Achi news desk-
Girls around the world tend to spend more time on social media than boys and it hurts their mental health, says a new report from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
In the latest edition of the agency’s Global Education Monitoring (GEM) report released Thursday, researchers examined the intersection of education and technology as it relates to girls.
Based on UNESCO data and published research from academics around the world, it covers a variety of subjectsincluding female students’ engagement with technology, gender comparison of digital skills and attitudes towards science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects.
Social media was identified as an area of concern. Some findings include:
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Social media algorithms can amplify negative gender norms and practices, affecting student well-being.
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The well-being of girls, who tend to spend more time on social media, is under more stress than boys.
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Social media users reported more body image concerns than non-users.
- The addictive design of some platforms can lead to too much screen time and distract students from academics and extracurricular activities, and can also affect attention spans and learning habits.
Spending too much time on social media is eroding girls’ mental health with negative effects on learning, warns a new UNESCO report which has also found that girls are more vulnerable than boys to negative feelings about appearance and body image.
‘Negative effects’ on learning
The report arrives at a time when lawsuits against social media giants and updates to online harm legislation have contributed to increased scrutiny of how the digital world affects young people.
Girls are more negatively affected by social media than boys, for example in developing negative feelings and emotions over body image, according to Manos Antoninis, director of UNESCO’s ongoing GEM report in Paris.
“That also has effects – negative effects – on learning and that’s where we’re really concerned.”
In education circles, technology is generally seen as positive, he noted, because of “the potential it brings to improve the content, ensuring that so many resources are available at our fingertips. [and] engaging young people with the new opportunities.”
Feeling included in their classrooms is key to academic success, but if a student feels singled out, ridiculed or bullied on increasingly ubiquitous social media, “they disengage from u education and that’s something we don’t want to see.”
Young people struggle to include a process, says a mother
Whitby, Ont., parent Kelly Dynes’ daughter should be graduating Grade 12 this year, but hospital visits and treatment for anorexia have delayed the teenager’s education. Dynes attributes the 17-year-old’s disordered eating to a “perfect storm” of various factors, but believes social media played a significant role.
Although her daughter had been an A student, Dynes said online content led her teenager down a harmful path where she began to constantly question herself, thinking: “I’m not enough. I can’t do it. I’m not pretty enough. I’m not fit enough. I’m not smart enough.”
Just before the pandemic, the teenager was a bright, accomplished eighth grader fascinated by biology, botany, the environment, painting and crafts. After classes first moved online, Dynes saw her daughter developing an interest in fitness and exercise videos, and switched to looking for healthy eating content, which then moved to “how to cook to be fit” or ” how to cook to be thin.”
By September 2020, the youngster had her first treatment for anorexia. She continues to pursue treatment at a facility in the US, as she almost gets back on track with her education.
“Social media is unregulated, kids … are sent to this content and they don’t have the ability to process it and understand what’s good, what’s bad, what which is real, [and] what is not real,” said Dynes.
Dr. Rachel Mitchell, a child and adolescent psychiatrist in Toronto, outlines how teenagers can quickly be sucked into a rabbit hole of potentially harmful social media content that they can’t tear themselves away from.
For some young people, interacting and communicating with others online is valuable in filling the “social bucket” in their lives, says Dr. Rachel Mitchell, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences in Toronto.
Still, the fact that UNESCO has highlighted social media as a concern sends an important message about its potential influence on women today, she added.
“It sucks you in so to speak, into what’s called a rabbit hole. And if you’re not in a good place mentally, the ability to a) process what you see, b) regulate what you see and) cut yourself off, is very difficult,” said Mitchell.
“There’s no parental eye around… and so you’re really left, literally, to your own devices to fend for yourself.”
Exacerbating long-standing problems
In the past, teenage girls’ magazines were blamed for fueling negative body image concerns in girls, but the difference now is that online content is relentless, Mitchell noted.
“You wouldn’t always have a magazine in your back pocket to look at every spare moment … which is basically what’s going on [with smartphones]. So it’s the amount and intensity of the information. The vulnerability hasn’t really changed,” he said.
“That was already there in society and it’s magnified that much.”
Mitchell acknowledges that social media regulation is a complex discussion involving a multitude of issues, perspectives and stakeholders.
“We need to have conversations about social media in schools. We need to have conversations about social media in our family lives. We need to have conversations about how much social media we as individuals are going to allow ourselves to use – and all those things apply to teenagers and younger kids as well,” he said.
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