Snapchat’s Effect on Our Teens’ Mental Health

Co-authored by Joshua Miller

Parents are more concerned than ever about their children’s mental health. Studies show that social media use has a strong effect on our teens’ daily emotions and behavior. Rather than write yet another article lamenting teens’ social media usage, I invited my nineteen-year-old son, Joshua, to co-author this Jews in the Digital Age column with me to ensure it includes perspectives from both a parent and a teen. 

Parents of teens are familiar with and use social network applications like Facebook and Instagram. They have also, in recent years, begun to use TikTok, the popular video application. However, Snapchat is different since most parents do not use it and are generally unaware of their teens’ activity on the platform.

Snapchat’s own annual reports explain that it is used primarily by high school and college students. The mobile application allows users to share photos, videos, and messages. As of February 2023, Snapchat has approximately 750 million monthly active users, 63% of which use the application regularly, and more than three billion snaps are created and exchanged each day.

Snapchat causes negative mental health issues, such as anxiety and depression, in high school and college students, making it an activity that should be high on the concern list of parents, teachers and mental health professionals. There exists a worldwide mental health crisis among teens and college students, and the use of Snapchat is prevalent among this age demographic. Studies have been conducted to show a causal relationship between Snapchat use and this mental health crisis.

Many teens will be enjoying a fun experience with family or friends, and then experience a sudden mood swing upon opening the Snapchat application on their phone. The phone screen will display photos of their friends' activities, who they’re with, and where they are currently located using Snapchat’s “Snap Map” GPS (global positioning system) feature. The teen who seemed to be happy and content is now feeling lonely, anxious and depressed thanks to the “fear of missing out.” Commonly known by the acronym “FOMO,” Snapchat contributes to this fear by making it appear that others in the teen’s peer group are enjoying life more. The teen often feels that they have not been invited or included in a competing activity even though they were satisfied with their situation prior to looking at the “Snap Map.” Seeing what others are posting on Snapchat, the teen loses focus and cannot be present with the people they are actually with in real life (“IRL”).

The Social Media Conundrum

I recently binge-watched CNN’s three documentaries on Netflix, which focus on the three final decades of the 20th century. Watching “The 70s,” “The 80s” and “The 90s,” I was left thinking about how CNN would characterize the current decade. No doubt, our love-hate relationship with social media would be a principal highlight this decade.

As an early adopter of social media and an active user, I find the love-hate relationship that people have with social networks intriguing. The people who condemn social media as an evil that has plagued our way of life are the same people who scroll through their Facebook feed before they fall asleep at night and while eating breakfast in the morning. There are aspects of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, et. al. that we despise, and there are aspects that we have embraced and don’t know how we managed without. This social media conundrum is fascinating to me and I have been curious as to how we can view it through a Jewish lens.

Jewish people are less than 0.2% of the world population and yet most of those who have led us into the social media universe are members of the Jewish faith. Sergei Brin and Larry Page founded Google, which opened the door to Mark Zuckerberg creating Facebook and Noah Glass joining his friends to launch Twitter. Certainly, their intention wasn’t to do harm in creating new forms of communication, search and sharing.

Zuckerberg was an avowed atheist who has begun to embrace his Judaism more since becoming a father to two daughters. His public posts about celebrating Shabbat and Jewish holidays with his family have led some to question whether core Jewish ethics are at odds with the way Facebook is run as a company and how this social network has created harmful outcomes in our culture. In its almost fifteen years in existence, Facebook has been blamed for an increase in teenage depression and suicide rates, altering a presidential election, giving racists and anti-Semites a platform to spew their hate, disseminating false news reports and suppressing actual news, ruining millions of friendships, and Russian intervention of our political process.

There’s no doubt that Zuckerberg, along with Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, has been in the hot seat for the past few years. Both have demonstrated they are strong proponents of free speech and they also believe in core Jewish ethics. Have those two mantras come into conflict at Facebook? How can the Jewish community see the light amidst the darkness in social media? While Facebook, under the leadership of Zuckerberg and Sandberg, has pledged to correct the harmful aspects of the network, they have largely failed. But should they be held responsible?

If there’s one thing that Judaism has taught us over the millennia, it is that there are shades of grey in everything. The social network that Zuckerberg created has a lot of positive aspects to offer us as a civilization. It has helped us communicate with people around the world and find ways to bring us closer together. Facebook allows us to keep in touch with long lost friends, wish each other birthday and anniversary greetings as well as condolences on the death of a loved one, view photos and videos of our family at life’s celebrations, and engage in respectful dialogue over the issues that matter most to us.

Sadly, Facebook and other social networks have also aided those who perpetrate evil. Social media has a dark side as we know all too well. It has amplified the voices of those who hate and threaten our democracy. It has given a much louder voice to bullies, who damage our wellbeing and sanity. However, social media hasn’t created anything new. It has just brought more of that darkness into the mainstream.

We must recognize that social media, whether in the form of Facebook and Twitter or something else down the road that will replace those networks, is now part of our world. It is up to us to use these tools for good and to shut out the evil that tries to enter through our internet connections. Ultimately, we must remind ourselves that social media engagement will never replace real-life human interaction.

In a recent New York Times piece, Bari Weiss wrote that it seems “the organizations and the people who get the most attention are destructive. On social media, this isn’t just speculation. Outrage and negativity are the most ‘engaging,’ and so that’s what we’re fed. The disciplined among us — and I’m hoping to get there — might get off these platforms entirely. One thing we all can do is make the effort to engage in real life.”

I don’t believe quitting social media activity cold turkey is the solution to what plagues our society. I think we must seek out the positive outcomes that exist in our experiences on social networks like Facebook while working to collectively shut out the darkness that has been so pervasive. While Zuckerberg might have created this game-changing network, he shouldn’t be fully blamed for where it has taken our society. We must show responsibility and direct social media toward the light – overwhelming the evil with good. That is the Jewish ethic.

Originally published in the Detroit Jewish News

A Return to Simpler Times (Before Technology Complicated Things)

I've always had a tremendous appreciation for technology. I'm continuously wowed by the innovations that have revolutionized our lives, but I also fear that technology is causing us to lose our foundation with some of the most basic human engagement. I'm a tech evangelist, but I often think about where we, as a society in general and as a Jewish community in particular, must draw the line.

Last month, we observed the High Holidays and, as we do every year, we heard the Hebrew word "teshuvah" used a lot. Teshuvah is most commonly defined as repentance, but it literally means return. Perhaps it is time we return to basics as a way of resetting for the Jewish new year. Many people praise technology, but also express how they yearn for the much simpler times of the past before technology dominated our waking hours. Teshuvah can be a path for us to continue to embrace technology, but also unplug and return to that simpler time.

Commanding Us to Be Happy on Sukkot

Tonight begins the 8-day festival of Sukkot (7 days in Israel and in the American Reform movement). One of the core texts from the Torah we learn about the festival of sukkot is v'samachta b'chageicha, v'hayita ach sameach—we should rejoice in our holiday and we should feel nothing but happiness. We even sing a catchy chant using these words. But, is it really possible to command happiness?

We live in challenging times. Wars, diseases, and injustice around the globe, it's no wonder that Pharrell Williams' famous song is so uplifting:

It might seem crazy what I’m about to say
Sunshine she’s here, you can take a break
I’m a hot air balloon that could go to space
With the air, like I don’t care baby by the way

Because I’m happy - Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof
Because I’m happy - Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth
Because I’m happy - Clap along if you know what happiness is to you
Because I’m happy - Clap along if you feel like that’s what you wanna do

I think Pharrell Williams sang the song that we really needed to hear this year. Happiness isn’t easy to come by, but it’s something we’re all searching for not just on the week long holiday of Sukkot, but all year round. But what really is happiness? Because if we don’t know what happiness really is, then maybe we’re wasting a whole lot of precious time in our lives by seeking it out!

In his book Stumbling on Happiness, Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert uses cutting-edge research to show that happiness is not really what or where we thought it was. We often think we know what will make us happy, but we really do not. We also say we are happy but oftentimes, as Gilbert explains, we are just misusing the term “happy.” Reading Gilbert’s book forced me to think of new ways to think of happiness and to bring more happiness into my own life.

Your Facebook News Feed and Your Emotions

Thirty years ago in 1984 Bananarama had the hit song "Cruel Summer" in which they sang "Trying to smile, But the air is so heavy and dry, Strange voices are saying, What did they say, Things I can't understand, It's too close for comfort, This heat has got right out of hand, It's a cruel, cruel summer, 
Leaving me here on my own, It's a cruel, cruel summer, Now you're gone." Ironically, the summer of 2014 really seemed to be a cruel summer. While fun summer activities continued as planned, the news around the world, as well as locally, may have led many of us to exclaim as Bananarama did three decades prior, "What did they say? Things I can't understand."

Now that the summer has come to a close and the kids are back to school, we can only hope that the news improves. What follows is an article I wrote for the Detroit Jewish News in which I took a look at how our Facebook News Feed affects us emotionally. My prayer is that all of our News Feeds stay positive for the remainder of the year. Thanks for reading!

Let’s be honest here. You spend a lot of time scrolling through your Facebook News Feed. Whether you’re on a desktop computer, your iPad or a mobile phone, it feels like a mindless activity to swipe through your friends’ posts. Well, you might not realize it but your mood will be changed by what you see on the screen.

According to a research paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science earlier this year, Facebook altered the news feeds for some users as part of a psychology experiment devised by the company's on-staff data scientist. Sheryl Sandberg, the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, later apologized for altering the News Feeds of some 700,000 different English-language Facebook users during a short period during 2012. Whether Facebook acted ethically or not, the results are quite revealing. The experiment sought to learn about the way positive and negative effect travels through social networks. The study concluded that "in-person interaction and nonverbal cues are not strictly necessary for emotional contagion."

To test the hypothesis, the researchers identified and began removing emotionally negative posts for one group and positive posts for another. According to the paper, "when a person loaded their Facebook News Feed, posts that contained emotional content of the relevant emotional valence, each emotional post had between a 10 percent and 90 percent chance (based on their User ID) of being omitted from their News Feed for that specific viewing." It should be mentioned that nothing Facebook did to manipulate users’ feeds was in violation of the Terms of Use each account holder agrees to when registering for the social network.