The Consequences of Social Media Use on Our Children's Growth and Development

Many of the parents reading this article grew up without a cell phone as a necessary attachment to their bodies, and/or their pictures plastered on the walls of Meta (Facebook), X (Twitter), or Instagram. Rest assured, I am not here to tell you how things were “normal” back in “the day” but to help decipher and navigate through the unprecedented world of social media our children are living in. We need to educate ourselves and figure out how to help them keep their physical, emotional, and spiritual development optimized. For this, we need to know the phenomenon of social media use inside and out, its effects, and how to use it to our advantage. 

Allah made our bodies physically interact with our world in three dimensions and additionally connect an invisible dimension of spirituality to our psychological and emotional development. In order to function in our full capacity as human beings, we need to interact with our environment fully immersed. No other time is more important than a child’s growing years. 

Concerns about Children and Social Media Use 

Science and research have already proven the significance of providing a healthy environment to a child in their formidable early years. There is no debate on this. More recently, the scientific research and medical communities have observed the rising effects of social media on the growth and development of our children in later years. In fact, some communities and schools are taking extreme measures to mitigate the harmful effects of social media on young children. There are a few examples like a town where parents and have come together to voluntarily disallow their children's cell phones until secondary grades.¹ Or A Silicon Valley school that doesn’t allow screen time at school and discourages it at home.² 

“Developmental neuroscientists have revealed that there are two highly critical periods for adaptive neural development. One of these is the first year of life. The second begins at the outset of puberty and lasts until early adulthood (i.e., from approximately 10 to 25 years old). This latter period is highly relevant, as this is when a great number of youths are offered relatively unfettered access to devices and unrestricted or unsupervised use of social media and other online platforms.” Chief Science Officer Mitch Prinstein, PhD³

The first time I ushered in a new class of iPad-exposed 5-year-olds in Kindergarten, I immediately started noticing differences in the mobility and dexterity of those children as compared to previous classes. They had a harder time holding pencils, drawing from imagination frustrated them, and they would be frequently angry at the non-touch laptop screens during technology-based lessons are some observations to mention a few. And then there were increased cases of students’ personal therapists demanding that their clients not be allowed near a computer in the classroom due to a medical diagnosis and given paper-based homework assignments. And, there were social media use (SMU) related incidences on a daily basis that needed intervention in the middle school grades. Many of you are probably nodding your heads reading this. Parents were baffled and often unable to make a connection to the physical and emotional implications of their children’s SMU on their school life. As a matter of fact, as adults, we often find ourselves too, struggling to balance our time between SMU and regular life responsibilities. 

Impact of Social Media Use 

So, what can be said about the children? We’ve learned that time spent on social media on average by:

• 8-12 years - 5.5 hours a day
• Teens - 8.5 hours a day 
• Use is statistically higher for Black and Hispanic children.

• 32% of teens surveyed considered YouTube essential to their lives.
• 43% of teens surveyed play games on a smartphone or tablet everyday.⁴

Let us delve into what the current research is telling us about the effects of excessive SMU on physical, emotional, and spiritual development of our children. 

Physical Development 

“Recent studies have revealed that technology and social media use is associated with changes in structural brain development (i.e., changing the size and physical characteristics of the brain).” Mitch Prinstein

It’s easy for children to become addicted to social media as the use of it floods their brains with dopamine and adrenaline. One can say that who doesn’t like a little dopamine every day? However, there are specific physical consequences of excessive SMU including:

• Insufficient Sleep – Children stay up late, and are on the screen in the dark, disturbing their wake and sleep cycle which affects their performance the next day. Children with a lack of sleep are agitated and inattentive in school. 
• Blue Light - The blue light emanating from the screened devices negatively affects the development of eyes and vision and may cause Myopia.⁵ 
• Speech – Some in the scientific community are concerned about the speaking skills of children due to excessive use of social media. Developing a robust vocabulary and language acquisition involves understanding body language, cognition, and extensive engagement with family and community, especially in early childhood.⁶
• Poor Physical Development – Children spending too much time on devices do not venture out to playgrounds or their backyards to have fun with their peers and siblings. Lack of physical activity results in poor muscular and skeletal growth as well as is causing obesity.
• Safety – Our perception of privacy has changed with the arrival of social media. What was considered sacred once, is no more. However, sharing of personal information also places children at a very high risk of being targeted by criminals and sexual predators which can then place them in extreme physical danger.

Emotional Development 

Mind and body are connected. Emotional and psychological problems become amplified when the body is not doing well and vice versa.  Here are a few issues our children are encountering in terms of their emotional health. 

• Self-image – The filters on social media are not doing any good to our children. Harmless fun is now a serious problem for some of our kids who are exhibiting body dysmorphic disorder symptoms (BDD).⁷ The excessive use of media is not only distorting their image of self but also encouraging a false sense of worth as well as pushing toward eating disorders. 
• Depression – Continuous inactivity and physical disconnection from peers and family due to excessive SMU use has been shown to have a direct effect on our teen’s mental well-being.⁸ 

• Addiction – Excessive use of social media puts our children at a very high risk of developing an addiction that makes it difficult to achieve a healthy life balance.⁹

Spiritual Development 

Of course, the state of mind and body has a direct connection to the state of our spirituality and connection to God.

• Undesirable Content and Activity – Excessive presence on social media encourages risk-taking and our children may engage in behaviors they normally wouldn’t. For example, sexting (sending, receiving, or forwarding sexually explicit messages, photographs, or videos). In addition, children are constantly targeted by the porn industry looking for their future clients. A share by a friend or an advertisement on the wall/feed can easily lead our children down a horrible path. 
• Radicalization – With so much time being spent on social media and hundreds of followers, it is difficult for parents to navigate down the list of friends. Our children are at higher risk of being exposed to radical information that may change their tarbiyah (upbringing) at home. They may lend their allegiance or loyalty to individuals with dangerous intentions on either side of the spectrum. They may get sucked into the propaganda of either religious extremism or doubting Islam all together, one click at a time on their social media feed.
• Time Wasted – Hours go by scrolling down the Instagram reels or YouTube Shorts. It starts with no time for dhikr or remembrance of Allah, no time for learning of Quran and Hadith as well as tazkiyah (reflections,) to missed prayers and fasting which are all essential to developing and maintaining a healthy spiritual life.

Solutions 

It is easy to become addicted and to live in the invisible bubble of social media.  As parents, here is what is being done by other parents and are suggestions from your doctors:

1. Be a role model by curtailing your own SMU.
2. Engage and increase physical family activities and include your kids in the planning to balance social media use.
3. Give kids full attention and demand theirs, too. Turn off your own notifications.
4. Look out for signs of trouble. 
5. Make family rules for social media use for meal, sleep, and prayer times. 
6. Teach kids about safeguarding privacy on social media.
7. Discuss unhealthy activity on social media that compromises your religious tarbiyah at home and encourages children to defy Islamic values. 

The need to maintain balance in life is an unrelenting task for mankind, but a mandate from Allah. There are some great benefits of social media use, however, it is much harder for children to limit their access without parental or adult support. Just like how they need to learn how to walk and talk, it is important for our children to learn how to safely engage with social media. Let us educate ourselves and support each other as a community in keeping our children from experiencing the harmful effects of excessive social media usage.

End Notes

1 Parents in a town in Ireland came together to voluntarily ban smartphones for kids as old as 13 

2 At Waldorf School in Silicon Valley, Technology Can Wait - The New York Times and Waldorf Schools teach without technology — here's what it is like 

3 APA chief scientist outlines potential harms, benefits of social media for kids

4 Constantly Connected: How Media Use Can Affect Your Child - HealthyChildren.org and Social Media's Concerning Effect on Teen Mental Health

5 Blue Light and Your Eyes - National Center

6  Associations of media use and early childhood development: cross-sectional findings from the LIFE Child study

7 The association between social media use and body dysmorphic symptoms in young people

8  Does Social Media Use Cause Depression? - Child Mind Institute

9 Social Media Addiction

Tayaabah Qazi has a master’s degree in Educational Leadership, an AdminI/II Certification from the State of Maryland Education Department, and a Secondary Teaching Certification in Chemistry as well as a CPP certificate. She has served in the education field as a teacher and an administrator of schools. She has served at Community College of Baltimore County as a Coordinator of Adult Basic Education program. Tayaabah is currently working as a Grant Program Manager at the Office of Workforce Development at Maryland Department of Labor. She has been a long-time resident of Maryland for 17 years, with her family, but hails from Southern California. She is also a staunch believer of the 4 Cs: Compassion. Commitment. Conversation. Cultivation.