Dr. Andrew Smolar: Teaching kids to cope in social media world

I was a student for 32 years. That time was spent in classrooms, labs, hospitals and quiet offices. Countless hours spent learning the language of medicine and the mysteries of the mind. Such was the pathway for a psychiatrist who became a psychoanalyst. But I wasn’t introduced to psychology until my second year of medical school, 19 years into my education.

I wasn’t taught about the child’s psychological development before then. Not where feelings originate, and how they lead to thoughts. Nor how difficulties communicating feelings lead to relational problems. I wasn’t taught about the engagement between baby and mother, and how this template affects later relationships. I wasn’t taught about how a child feels conflicted between desires and fears. And I wasn’t taught about how a child’s development is derailed by trauma, ranging from harsh punishment by parents to death or abandonment by one of them.

Amazingly, I wasn’t taught about the science of learning. Why certain kids struggle with the traditional approach. What variables make it easier or harder. How feelings about social acceptance affect one’s ability to learn. We also weren’t taught to question the sources we relied on for facts — primarily textbooks. It wasn’t until college that I was encouraged to think critically about the author’s perspective, at times unconscious. The way the narrator tells the story, what is omitted or accentuated, shapes the reader’s picture of the story. It turns out that the subject of bias is vital.

I also wasn’t taught about group behavior. Even though groups surrounded me — cliques of kids mocking or bullying other kids — no one explained how a nice kid could become a meanie when in a hostile crowd. The role of group belonging in consolidating personal identity, group contagion and the causes of group regression were never in the syllabus.

Fast-forward one generation. Our kids completed public school in our hometown five years ago. The schools are considered excellent; they are equipped with cutting-edge technology and led by teachers ranging from average to superb. Unless a child is an unorthodox learner who hasn’t been diagnosed, she can expect to receive a solid education at the least, and a superb one if she exploits the resources.

But our kids weren’t taught about healthy ways to communicate feelings. Nor about child development, the science of learning, or group dynamics. A little bit about the power of bias. Only now, that little bit is clearly inadequate. Because they walk around with computers in their hands, connected by social media. They received no lectures about how Instagram can injure self-esteem, no lessons about how multi-tasking lowers effectiveness in all tasks, little guidance about analyzing sources of data to determine what is true, no warnings about anger and how it becomes hateful when escalated online, and no education about search engines and their goal of creating addiction in the user.

I’ve treated many adolescents during this emergence of social media. I’ve shown them how their cellphones’ buzzing during sessions interferes with their concentration and disrupts the continuity of our relationship. When they report slights suffered on Facebook, and I question why they stay, their typical response is FOMO. After we talk, they realize that what they will be spared by leaving Facebook is their unhealthy way of relating — usually related to past patterns and almost never solved virtually.

In a recent lecture given in Philadelphia, 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa explained that lying engenders more social media activity than truth telling. And because there are no penalties for spreading falsehoods — in fact there is profit motive for spreading them — they inundate us. The role of social media has been central in facilitating election interference, fomenting hatred, obscuring actual reality, and encouraging violence. Ressa advises that for now, we organize opposition to this barrage and enact laws to regulate the internet airways, and in the long-term, educate our children so they can protect themselves from this mode of transmission of feelings and information.

We haven’t, in my lifetime, been this divided. There are many reasons for this fissure, including the destructive influence of social media. We shouldn’t underestimate the impact of additional existential threats, such as mass immigration, climate change, and the recent pandemic. Under such pressures, people scan for others who seem like themselves — noticing shared ethnicity, skin color or religion. They tend to create hierarchies: my group is best and we are entitled to more than yours. They sometimes dehumanize members of the other group. The best way to immunize people against fragmentation is to teach them about what leads to it, and help them to cope with their mixed feelings.

The place to start is where 90% of children meet: public school. And they can’t afford to wait 19 years to learn these principles.

Andrew Smolar, M.D., is clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Temple University School of Medicine.