult is because now everybody sees that. So you’re losing face. You’re not just being hurt in the friendship, you’re losing face in front of a large group of people. And so again –  but the good news is, a lot of teens are aware of how visible it is. So we can teach young people, like “When things seem to be out of control in the public space, stop engaging. And you should talk to the adults or friends you trust and try to resolve those things in private, ideally in-person. So that’s what I would do. 

[Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore]: Yeah. It’s also easier to do mean things and say mean things if you’re not looking the person in the face. So there’s research on that as well. So a question that a lot of parents have is “What kind of limits or monitoring should I be doing for my kids?” In my practice, I have never had a parent come in and say, “You know what, I wish I’d given them a phone earlier.” It’s like no it’s like – it’s a source of arguments, i t’s constant negotiation. So I usually tell them, “Make your rules before you hand over the phone because that’s when you’ve got the most leverage. They’ll agree to anything to get the phone.” But can we talk about more on-going limits or monitoring. What do you recommend? Riley, do you want to start with that?

[Dr. Riley Scott]: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a really good point too, Eileen, around making the rules before you hand over the phone, once you know – 

[Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore]: But also if you could mention about “dumb phones” and other options. 

[Dr. Riley Scott]: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I think there is a lot to be said, like Mitch mentioned earlier as well, around parental controls and privacy settings and things. So from the very get-go, I keep coming back to the point about open communication, but we do see tech agreements and things within households being really effective for everybody being on the same page. Like Chia-chen mentioned before, modeling that healthy behavior as adults to young people as well is going to be a really effective way of showing what is acceptable in the house and when we interact on our phones versus when we’re spending time as a family or whatever it may be. But in terms of the restrictive or, you know, other monitoring approaches, what research often says is best or that promotes the most positive outcomes is kind of active monitoring and engagement. So whether your young people are spending time in online games, and I mean, I know nothing about a lot of online games myself, but if I knew a young person that was spending a lot of time in online games, “Why don’t we jump on the game together and you can show me how it works?” And then that way you get a feel for what’s actually happening for them, who they might be interacting with and seeing who can contact them. As opposed to the more restrictive approach , which is, you know, “There’s no games in this house.” Because it kind of drives some of that underground behavior where it might be happening more secretly in a bedroom or whatnot. So having those rules and agreements around, no phones in the bed at night, falling asleep with your phone in the hand is not good, for anybody. Also, communicating with young people in a way that they understand is really helpful as well. So one metaphor that I find particularly useful is how would you feel if there were 30 people in your bedroom at night and you were trying to get to sleep? And why does it feel different when you’re interacting with someone through a phone? 

[Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore]: Oh, I am definitely stealing that. 

[Dr. Riley Scott]: Yeah, it’s a really good one to just like kind of reframe things and get the conversation and get those cogs turning a little bit for young people to get them thinking about their own ways of maybe changing and monitoring their behavior as well.

[Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore]: So your kid is probably not going to thank you for this stuff. I remember when one of my kids used to give speeches about freedom and autonomy and the future. And I’m telling you, these speeches could have launched a nation, but they were about a 14-year-old child who was tired and needed to turn in her phone. So I want to thank you all for this conversation. This is such an important topic. It is really top of mind for families nowadays. And thank you for your insights. And now, I’m going to pass things over and we’ll wrap up. 

[Kris Perry]: Thank you, Eileen. As we wrap up, I want to thank our moderator and panelists for such a thoughtful discussion. And thank all of you for joining us and for the important questions you asked. To learn more about this topic and many others, visit our website at childrenandscreens.org. If you’re interested in supporting this work, contributions help us continue offering trusted, independent guidance to families and professionals. You can donate by scanning the QR code on your screen, or visiting our website. Keep an eye out for follow up emails with your link to the webinar recording, transcript and a curated set of resources following today’s session. On behalf of Children and Screens, thank you for joining us and for your commitment to children’s well-being in a digital world. We hope to see you at a future Ask the Experts webinar. Have a great afternoon.