How Wisconsin parents are protecting kids' mental health from social media — without banning their phones

A Milwaukee dad didn’t have many rules for his older kids’ phone use, but when his 10-year-old daughter started spending all her free time using her phone, he and his husband had to enforce new limits.

A 15-year-old New Berlin girl who has Down syndrome doesn’t have her own phone yet. But her mom encourages her to play online virtual reality games because they help her to socialize.

A Pewaukee mom doesn’t allow social media apps on her 15-year-old-daughter’s phone, and her 12-year-old doesn’t have her own phone yet. However, the girls’ 8-year-old brother has had a phone since he was 4 because he needs it to monitor his diabetes.

We talked to parents, kids, teachers, researchers and medical professionals to learn about the effects of social media and cellphones on kids’ mental health as part of our Kids in Crisis series.

Though studies are unable to definitively show that time spent on social media causes mental health problems, adolescents' mental health problems have risen in recent years alongside their use of cellphones and social media.

As alarming stories of cyberbullying, body-image issues and other toxic social media content have mounted, there has been increased interest in banning social media apps for children and adolescents.

But experts are moving away from recommending one-size-fits-all bans and monitoring apps. Instead, they're found success in approaches that recognize that kids — with help from the adults in their lives — can use digital technology in ways that support their mental health and development.

Jacqueline Nesi, a psychologist and professor, estimated in a March 2023 edition of her digital-focused newsletter Techno Sapiens that there’s a 75% chance social media has contributed to the rising mental health issues. But she worries focusing on social media as the single cause can make people lose sight of other factors that play a role in mental health.

“If we’re pinning our hopes for fixing this crisis entirely on social media, we’re going to be disappointed,” she wrote.

'We're working with her to create good behaviors'

Brad Schlaikowski, a Milwaukee dad of five, didn’t think anything of giving his three older children their own phones when they turned 10.

“My oldest son had a phone and would text, but was so into sports and going out with his friends that his phone wasn’t the center of attention, and my second son was pretty much the same thing,” Schlaikowski said. “And my third son, for the first couple of years, we were lucky if he even grabbed his phone when he left the house.”

But his daughter is a different story.

“My daughter got her phone when she was 10, and I hate the damn phone,” Schlaikowski said. “Any day of the week, she will take her phone, go upstairs and sit in her bedroom. It can’t be good for anyone’s mental health to isolate themselves like that.”

Schlaikowski says he doesn't think digital tech use is inherently bad, but is a problem when it takes the place of other positive activities.

Schlaikowski said that he and his husband, upon realizing their daughter’s all-consuming relationship with her phone, have included her in establishing boundaries.

“We’re working with her to create good behaviors, so we asked her what she thinks her limits should be,” Schaikowski said.

She came up with the idea of doing a chore to earn an hour of phone time during weekdays. And, in a sign of self-awareness, she conceded that her parents should be the ones to choose the chore.

“She knew that if she chose the chore, she’s going to do something easy like emptying the garbage in her bedroom, but she knows I’ll choose a worthy chore,” Schlaikowski said, laughing.

“We’ve found that if we’re more open and make these rules into discussions, we’re going to get more buy-in from our kids.

“And fewer eye-rolls,” he added.

The family's approach aligns with the American Academy of Pediatrics' Family Media Plan, which encourages parents and kids to work together to determine their values and priorities for digital technology, such as online safety, the importance of offline relationships and anti-bullying behaviors.

The plan then helps families determine strategies that will help them navigate the online world in a way that works for them.  

'People build communities in different ways than we did'

In their book "Behind their screens: What teens are facing (and adults are missing), Harvard researchers Emily Weinstein and Carrie James point to research showing there are many factors that contribute to whether a child's use of digital technology will displace the positive influences in their lives — including their personalities, family support, maturity, mental health state, and participation and interest in hobbies and outside activities.

And just because an adolescent spends more time on their phone than doing in-person activities doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not socializing.

A 2020 study on “Adolescent Mental Health in the Digital Age” found adolescents with supportive friend groups have better mental health and that “online communication may be a critical way that peer-to-peer support and communication occurs among adolescents.”

Megan Moreno is a University of Wisconsin adolescent medicine physician and co-medical director of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health. She often warns parents against romanticizing their own methods of socialization as adolescents over what their kids do to make and keep friends.

“I have a 16-year-old and an 18-year-old, and one thing I think a lot about is checking my own biases of how they’re supposed to be spending their time,” Moreno said.

She compares it to another form of digital technology: video games.

“If you grew up as an '80s kid, you went to the arcade and played really stupid games like Dig Dug,” she said, laughing. “Now our kids are playing complex games with skills development. We need to resist overglorifying our own experiences and assuming our kids need to have those same experiences.”

Mark Fairbanks, a Shorewood dad of two adult sons, has a similar perspective. He said when his sons were teenagers, his wife, Margaret, sometimes worried that the kids were always up in their rooms.

“I was like, ‘yeah, but they’re interacting with people from all over,’” Fairbanks remembers saying. “People build communities in different ways than we did. If community comes through interaction during gaming, why is that bad? Or if a community comes through a social media group who’s interested in the same thing as you, why is that bad? It’s not. It’s different.”

'Social media is a lifeline'

This is especially poignant for Fairbanks because his 25-year-old son, Harry, is autistic. In 2012, Fairbanks and his wife started Islands of Brilliance, a Milwaukee organization that provides learning opportunities for autistic children and young adults. The group embraces digital technology through virtual get-togethers and mentor relationships that empower autistic people to learn software-based design skills. Fairbanks said that, for a lot of autistic people, technology is a “level-setter.”

For many kids who are neurodivergent or who have disabilities, socialization isn’t displaced by digital technology; on the contrary, phones, social media and virtual platforms offer new opportunities for socialization — which can improve their mental health.

New Berlin mom Sally Firth said digital technology has helped her 15-year-old daughter, Gemma — who has Down syndrome — socialize in a way that is difficult for her to do in person.

Firth recently took Gemma to a girls’ basketball game at her high school. When they saw a group of classmates in the bleachers, Firth asked one of the moms if Gemma could sit with them, and they made room for her.

“I don’t want to have to force myself into creating relationships for her, and I wanted her to be able to have the experience without me,” Firth said. “But we did need to leave because the buzzers were too loud.”

Gemma has the opposite experience with the virtual classes she takes and the online groups she interacts with through Pink Umbrella, a Milwaukee theater company for disabled people of all ages.

“There’s a comfort level there. She’s at home, she can smell us cooking dinner, we’re in the background, and that all relieves her anxiety,” Firth said. “When it’s something virtual, she can do it herself. Being accepted is automatic when it’s virtual.”

Pink Umbrella’s executive director, Katie Cummings, holds up the organization’s virtual Laughter Yoga group — one of the workshops Gemma attends — as an example that enables socialization rather than displaces it.

Cummings said for the past four years, the 12 members of the group have been meeting, laughing and building relationships on Zoom weekly during the theater group’s programming season, which runs a little over half the year.

Like Gemma, Henry Wisniewsi, 11, has Down syndrome. His parents have found that digital technology helps him develop the skills he needs to socialize with his peers.

“Language skills are challenging for Henry, and we want him to learn to have reciprocal conversations,” said his mother, Beth Wisniewski. “YouTube helps him to do that, because he and his peers who are typically developing all watch the same videos or play the same Nintendo Switch game, and then they all talk about it.”

When he was younger, Harry Fairbanks found it easier to communicate by typing YouTube comments than through in-person conversations. As he got older, he started using social media platforms to make friends with people who share his special interest: trains.

“He’s got friends all over the country, and they’ve used Twitter and Discord to communicate about the things they love,” said Mark Fairbanks, Harry's dad. “They also coordinate getting together in person. This past August, Harry met eight people from around the country at a rail museum in Pennsylvania.”

"There are kids for whom social media is a lifeline, and I don’t think we fully understand how much harm it would cause if we totally banned them from it,” Moreno said.

“We can tell them they should have offline friends, but that isn’t going to help. For marginalized communities, those are the only groups they have of people who are like them."

'Going back is not an option'

Beth Wisniewski said certain kinds of videos — like food challenge or music videos — calm Henry's anxiety. He's allowed to watch those videos on his own. But other videos increase his anxiety, and he either needs supervision to watch them or is not allowed to watch them at all.

One day, he watched one of the forbidden videos.

“Henry came up to me and said, ‘Mom, I’m sorry, I was watching a video that was too scary for me, and I know I wasn’t supposed to, and now I have a headache, and I don’t know what to do,’” Wisniewski said.

“It was reassuring to us that he recognized that when he watched something he didn’t want to see, he didn’t like the way it turned out for him,” Wisniewski said. “And then that he came to us and told on himself so we could help him.”

Family conversations and limits around digital technology can help children plan for how to handle toxic or troubling content. But that won't prevent them from encountering it in the first place.

Social media and video apps use algorithms to curate highly engaging content to keep people on the apps. The videos and posts they prioritize elicit strong emotions — including anger, fear and envy.

And personalized algorithms lead people into echo chambers where they can come across misinformation and content that is bigoted or that can encourage problematic behavior.

Digital media designs can exacerbate thinking traps — untrue beliefs that people have about themselves and their experiences based on limited information — said researcher and author Emily Weinstein.

For example, adolescents might think they're the only ones not on vacation because of the photos in their social media feed, or that their friend hates them because they haven't immediately responded to a text.

"Social media didn't create cognitive distortions, but they can definitely amplify them," Weinstein said.

Wisconsin and 40 other states recently filed a lawsuit against Meta, which operates Facebook and Instagram, claiming “the company has hooked kids onto its platforms using harmful and manipulative tactics.” The lawsuit demands Meta stop using algorithms and collecting data from kids younger than 13.

In 2023, a bill was proposed in Wisconsin — similar to a first-of-its-kind law passed in Utah — that would require social media companies to verify users' ages, block access at certain times of day for those younger than 18, and prevent minors' accounts from accessing "addictive designs or features." Parents can turn off those settings at any time.

Design It For Us, a youth-led organization that advocates for safer online environments, says approaches like that give companies a "free pass" and put the weight of responsibility on parents' vigilance.

"We need to establish standards that make platforms safer, not keep us off of them," co-founders Emma Lembke and Zamaan Qureshi wrote in a column published by Gizmodo in April 2023.

The group says online platforms should be required to be "safe upon entry," as cars are with seat belts, and by default turn off potentially harmful features — including autoplay, infinite scroll, collection and retention of geo-location information and hyper-personalized algorithms — for users younger than 18.

Amy Marsman, senior research analyst for the Wisconsin Office of Children’s Mental Health, says the car metaphor is apt. It was also used in Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s 2023 social media advisory, where he compared the early years of social media to the early years of the automobile.

“We didn't decide to go back to horse and buggies because cars were unsafe; we built protections around them,” Marsman said.

Roads were paved to make rides smoother and driver’s education programs were created. And in 1968, decades after the first automobiles were sold, manufacturers were required to provide seatbelts in each seat.

“We have to be really careful (with social media)," Marsman said. "But going back is is not an option.”

Green Bay Press-Gazette reporter Natalie Eilbert contributed to this report.

Contact Amy Schwabe at amy.schwabe@jrn.com.