Alexander, 9
Media consumption: 5 hours
Favorite media/technology: Tablet to watch YouTube & play FIFA
How do you and your family interact with media/technology?
We use media to watch videos and play music; we also use it to learn things. My dad uses it to learn his crafts with wood and tools, my mom uses it to pray, and my sisters use it to watch movies and stuff. I use it to play games. We also use it to watch the world cup 2022 Qatar and other soccer/sports games and that keeps us entertained because if the team you like wins a game you go back to see the replay and it’s exciting to see your team qualify or win.
How do you and your peers interact with media/technology?
My friends use it to play games like Minecraft, Fortnite and Roblox. And they use it to watch videos like gaming videos, to play music, and they also use it to do school work cause sometimes our teacher asks us to go to Schoology and Clevver portal.
What do you use media for?
I use media for watching videos, playing FIFA, and learning how to do certain things like drawing, how to play instruments. I also use it for school, we do Amplify, Brainpop, ST Math, and sometimes our teacher lets us play Minecraft education.
What is your favorite/least favorite thing about media/technology?
My favorite thing is that you can go experience different things. You can play games online with your friends, you can learn and ask questions to Google or Siri. My least favorite thing is cyberbullying because if you post a video on YouTube and you get a lot of hate it can affect your life and feelings which will make you depressed, angry, and can lead you to try and commit suicide and hate.
What is one thing you want the people who create the media you like to watch/play/interact with to know?
To be more safe because once you really get to know it people just start hating on it. They should take responsibility of updating it because if you leave it like that people won’ t like it anymore and leave bad reviews. They should make media more safe because there could be cyberbullying, death threats, sexual things like “ooo imma come to your house and do this to you.” They should restrict comments on certain things like YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter because they could send hate comments.
What media do you interact with the most?
Games like FIFA, Animal crossing, Duolingo to learn French, and YouTube videos like gaming, unboxing, influencers: Faze Rug, Mr.Beast, Caylus.
Where do you get most of your information about what’s happening in the world (eg. news, internet, parents, etc.)?
From the TV news, notifications from Apple News, friends. Like last time they told me about the war in Ukraine and I didn’t know that. Oh and ads like on YouTube that if you click on it it shows you about what is happening in the world.
What media helps you stay busy/stay calm during challenging times?
Breathing videos in school, satisfying videos: slime, soap cutting, cute animals, and watching Lego videos. I watch coloring videos of people painting pastels landscapes and celebrities.
What lessons have you learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and other challenging times?
How to interact with technology like FaceTime with your friends so that you don't feel lonely and so that you can be social. How to not get sick by wearing a mask all the time, wash your hands for 23 seconds because of the virus because you don't want to get sick. People die, it affected lives, we don't talk about that.
Have you learned anything about how you use media and technology because of the COVID-19 pandemic and other challenging times?
Yeah we took Zoom classes, which were boring. How to build things, because you couldn't go out with the pandemic and quarantine, so you had to go outside for certain necessities. That you could go use technology to be entertained and not be bored. Using technology to experience things that we could no longer do like watching videos of people vlogging in the past, cooking shows that you had to test negative for to be on. It taught you that if you do not get wifi you go crazy as hell and if you don’t have wifi you die, you get bored. If you didn't have certain money for wifi then the kids parents would have to teach them about what they know when they went to school, if they even went.
Interviewed by: Angela Ramirez, UCLA student
Embracing Technology as a Tool for Healthy Attachments in Adolescence
Thirteen-year-old Kayla is dragged away from her social media by the interruption of her father's voice at the dinner table. Dad is trying to connect but Kayla rejects him, preferring the world inside her phone. At first glance, this scene in the 2018 film Eighth Grade feeds into common stereotypes that teens are bewitched by social media, which causes them to withdraw from their parents and become obsessed with peers. But does technology really take adolescents away from parents?
To understand this question, our research team in the department of psychology at UC Santa Cruz, designed a daily diary study to look at how teenagers are balancing time with parents and friends through face-to-face and computer-mediated communication. Contrary to stereotypes, our study found that adolescents who spent more time communicating with friends via technology also spent more, not less, time with parents compared to those who had less contact with friends. Likewise, Eighth Grade ultimately rejects the idea that adolescents use technology to get away from parents and instead paints an authentic portrait of how teens use their phones to explore new horizons while maintaining closeness with parents. In one illustrative example, Kayla uses technology to connect with her peer group but when she is upset and wants to leave the pool party of a popular girl at her school, her dad is just a phone call away to support her.
The teenage years are important for the expansion of healthy attachments, which includes feelings of emotional support, trust, and commitment in close relationships alongside feelings of autonomy and a sense of personal boundaries. Attachment styles begin to develop in the early stages of life based on interactions between infants and their caregivers. When babies receive predictable and appropriate care, they will begin to develop a secure attachment style in which they feel safe enough to explore their expanding world and trust they can seek the close support of an adult when in need. If these basic needs are not met, a child may develop an anxious or insecure attachment style in which they lack the ability to depend on their parents, creating a pattern of behavior that impacts how secure and confident they will feel in future social relationships. The nature of attachment shifts during adolescence and the crucial task is for parents to recognize their child’s growing needs for autonomy—adolescents who feel that their parents respect their personal choices are more likely to feel emotionally close to parents and will transfer that healthy balance of closeness and autonomy to future relationships.
In the latter half of the 20th century in Western cultures, adolescents’ development of emotional attachments to friends and romantic partners has been marked by greater distance from parents. Might we see less distance from parents with the convenience and portability of communication technologies making it easy for adolescents to stay connected while exploring on their own? Our study asked 169 high schoolers, ages 14 to 18, to complete daily diary surveys about their social interactions before bed for six consecutive days. On the last day of the study, the teens filled out a survey about their relationships with friends and parents. The survey also included scales to assess adolescents’ feelings of autonomy in relationships with their parents. The results suggested that technology can be used to enhance both autonomy and closeness during periods of transition in parent-adolescent attachments. The more adolescents communicated with friends and parents via technology, the more face-to-face time and emotional closeness they had with them. The study also found that the more teens communicated with their parents via technology, the more they felt a combination of autonomy and emotional closeness with them. Teens who texted more frequently with friends were more likely to make decisions independently from parents. Contrary to fears that technology is making us less social, our findings illustrate how digital tools are helping teens connect in new ways that honors their growing needs for autonomy. In Eighth Grade, Kayla illustrates these findings when she develops new friendships with older high schoolers and a boy in her grade. As a result of this independence, Kayla spends more time socializing with her dad, too.
Thinking of the phone as a transitional object is helpful for understanding how teens are balancing autonomy and closeness with parents in the digital age. During childhood, transitional objects offer children more independence while also providing connectedness and safety. Transitioning a child’s human contact through an object like a blanket or toy reminds them of their parents. Likewise, a smartphone provides the same support for teens. Not only does the phone create opportunities for freedom, it also grounds teens - like we see with Kayla at the pool party in Eighth Grade - in knowing they can connect with their parents anytime and anywhere, which may lay the foundation for ongoing secure attachment with parents even as teens form new emotional attachments outside the family.
Take Away Message for Storytellers
Eighth Grade parallels our research by showing that Kayla’s phone provides her new opportunities for socioemotional growth and social identity in her journey from childhood to adulthood. Eighth Grade resists exploiting the idea that adolescents use technology to replace parents with friends. Instead, it shows a true to life image of teens using social media to navigate their complex worlds of friends and family. This is what Eighth Grade does so well—it shows how important communication technologies are for Kayla’s growing independence and for her feelings of trust and support with her dad during a somewhat turbulent time of transition. The film makes a deliberate choice to show how Kayla uses communication technologies to support, not hinder her development. Our research also supports this more positive view of communication technologies. Ultimately, storytellers should continue to find ways to portray teens using digital tools for both autonomy and closeness, seeing these goals as compatible rather than contradictory.
Actionable Insights
Show characters in parent-child relationships engaging in healthy online communication
Show young characters using technology to connect offline in face-to-face interactions with friends and family
Show adolescent characters who use technology to gain independence and maintain closeness with their parents
Zoe Peterson
Department of Psychology, UC Santa Cruz
Adriana Manago, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Psychology, UC Santa Cruz
Collaborator of the Center for Scholars & Storytellers
Based on the article: Manago, A.M., Brown, G., Lawley, K., Anderson, G. (2020). Adolescents’ daily face-to-face and computer-mediated communication: Associations with autonomy and closeness to parents and friends. Developmental Psychology, 56, 153-164.
Technology in Tandem: Designing for Joint Media Engagement
Technology in Tandem: Designing for Joint Media Engagement
“Daddy, what’s that?”
“Oh, that’s a walker – it helps people walk when they are a little unsteady. You remember when Grandma was in the hospital after her surgery? She used a walker to help her get around until her leg was feeling better. It looks like the beaver in the show is using a walker while he gets better too!”
There’s a common saying that kids are like sponges, soaking up everything around them. And it’s not wrong – kids can pick up a lot. But study after study shows that when it comes to media, like TV, apps, and ebooks, children can absorb the most when an adult uses the media with them. For example, one study conducted at the University of Delaware in the Child’s Play Learning and Development Lab, found that 4- and 5-year-olds understood an e-book’s story better after they read it with a parent than after “reading” it alone using the audio narration. Interactions like the one above probably explain why. Audio narration can read the story to the child, but only an adult can stop to define an advanced word, describe a picture, or relate the story to their child’s life.
But how much do children and parents use media together?
Despite everything we know about how “joint media engagement” can help children learn, the data show that most of children’s media use happens alone. Only about a third of parents say that they watch TV with their children all or most of the time and only one in five parents say that they use tablets with their child that often. Similarly, only a third of parents report watching online videos with their child most of the time, and less than one in five report playing video games with their child that often. Perhaps not surprisingly, these statistics differ by age: Joint media engagement is highest with younger children and drops off drastically as children get older, especially for tablets and smartphones.
The role of the media itself
Very few media properties encourage adults to use media with children. Although media creators are quite good at making shows and movies that are appealing to children, whatever makes media irresistable for a 4-year-old is not likely to make most adults swoon with delight. Think about parents in the 1990’s complaining about the songs from Barney or those in the 2000’s who couldn’t stand Caillou’s constant whining. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule. The beloved PBS show Sesame Street features celebrity appearances and humor that is likely to go way over kids’ heads but is targeted right at the parents who might be sitting on the couch with them. Even if they don’t intend to watch with their children, seeing, for example, Tiffany Haddish or John Legend might entice parents away from preparing lunch or scrolling through their email to check out what their child is watching.
Tablets and smartphones however, may be used even less with children because these devices are not geared towards two people using them together. It feels natural to sit on the couch next to your child to watch a TV show together, but when was the last time you jointly used an iPad? Research has shown that when children use a tablet they place it in their laps or in front of their face, making it more difficult to share. When children use media on a big screen in the living room, parents can walk by and easily see what their child is watching. Likewise, computers are oriented vertically and have a screen large enough to view over the child’s shoulder. Today’s devices are convenient for use on-the-go, but their smaller screens and handheld nature mean that parents may struggle to see what their children are watching. That makes it doubly difficult to engage casually and jointly with your child and the screen.
Rethinking media design for joint engagement
Here are some tips about how media creators can craft content that requires joint media engagement:
When a child opens an app, it could default into a two-player mode, prompting them to go find a parent to collaboratively reach a goal in the game.
Activities in apps could allow for multiple screen touches simultaneously, so that parents and children can both be engaging at the same time.
Create apps that allow children and parents to play together on multiple screens; for example, a child playing on a tablet in the kitchen could send a digital invitation to their parent’s smartphone in the living room.
Consider both children and parents in designing their content.
In the end, we all know that media is often used as an activity for children when parents need to complete other tasks, as a “babysitter.” But media can have many uses, and children gain much from the kinds of casual interactions around media described in the story of grandma’s walker above. Media creators should think creatively about how they can engage multiple generations so that both parents and children can have fun and learn from using media together.
Rebecca Dore
Senior research associate at the Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy at The Ohio State University.
Collaborator of the Center for Scholars and Storytellers
Roberta Golinkoff
Professor of Education at the School of Education at the University of Delaware.
Collaborator of the Center for Scholars and Storytellers
What Teens Really Think About Their Social Media Lives: Tips for Storytellers
Social Media and Teens
© Photo by Jen Siska
In Common Sense Media’s latest research, teens share their experiences on everything from digital distraction to how social media makes them feel.
What teenagers look like they’re doing and what they’re actually doing can be two totally different things — especially when it comes to social media. A bored-looking ninth-grader could be majorly bonding with her new BFF on Snapchat. A 10th-grade gamer may complain loudly when you cut off his internet but be secretly relieved. An awkward eighth-grader may be YouTube’s hottest star. To find out what’s really going on in teens’ social media lives, Common Sense Media polled more than 1,100 13- to 17-year-olds in its latest nationally-representative research, Social Media, Social Life: Teens Reveal Their Experiences. The new study updates our 2012 study on teens and social media with surprising new findings that address many of parents’ most pressing concerns about issues such as cyberbullying, depression, and even the popularity of Facebook (spoiler alert: It’s not).
Why now? Today, 89 percent of teens have their own smartphones (compared with 41 percent in 2012). They grew up right alongside Instagram and Snapchat. They do research papers on Google Classroom, find emotional support on teen forums, share poetry on Tumblr, and may text “I love you” before they’d ever say it to your face. But concerns over the negative consequences of social media have grown in tandem with its popularity among teens. Grim reports on teen suicide, addiction, cyberbullying, and eroding social skills have caused many people, from parents to teachers to the tech industry itself, to look at social media as a potential contributor — if not the cause — of these issues. This survey clarifies some of those concerns and draws attention to the reasons some kids are deeply affected by — and connected to — their digital worlds.
Key Findings of Social Media Report & Actionable Insights:
Thumbs mostly up. Only a very few teens say that using social media has a negative effect on how they feel about themselves; many more say it has a positive effect. Twenty-five percent say social media makes them feel less lonely (compared to 3 percent who say more); eighteen percent say it makes them feel better about themselves (compared to 4 percent who say worse); and 16 percent say it makes them feel less depressed (compared to 3 percent who say more).
Managing devices is hit or miss. Many turn off, silence, or put away their phones at key times such as when going to sleep, having meals with people, visiting family, or doing homework. But many others do not: A significant number of teens say they “hardly ever” or “never” silence or put away their devices.
Less talking, more texting. In 2012, about half of all teens still said their favorite way to communicate with friends was in person; today less than a third say so. But more than half of all teens say that social media takes them away from personal relationships and distracts them from paying attention to the people they’re with.
Vulnerable teens need extra support. Social media is significantly more important in the lives of vulnerable teens (those who rate themselves low on a social-emotional well-being scale). This group is more likely to say they’ve had a variety of negative responses to social media (such as feeling bad about themselves when nobody comments on or likes their posts). But they’re also more likely to say that social media has a positive rather than a negative effect on them.
Tips for Storytellers:
Show kids (and their parents) putting phones away or on “do not disturb” at key times, such as mealtimes or bedtime. Kids know social media can get in the way of important things, but they have a hard time regulating their own use. Modeling mindful and intentional use can help to normalize behaviors. It’s also worthwhile to depict kids who take phone breaks for a day or more to feel less distracted, or to avoid digital drama.
Highlight the teens who need the most help. An honest depiction of teen social media use for a depressed teen might include a teen feeling unusually happy after receiving online validation (through likes or replies), but also deeply affected by comparing themselves negatively to others online (like on Instagram), or not getting likes or feedback after posting something.
Show the creative side of media to inspire teens to use media to learn and grow. Teens express themselves in a variety of ways on social media: creating and sharing art, photography, poetry and other writing, and music. Take care to show kids creating with their mobile devices, and not just consuming or mindlessly scrolling.
To find out the latest on what teens are doing on social media, check out Common Sense Media.
Michael Robb, Ph.D.
Senior Director of Research, Common Sense
Collaborator of The Center for Scholars & Storytellers
Caroline Knorr
Senior Parenting Editor, Common Sense