Monthly Archives: March 2023

What Do Teen Girls Think About TikTok, Instagram, and How Social Media Impacts Their Lives

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A new report by Common Sense Media shows that nearly half (45%) of girls who use TikTok say they feel “addicted” to the platform or use it more than intended.

Today, new research report by Common Sense Media, reveals what teen girls think about TikTok and Instagram, and describes the impact that these and other social media platforms have on their lives. According to the report, Teens and Mental Health: How Girls Really Feel About Social Media, nearly half (45%) of girls who use TikTok say they feel “addicted” to the platform or use it more than intended at least weekly. Among girls with moderate to severe depressive symptoms, roughly seven in 10 who use Instagram (75%) and TikTok (69%) say they come across problematic suicide-related content at least monthly on these platforms.

A survey of over 1,300 adolescent girls across the country sought to better understand how the most popular social media platforms and design features impact their lives today. Among the report’s key findings, adolescent girls spend over two hours daily on TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat, and more than 90 minutes on Instagram and messaging apps. When asked about platform design features, the majority of girls believe that features like location sharing, public accounts, endless scrolling, and appearance filters have an effect on them, but they’re split on whether those effects are positive or negative. Girls were most likely to say that location sharing (45%) and public accounts (33%) had a mostly negative effect on them, compared to other features. In contrast, they were most likely to say that video recommendations (49%) and private messaging (45%) had a mostly positive impact on them.

Other key findings

  1. Nearly four in 10 (38%) girls surveyed report symptoms of depression, and among these girls, social media has an outsize impact—for better and for worse
  2. Girls who are struggling socially offline are three to four times as likely as other girls to report daily negative social experiences online, but they’re also more likely to reap the benefits of the digital world.
  3. Seven out of 10 adolescent girls of color who use TikTok (72%) or Instagram (71%) report encountering positive or identity-affirming content related to race at least monthly on these platforms, but nearly half report exposure to racist content or language on TikTok (47%) or Instagram (48%) at least monthly.
  4. Across platforms, LGBTQ+ adolescent respondents are roughly twice as likely as non-LGBTQ+ adolescents to encounter hate speech related to sexual or gender identity, but also more likely to find a connection. More than one in three LGBTQ+ young people (35%) who use TikTok say they have this experience daily or more on the platform, as do 31% of LGBTQ+ users of messaging apps, 27% of Instagram users, 25% of Snapchat users, and 19% of YouTube users.
  5. Girls have mixed experiences related to body image when they use social media. Roughly one in three girls who use TikTok (31%), Instagram (32%), and Snapchat (28%) say they feel bad about their body at least weekly when using these platforms, while nearly twice as many say they feel good or accepting of their bodies at least weekly while using TikTok (60%), Instagram (57%), and Snapchat (59%).
  6. The majority of girls who use Instagram (58%) and Snapchat (57%) say they’ve been contacted by a stranger on these platforms in ways that make them uncomfortable. These experiences were less common, though still frequent, on other platforms, with nearly half of TikTok (46%) and messaging app (48%) users having been contacted by strangers on these platforms.

Common Sense Media also announced today that the organization is launching the “Healthy Young Minds” campaign, a multiyear initiative focused on building public understanding of the youth mental health crisis, spotlighting solutions, and catalyzing momentum for industry and policy change. Town halls are scheduled for New York City, Arizona, Los Angeles, Indianapolis, Florida, Massachusetts, London, and Brussels, with more locations to be announced shortly. Further research and digital well-being resources for educators will be released in the coming year.

To learn more about Common Sense Media, the survey or educational materials available:

Source: Common Sense
Link to Survey: Teens and Mental Health: How Girls Really Feel About Social Media
Report Infographic
Curriculum and classroom resources

News Briefs March 2023

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Recent Articles, News, Stories & Press Releases

Some interesting reading to inform or stimulate ideas or further exploration in various topics

JMIR Medical Education is launching a new theme issue focused on ChatGPT, Generative Language Models, and Generative AI in Medical Education.

The objective of this theme issue is to explore how generative language models can be used to advance medical education. Areas of interest include but are not limited to applications of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in medical education, creating intelligent tutoring systems, using natural language processing technologies in medical education, and exploring how chatbots can improve patient-physician communication.

The deadline for submissions is July 31, 2023. All accepted manuscripts will be published as part of the JMIR Medical Education Special Issue on ChatGPT: Generative Language Models & Generative AI in Medical Education. Manuscripts should be prepared according to the journal’s guidelines and can be submitted at https://mededu.jmir.org/author.

LAMP Platform, originally developed specifically for mental health, has the potential for a broader application of the system’s data analysis tools across other medical specialties and care settings.

The program (Learn, Assess, Manage, Prevent) or LAMP, is designed to make psychiatric care possible whenever and wherever it’s needed most. It was developed for neuropsychiatric research purposes under the direction of Dr. John Torous at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard, but its use has expanded to help augment clinical care according to software engineer and medical student Aditya Vaidyam with the team at Harvard.

The LAMP Platform is part of a new approach that combines asynchronous telemedicine with digital phenotyping. It takes virtual medicine to the next level, allowing patients to report changes or symptoms as they happen outside the clinical encounter. ‘Digital phenotyping’ tracks patient biomarkers (heart rate, sleep patterns, etc.) and interactions with mobile devices and cognitive games to yield vast amounts of data that can be analyzed to help predict relapse or even to suggest personalized interventions to fit the patient.

Vaidyam, who is at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Carle Health, CI MED, foresees broad application of the system’s data analysis tools across other medical specialties and care settings. “It has the potential to help triage care needs; maybe urgent care physicians or telehealth physicians use the data to lessen the load on ERs, or maybe primary care providers use the data to dynamically reschedule their patient load based on estimated patient health risks.”

For more information on LAMP visit the Harvard website [Link] [Source]

School systems sue social media platforms

A number of school districts across the country are increasingly taking on social media. They are filing lawsuits that argue that Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube have helped create the nation’s surging youth mental health crisis and should be held accountable.

The focus of the litigation filed in a California federal court last week, alleges that social media companies used advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to create addictive platforms that cause young people harm. “The results have been disastrous,” the filing asserts, saying more children than ever struggle with their mental health amid excessive use of the platforms. “There is simply no historic analog to the crisis the nation’s youth are now facing,” it said.

School administrators have observed a spike in mental health emergencies during the school day. There have been “very serious” cyberbullying incidents related to social media — with content “nearly impossible” to get the companies to take down — and school threats that have kept students at home.

Marisol Garcia, a staff therapist at the Family Institute at Northwestern University, said social media can be a powerful means of connection but the downsides are significant too. She was not surprised schools have begun filing lawsuits, saying they want to do what they think is good for their students’ mental and physical health.

The long-term ramifications of social media use — on attention span, social skills, mental health — are unclear, she said. The legal action, she said, “could be a positive thing.”

New Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

A new report from the CDC adds urgency to the lawsuits.

According to federal researchers who released data last week, teen girls across the United States are “engulfed in a growing wave of violence and trauma.” The CDC findings show that nearly 1 in 3 high school girls reported in 2021 that they seriously considered suicide — up nearly 60 percent from a decade ago.

Almost 3 in 5 teenage girls reported feeling so persistently sad or hopeless almost every day for at least two weeks in a row during the previous year that they stopped regular activities — a figure that was double the share of boys and the highest in a decade, CDC data showed. Girls fared worse on other measures, too, with higher rates of alcohol and drug use than boys and higher levels of being electronically bullied, according to the 89-page report. Thirteen percent had attempted suicide during the past year, compared with 7 percent of boys.

[Source – Washington Post], [Link to CDC Report Youth Risk Behavior Survey]

Physicians And Other Clinicians Should Screen Youth For Cyberbullying & Social Media Use

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An article published in the journal Primary Care Clinical Office Practice by physicians from Florida Atlantic University’s Schmidt College of Medicine recommend that primary care physicians and other clinicians need to screen adolescents and young adults for inappropriate or misuse of social media and cyberbullying.

Most adolescents and young adults have experienced bullying in some form, with about one-third of them experiencing cyberbullying, contributing to mental health concerns. Cyberbullying involves electronic communication such as texts, emails, online videos and social media, which has become increasingly problematic over the last few decades. Several reasons include the anonymity it allows, the fact that it is not as easily monitored, and that adolescents and young adults have easier access to devices.

Bullying is nothing new, but teens these days must also navigate the challenges of the digital landscape. Parents and teachers who grew up in a different generation may struggle to understand the many nuanced forms that online bullying, or cyberbullying, can take.

Any form of bullying is hurtful, but cyberbullying can be especially damaging because of the nature of the digital world. With cell phones and laptops, students carry their bullies in their backpacks, meaning that they cannot even escape their tormentors at home.

What’s more, because of the sneaky nature of cyberbullying, parents and teachers may be completely unaware that a problem is happening unless they are closely monitoring their children’s social media usage. And, teens may be reluctant to open up about cyberbullying for fear of losing access to the digital world.

Screening and Screening Tools

According to the article authors, “It is staggering that only 23 percent of students who were cyberbullied reported it to an adult at their school, which shows that many incidences go unreported. This is another crucial reason why we need to screen patients as well as educate parents.”

Screening tools are available and can be worked into the work-flow of healthcare visits to ensure that screening is consistently done and results are addressed in a timely manner.

Current screening tools include:

  • Revised Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire (R-OBVQ) [Link]
  • California Bullying Victimization Scale (CBVS) [Link]
  • Child Adolescent Bullying Scale (CABS) [Link]
  • Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center (MARC) [Link & Ressources]

Another resource is a “Cyberbullying: Top Ten Tips for Health Care Providers,” pamphlet developed by the Cyberbullying Research Center, which is part of the FAU School of Criminology and Criminal Justice. [Link]

Source: Caceres J, Holley A. Perils and Pitfalls of Social Media Use: Cyber Bullying in Teens/Young Adults. Primary Care: Clinics in Office Practice. Volume 50, Issue 1, March 2023, Pages 37-45. [Link]

The Sale of American’s Mental Health Data

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Millions of Americans have been using health tracking apps for for the last few years and since the pandemic, numerous apps for mental health issues like depression and anxiety have proliferated. We have become used to our private medical information from the usual medical settings being protected by HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). But unfortunately, HIPAA wasn’t designed for the modern digital world, with its new technologies. Most apps—including health, mental health, and biometric tracking devices—don’t fall under HIPAA rules, meaning that these companies can sell your private health data to third parties, with or without your consent.

A new research report published by Duke University’s Technology Policy Lab reveals that data brokers are selling huge datasets full of identifiable personal information—including psychiatric diagnoses and medication prescriptions, as well as many other identifiers, such as age, gender, ethnicity, religion, number of children, marital status, net worth, credit score, home ownership, profession, and date of birth—all matched with names, addresses, and phone numbers of individuals.

Data brokers are selling massive lists of psychiatric diagnoses, prescriptions, hospitalizations, and even lab results, all linked to identifiable contact information.

Researcher Joanne Kim began by searching for data brokers online. She contacted 37 of them by email or a form on their website (Kim identified herself as a researcher in the initial contact). None of those she contacted via email responded; some of those she contacted via form referred her to other data brokers. A total of 26 responded in some way (including some automated responses). Ultimately, only 10 data brokers had sustained contact by call or virtual meeting with Kim, so they were included in the study.

The 10 most engaged data brokers asked about the purpose of the purchase and the intended use cases for the data; however, after receiving that information (verbally or in writing) from the author, those companies did not appear to have additional controls for client management, and there was no indication in emails and phone calls that they had conducted separate background checks to corroborate the author’s (non-deceptive) statements.

Data Brokers reported conditions for selling data:

  • emphasized that the requested data on individuals’ mental health conditions was “extremely restricted” and that their team would need more information on intended use cases—yet continued to send a sample of aggregated, deidentified data counts.
  • confirmed that the author was not part of a marketing entity, the sales representative said that as long as the author did not contact the individuals in the dataset, the author could use the data freely.
  • implied they may have fully identified patient data, but said they were unable to share this individual-level data due to HIPAA compliance concerns. Instead, the sales representative offered to aggregate the data of interest in a deidentified form.
  • one was most willing to sell data on depressed and anxious individuals at the author’s budget price of $2,500 and stated no apparent, restrictive data-use limitations post-purchase.
  • another advertised highly sensitive mental health data to the author, including names and postal addresses of individuals with depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety issues, panic disorder, cancer, PTSD, OCD, and personality disorder, as well as individuals who have had strokes and data on those people’s races and ethnicities.
  • two data brokers, mentioned nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) in their communications, and one indicated that signing an NDA was a prerequisite for obtaining access to information on the data it sells.
  • one often made unsolicited calls to the author’s personal cell. If the author was delayed in responding to an email from the data broker, the frequency of calls seemed to increase.

Conclusions

The author concludes that additional research is critical as more depressed and anxious individuals utilize personal devices and software-based health-tracking applications (which are not protected by HIPAA), often unknowingly putting their sensitive mental health data at risk. This report finds that the industry appears to lack a set of best practices for handling individuals’ mental health data, particularly in the areas of privacy and buyer vetting. It finds that there are data brokers which advertise and are willing and able to sell data concerning Americans’ highly sensitive mental health information.

This research concludes by highlighting that the largely unregulated and black-box nature of the data broker industry, its buying and selling of sensitive mental health data, and the lack of clear consumer privacy protections in the U.S. necessitate a comprehensive federal privacy law or, at the very least, an expansion of HIPAA’s privacy protections alongside bans on the sale of mental health data on the open market.

[Link]