The nation’s second-largest teachers’ union said Thursday it was losing patience with social media apps that it says are contributing to mental health problems and misbehavior in classrooms across the country, taking time and money from teachers and school systems.
The American Federation of Teachers issued a report with several other organizations, warning that tech companies should control their apps before Congress forces them to do so. The federation has 1.7 million members.
The report comes at a time of great concern about the impact of social networks on children and adolescents. In May, the US Surgeon General warned that social media use is a leading contributor to depression, anxiety and other mental health problems, and more than 100 school districts and government entities have sued the companies behind apps like TikTok and Instagram because of the associated issues.
Congress is also considering cracking down, with several bills introduced this year to regulate social media use, including a proposal to completely ban social media use by children under 13.
Federation president Randi Weingarten said in an interview with NBC News that teachers’ jobs are now much more difficult because of social media applications.
“When a young person gets discouraged because they have been sent all kinds of pictures about body weight, that young adolescent brings that to school,” he said.
“There’s a challenge in terms of wellness and behavior in the classroom, and a teacher doesn’t have a ready counselor or social worker to go to,” Weingarten said. “The teacher is supposed to be teaching the class.”
The report does not single out a specific social media app. Instead, it makes a series of recommendations that the federation says all businesses should adopt, including stopping phone notifications during the school day, removing video autoplay and infinite scrolling for feeds, and allowing students the option to turn off or reset recommendation algorithms.
“We really tried to come up with things that they could do right away,” said Weingarten, one of Biden’s top White House allies.
The report is the first of its kind from the federation, though it has been outspoken about the impact of social media on children, endorsing a failed attempt shareholder resolution at the annual Meta meeting last year.
Instagram’s internal researchers have repeatedly found in recent years that the app is harmful to a sizeable percentage of young users, especially teenage girls, The Wall Street Journal reported. reported in 2021citing documents leaked by company whistleblower Frances Haugen.
Since then, Instagram and its parent company, Meta, have announced a number of changes including age verification for Instagram, older supervision in the Messenger app, and a plan for parent-managed accounts for children ages 10-12.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was questioned on the issue of adolescent mental health by both Republican and Democratic legislators during their testimony before Congress in March.
But tech companies have hit back at the harshest criticism, pointing out that science hasn’t established a direct causal link between the rise of social media and the decline in youth mental health. of May general surgeon advice He struck a somewhat balanced note, saying that social media had both positive and negative effects and more research was needed.
A Pew Research survey last year found a complicated relationship between adolescents and social networks. When asked to describe the effect of social media on them personally, 32% said it was mostly positive and 9% said it was mostly negative. But when asked to describe its effect on people their age, the result changed: 24% said mostly positive and 32% mostly negative.
The federation’s report lists some of the costs it says have fallen on the shoulders of teachers and schools: hiring additional mental health counselors, educating students about the dangers of social media, time spent confiscating phones and addressing social media-related bullying, and investigations of hoaxes being spread via social media.
School systems run by the Seattle system have sued the companies behind Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube in connection with their alleged role in the youth mental health crisis, and those lawsuits are pending in federal court in Northern California. The companies said in answers to lawsuits that they were taking steps to make their products more secure.
Weingarten said he wishes the lawsuits weren’t necessary.
“The sad thing here is that these school systems had to resort to suing social media companies to get them to stop,” he said.
The federation released the report with several other organizations that have criticized the impact of social media: the American Psychological Association, Design It For Us, Fairplay and ParentsTogether.
Ailen Arreaza, executive director of ParentsTogether, a nonprofit family advocacy group, said parents, students and teachers can’t tackle social media issues on their own.
“Tech companies must take responsibility for the harm they cause, and if they don’t, our government should step in and require them to make these product changes in the interest of youth safety,” he said in a statement.
