Compared to a , they’re less excited and hopeful about the change it could bring and more angry at its existence, citing concerns about AI’s impact on their cognitive abilities and professional opportunities.

Respondents said they used AI at nearly the same rate they did before — they reported only a slight increase in daily and weekly exposure — but when asked how it makes them feel, the answers revealed growing misgivings. 

Thirty-one percent said it made them angry, up 9 percentage points from 2025. And just 22% said it made them feel excited, down 14 percentage points from last year. Only 18% of respondents said it made them feel hopeful, marking a nine-point drop. Forty-two percent said it made them feel anxious, roughly the same as last year. 

Zach Hrynowski, senior education researcher at Gallup, said the switch was swift. 

“One of my working theories is that (it’s) the high schoolers, who are in their senior year, or especially those college students, who are maybe thinking, ‘AI is taking my job. I just went to college for four years: I spent all this money and now it’s turning my industry upside down,” he said. 

Only 46% of respondents believed AI would help them learn faster, down from 53% the prior year, Gallup found. Fifty-six percent of respondents said it would help them to expedite their work compared to 66% last year. 

Hrynowski notes, too, that users’ unease wasn’t entirely tied to the amount of time they spend engaging with AI. 

“Year over year, among that super user group, they’re much less excited, they are much less hopeful — and they are more angry,” he said. “So this is not a case of some people who are adopting it and loving it and some people who are just avoiding it and feel negatively about it.”

Nearly half of respondents said the risk of the technology outweighs the benefits in the workforce. Just 37% believed it would help them find accurate information, down from 43% the prior year and only 31% believed it would help them come up with new ideas compared to 42% in 2025. 

The survey also notes some disparities by age and race. For example, older Gen Zers are more likely than younger ones to voice concerns about AI’s impact on learning in general. 

Asked how likely is it that AI designed to mainly complete tasks faster will make learning more difficult in the future, 74% of K-12 respondents said it was “very likely” or “somewhat likely” compared to 83% of Gen Z adults who said the same. Men and Black respondents were also less concerned about learning impact than their peers overall.

Results are based on a survey of 1,572 people spread throughout every state and Washington, D.C., conducted between Feb. 24 and March 4, 2026. It was commissioned by the Walton Family Foundation and , Global Silicon Valley. Together, Walton Family Foundation and Gallup are conducting ongoing research into Gen Z’s attitudes toward AI.

Hrynowski believes there might be a link between recent revelations about the harmful nature of social media and AI-related distrust: Many of the respondents came of age, he notes, just as former surgeon general Vivek H. Murthy called for a about its use. 

shapes the user experience in social media. Just last month, a California jury found social media company Meta — owner of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Threads — and YouTube injured a young woman’s mental health by design in that could encourage untold others. 

This was the second of two critical decisions: Just a day earlier, a New Mexico jury found Meta — and hid what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms.

“I’ve always been very impressed from the start of this work with Gen Z that across the board, not just with AI, they are keenly aware of the risks of technology, whether it’s social media, whether it’s AI or screen time,” Hrynowski said. 

They are not the only generation to harbor these worries. A growing number of parents of K-12 students are pushing back on their screen time, not just , but  

Despite respondents’ skepticism about AI, they’re also readily aware that the technology won’t be walked back: 52% acknowledge that they will need to know how to use AI if they go to college or take classes after high school, while 48% think they will need to know how to use AI in the workplace.

An earlier Gallup study, released just last week, shows 42% of bachelor’s degree students have reconsidered their major because of AI.

Gen Z, in its reluctant acceptance of the technology, wants help in how to navigate it, both in an academic setting and in the workplace. Schools are stepping up, the survey revealed: The share of K-12 students who say their school has AI rules moved from 51% in 2025 to 74% this year. 

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation provides financial support to ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ.

Employing student influencers is the latest strategy in the Detroit school district’s ongoing efforts to grow enrollment in city schools.

District officials unveiled last week to hire 23 students to share positive messages about their schools in the Detroit Public Schools Community District. The high schoolers will create and share social media content aimed at winning over prospective students and parents, as well as engaging their peers.

The initiative is one of several new ideas the district is considering to reverse a 20-year trend of .

“Our students are at the center of everything that we do,” said Sharlonda Buckman, assistant superintendent of Family and Community Engagement, during last week’s meeting. “They have real stories, real accomplishments, real growth.”

When families hear students’ stories and see possibilities for their children, their perceptions about the district may shift, Buckman added.

have already opened. One student from each of the district’s high schools will be selected to take on the task. If approved by the board, the influencers will be assigned content and events to promote each month on rotating schedules, earning $250 each month they post.

Many factors have contributed to enrollment declines, including a shrinking, lower birthrates, , and . The district also competes with , which enroll about , as well as suburban districts that heavily recruit Detroit students.

Traditional strategies to attract students – including canvassing neighborhoods, hosting Summer on the Block events, expanding prekindergarten, focusing on reenrollment rates, and putting up billboards – have produced modest results, according to the district.

The district estimates it currently has more than 49,200 students – an increase of about 400 compared to the official count at the end of last school year.

Last summer, board members asked the district to come up with innovative, cost-efficient ways to drive enrollment more rapidly.

Board member Monique Bryant said during a July committee meeting she wanted to see students tell the stories of their own schools.

“I think we have an opportunity to use our students more, and I think we get more bang for our buck than what we’re spending now,” she said.

Students and parents would be ‘brand ambassadors’ for their schools

Overall, the district’s plan to boost enrollment is to shape the public’s perception of DPSCD to be more positive, increasing awareness of its schools with targeted advertising and connecting with more families in the city.

Marketing research supports the board’s idea to center student voices to reach those goals, district officials said.

In a survey of about 300 people conducted by the district, about 30% said they wanted to see student success stories, said Deputy Executive Marketing Director Jessica Byrd.

In addition to winning over parents, students also want to see themselves in district messaging, Byrd said. By partnering with high schoolers who are gifted at reaching peers on social media, the district will reach more potential students, she added.

“They bring their audience to our platforms, and that’s essentially what we want,” Byrd said.

The influencers will participate in monthly content creation workshops with the marketing team. They will post both on the district’s social media and their own.

DPSCD also proposes hiring 10 to 15 parent and community ambassadors to “counter negative perceptions and amplify enrollment messaging.” The presentation did not include how much the ambassadors would be paid.

The ambassadors may be people who are trusted by their communities, such as church leaders, block club presidents, and parents of students in the district. They will have monthly themes for their messaging, including safety, the district’s gains in literacy achievement, and career and technical education programs.

The district has relied on volunteer in previous years, with slightly different roles. In the past, ambassadors represented the district at community and school events.

This year, the district proposes spending nearly $42,000 on both the student influencers and the community ambassadors.

In total, the marketing plan, including other new initiatives such as web content managers, would cost around $1.4 million, according to the district’s presentation.

The district will continue its traditional enrollment campaigns, including canvassing, yard signs, and events.

Board members at last week’s meeting said they were pleased with the new plans, which would be funded in the district’s budget for the next fiscal year. The board must approve a budget by June 30.

Hannah Dellinger covers Detroit schools for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

After nine days of deliberation, a Los Angeles jury found Google and Meta liable for harms stemming from the design of their social media products on Wednesday and ordered them to pay $3 million in compensatory damages to a plaintiff who said that Instagram and YouTube caused depression, body dysmorphia and suicidal thoughts.

Meta was 70 percent of damages and YouTube the rest. The amount owed the plaintiff may rise, and the jury will over potential punitive damages for egregious conduct, per The New York Times.

This is the tackling the legal question of whether features of social media, like autoplay, infinite scroll and beauty filters can cause harm to users.

“This momentous verdict shows that tech companies will be held accountable for the harm they cause. These companies have spent years choosing profit over people’s well-being, and now a jury has decided they must pay the price for their actions,” said Maddy Batt, a legal fellow at Tech Justice Project, a law firm specializing in suits against AI chatbots.

The plaintiff, KGM, filed her lawsuit using a pseudonym in 2023. KGM, now 20, says she has been addicted to social media since she was a child. It was one of three cases selected out of thousands as “bellwether trials” to test out a new theory of liability.

Batt cautioned that the outcome of this trial doesn’t mean “an automatic legal win” for the thousands of pending cases, as determining causation varies greatly given the circumstances. “Each individual plaintiff still does have to show, if they go to trial, that any negative mental health outcomes they personally experienced were linked to social media,” she said.

It is a huge boon to tech accountability advocates to see this success though, Batt said, and could lead to tech companies changing their products because of the amount of money in play to settle cases or pay damages. This jury decision, coupled with a $375 million verdict against Meta announced yesterday, is the first step to achieving that goal.

The New Mexico Attorney General RaĂșl Torrez sued Meta in 2023, alleging the company misled constituents over how safe its platforms are for children. State prosecutors focused specifically on Instagram’s potential to facilitate the sexual exploitation of kids.

On Tuesday, a jury sided with New Mexico, saying the company also engaged in deceptive trade practices. Meta was ordered to pay $5,000 per violation — $375 million total. Torrez at a future bench trial, and hopes to compel changes to the platform. Meta said it plans to appeal.

Batt pointed out that this trial is the first time tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg have had to make a case and submit to questioning in front of a jury of their peers. (The CEO did not take the stand in the New Mexico case.) Large tech companies have faced a public backlash over the past decade, and much of it has revolved around their products’ impact on the mental health of young people.

Frances Haugen, a whistleblower, leaked internal research documents from the company previously known as Facebook showing girls reported their eating disorders worsening after using Instagram. Social media use can prompt girls to compare and criticize their own bodies, and many companies struggle to moderate on their platforms.

Over two-thirds of teenage girls reported using Instagram, more than boys. A quarter each of Black and Latinx teens said they use Instagram and YouTube “constantly” according to a by Pew Research Center.

Google argued that YouTube was not social media, while Meta of KGM’s anxiety, depression and body dysmorphia. Meta’s lawyers deconstructed KGM’s home environment, alleging her parents’ divorce and treatment by her mother were the root cause of her emotional pain. The companies also argued that it wasn’t the way their products were designed that caused problems, but rather the specific content seen.

KGM originally named the companies behind Snapchat and Tiktok in the lawsuit, but those parties settled for an undisclosed sum before the trial started. The trial focused on Instagram and Facebook, both Meta products, and YouTube, which is owned by Google.

The burden was on KGM’s lawyers to prove that Meta and Google were negligent in their design of social media products and show that those same products caused the plaintiff’s mental health issues. The jury agreed with those arguments.

KGM testified that features like notifications , and she was unable to stop whenever she tried to limit her usage. She said she started her first Instagram account at age 9 and joined YouTube at age 10, even though legally kids aren’t supposed to have online accounts before they’re 13. Almost all of her Instagram posts had image filters on them, and KGM said she didn’t feel bad about her body until she began using the platform.

The tech accountability watchdogs who rallied behind KGM are ecstatic over this win. “The era of Big Tech invincibility is over,” said Sacha Haworth, executive director of The Tech Oversight Project, in a statement.

For parents who have lost their kids to what many describe as social media-related harms, this is a moment of vindication.

“For years, families have been told this was a parenting issue, but the jury saw the truth: these companies made deliberate decisions to prioritize growth and profit over kids’ safety,” said Shelby Knox, director of online safety campaigns at nonprofit ParentsTogether.

Social media companies have been battling allegations of harm, particularly to kids, for years. Most of the claims are easily dismissed under Section 230, the law that says a platform isn’t held liable for third-party content it hosts. But these bellwether cases are testing whether the design of products like YouTube, Facebook and Instagram are inherently harmful. Plaintiffs have pointed to the impacts of features such as infinite scroll and face filters as harmful regardless of the content being shared.

The case concludes as Congress works to pass a package of internet bills that is but that critics say may lead to the removal of digital and — a particular concern given the Trump administration’s policy positions.

In her statement, Haworth at The Tech Oversight Project called on lawmakers to pass the Kids Online Safety Act, one of the most hotly debated pieces of tech legislation in recent years. It has failed to pass the House since its first was introduced in 2022, but now is being considered as part of the aforementioned package.

“It’s good that people are suing these companies and winning in court to reduce their power and force them to change their policies,” said Evan Greer, director of digital rights nonprofit Fight For The Future, to The 19th. But she’s concerned how the verdict in KGM’s case will be used to advocate for laws that she says could threaten free speech online.

Greer pointed to the way activists are using social platforms to monitor abuses by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, advocate for human rights and discuss accustations of sexual abuse against people like Jeffery Epstein. “We need policies that address corporate abuse without kneecapping the ability of front-line activists to use social media to change the world,” she said.

Jess Miers, associate professor of law at the University of Akron School of Law, is concerned about the long-term consequences of the verdict. While these cases focus on the way platforms are designed, said in practice, there isn’t a strong delineation between content and feature design.

“Autoplay is only engaging because of what it plays,” she told The 19th. “Infinite scroll only retains users because of what it surfaces.” She pointed out many apps use these kinds of features, but those aren’t the ones being sued.

Thus, liability tied to design will inevitably trickle down to judgements about content. “The only practical way to reduce the risks alleged in these suits is to restrict or suppress categories of content that might later be characterized as harmful or ‘addictive,’” she noted.

And what’s the content most likely to be labeled as harmful? “History shows they expand to cover disfavored speech—whether that’s reproductive health information, gender-affirming care, or speech about policing and immigration enforcement,” she said.

“The people most likely to be affected are those who already rely on the Internet as a primary space for connection and support,” Miers said — like disabled people, LGBTQ+ youth or people looking for accurate information on contraception.

was originally reported by Jasmine Mithani of . .

Circulated in January through the National Bureau of Economic Research, used survey data from a nationally representative sample of thousands of teenagers to investigate one of the more controversial questions in American life: How much is young people’s engagement with the internet contributing to of their mental health?

With youth exposure to technology reaching saturation levels — a 2025 report showed that now have their own mobile device — prominent scholars have spent the last few years pointing to between kids’ use of screens and social media and their mounting rates of depression. Skeptics counter that the theory mistakes correlation for causation, and that troubled adolescents likely spend more time plugged in to escape the stress or loneliness they are already feeling.

Brandyn Churchill, the paper’s lead author and an economist at American University, said that he sought to overcome the “ambiguity” of cause and effect by exploiting the uneven pace of broadband’s expansion across the country.

“This avoids the correlation-versus-causation issue because it’s a natural experiment with a control group and a treatment group,” Churchill said. “In states where they gained greater access to broadband, mental health among kids got worse compared to states where they did not.”

Complicating somewhat the broadly observed trend that girls experience worse consequences from time spent online, the study also shows that suicidal thoughts also intensify among male students in proportion to internet access. But its findings generally dovetail with other research from around the world that has tied high-speed internet with psychological problems.

Relying , Churchill and co-author Kathryn Johnson tracked the deployment of broadband across American counties between 2009 and 2019, a period during which the U.S. moved from just under 70 percent coverage to approximately 90 percent. Sizable variation existed between states, with broadband reaching less than 50 percent of Mississippi counties and almost 90 percent of Massachusetts counties as the 2010s began.

As each new community mothballed its dial-up internet, the adolescents living in them responded by logging on more frequently. Responses to the National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, a school-based poll administered by the Centers for Disease Control to thousands of high schoolers, showed that heightened access to high-speed connections predictably led to teenagers devoting more hours of each day to online activity. 

The switch “enabled new types of technologies that we didn’t have when dial-up was more common,” Churchill said, including streaming and video-based social media. “You gained the ability to move to photo- and video-based social media like Instagram, Snapchat, and obviously TikTok nowadays.”

But with the increased internet usage came a more disturbing increase in children’s attitudes. According to the CDC survey, those who spent more than five hours online each day were 68 percent more likely to have considered suicide in a given year than those spending at most one hour online. Heavy users were 64 percent more likely to have actually attempted suicide.

Growing body of evidence

By digging further into the survey responses, the authors discovered possible channels for the negative emotion, each familiar to many parents and educators working with young adults. 

For example, with each increase of broadband access by one standard deviation (a common statistical term measuring difference from a statistical average), adolescent girls were 9 percent more likely to complain that they were being cyberbullied. They were also 8 percent more likely to describe themselves as overweight, though broadband availability was not associated with changes to youth body-mass index during the time under study. Boys became almost 10 percent more likely to report that they were getting insufficient sleep each night.

While girls absorbed a larger impact than boys, each group saw significantly higher levels of suicidal thoughts as they took part in more high-speed internet.

Esther Arenas-Arroyo, an associate professor at the Vienna University of Economics who has conducted similar studies within Europe, said that there are some drawbacks to focusing on internet usage rather than the penetration of specific technologies, such as smartphones or social media apps. Still, she added, access to broadband represents “a necessary condition for the types of online behaviors most plausibly linked to deteriorations in youth mental health.”

“Existing evidence shows that adolescents are far more likely to engage with social media, entertainment, and video platforms when they are at home with high-quality connectivity,” Arenas-Arroyo wrote in an email.

Last year, the economist published on youth mental health and its interactions with digital activity. Rather than simple access to broadband, that work examines the rollout of ultra-high-speed fiber optics that have increasingly replaced slower forms of broadband in her native Spain. Like Churchill, she and her collaborators concluded that the acceleration of internet connectivity led to more “addictive” internet usage; additionally, however, she combined that data with hospital records, finding that fiber deployment contributed to a documented jump in mental health diagnoses and suicide attempts.

Arenas-Arroyo argued that the body of research around the topic has become too large for education leaders and the political class to ignore. 

“A growing body of causal evidence, including my findings, shows that as internet access becomes faster and more ubiquitous, its potential risks to adolescent mental health may intensify,” she observed. “This shifts the policy debate away from whether there is a problem and toward how to mitigate its negative effects.” 

Policy changes across multiple countries have already begun to alter the way that students interact with the internet. A survey released last month by the University of Southern California found that 98 percent of America’s K–12 students attend a school with some form of limitation on cell phone use, with over three-quarters of teenaged respondents saying they supported the restrictions.

Even blunter tools have been embraced internationally, with by banning all use of social media for children under 16. On Tuesday, Spain to do the same, with the country’s prime minister decrying social media as “a failed state.”

Churchill conceded that it would be impossible, and probably undesirable, for countries across the West to attempt to push back the adoption of broadband. But with the research consensus around the potential downsides of the technology growing louder, he added, governments will likely find themselves charged with the task of addressing them.

“Our work is built on national estimates of adolescents across the entire United States — and yes, our results line up with a lot of the other results that existed,” he said. “That should increase our confidence in making policy recommendations based on these findings.”

While the policies are almost uniformly popular, a few observers see a downside. The movement “happened so quickly there wasn’t a thoughtful, nuanced approach” to the problem of helping young people manage digital distraction, said Julia Gustafson, a public health expert who spent five years developing school partnerships for Yondr.

She and partner Shannon Godfrey last year founded , a technical solution to distraction that they believe offers the benefits of a bell-to-bell mobile phone ban that also teaches students how to manage their digital habits and learn skills that give them greater agency without hiding their devices in a pouch.

On its website, The Commons describes itself as “airplane mode for schools,” creating what amounts to a large geofence around a campus that essentially turns off the Internet during the school day. Schools can “whitelist” sites they need, such as Google Classroom, Khan Academy, Duolingo and the like, but others are inaccessible. Students keep their phones with them, but they must adjust the app’s settings to turn individual apps or games on.

Students who look for ways around the system trigger a notification that offers a “nudge,” giving them the opportunity to turn the apps off. If they don’t, alerts go to administrators, who can easily track down the student and address the issue.

At bell time, the geofence deactivates, said Gustafson. When students walk off campus, it deactivates as well. “It’s tier-one social norming,” she said. “Students are building the skills they need every single day, along with their peers doing the same thing. It makes the right choice the easy choice, by automatically silencing those distractions.”

Godfrey, whose background is in ed tech, said the app helps schools minimize distractions while helping students practice “healthier tech habits,” something bans don’t address. The habits, she said “can transfer beyond the school walls” and help students develop life skills that will be valuable as adults. 

ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s Greg Toppo talked recently with Gustafson and Godfrey about what they see as the inadequacy of phone-free schools policies and, in Gustafson’s words, how such policies send “a completely mixed message” to kids about the power of technology. 

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ: Let’s talk about the phone-free schools movement. I can’t remember the last time I saw something catch fire so quickly and grow so rapidly. I gather that you folks have a slightly different point of view on this in terms of distraction and keeping kids focused on school.

Julia Gustafson: It’s been simmering under the surface for a long time. People have noticed that there’s something wrong with how people are engaging with their phones, but more importantly, the addictive applications that are on the phones. COVID was a catalyst to people waking up and understanding that there truly is something wrong here. Going beyond that, it’s been a movement, both on a parental level and a school level, because we’re seeing teacher attrition rates higher than they ever have been. How can we support our teachers, and how can we support our students and parents getting intimately involved? 

It always takes a little while for research to catch up, and research has now finally caught up. That being said, the way in which it’s being handled, talking about it as bans and prohibition, is a surrender to not understanding what to do about a truly wide-spanning public health topic. A ban or prohibition is action, versus what we were doing before, which is inaction. But no one has really taken a thoughtful approach to thinking about how we can do this differently, with guardrails to support people’s interactions with phones. 

Shannon Godfrey: My background has been in education technology, and so I’ve seen the positive of when tech is used appropriately in the classroom to aid student success. Julia and I together come in with that thoughtful approach. But when you look at some of the research around neuroscience or behavioral science, adolescents haven’t yet developed the skills for self-regulation, impulse control, attention management. And most of the apps that are competing for their attention are intentionally engineered to make it hard to disengage — and that’s something we know adults struggle with too.

So to Julia’s point, this is really a societal problem and a public health issue. But the difference with adults is that we’ve had time and context to develop coping strategies. We’ve developed systems to manage the distractions, and it’s getting more difficult for students to be able to handle that. 

Our “a-ha” moment [was] having experience helping schools go phone-free, and seeing that the short-term, immediate impact was phenomenal, but really talking with schools about the exceptions [that didn’t work]. How do we start to use tech positively when we’re using Duolingo or mobile optimized apps in the classroom? How do we make sure that students are really developing some of the skills beyond the four walls of schools? We are having a lot of these conversations. We need something a little bit more intentional, and I think that is something tech can solve.

Julia, you used the word “surrender” earlier. I’m guessing that you would say a phone-free strategy doesn’t teach the skills of “saying no” and limiting your time on an app — or even learning about what the app is trying to do. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that.

Gustafson: When policymakers are addressing demands from both parents and schools, what they’re lacking is that context in which technology is integral for anyone to be successful now, but also into the future. And so when you ban or prohibit something, that’s sending a completely mixed message to the students that the technology is to be embraced and it’s going to make you a leader — but needs to be locked away. Then we need dual-factor authentication to log into our Chromebooks, and so we take out this “prohibited” device, open it up to use the dual factor authentication — but then are bombarded with 200 notifications from Tik-Tok. So boom, this rebound consumption happens, and you’re locked into that as a distraction, vs. going on your phone, using it as the tool that it was designed to be, and being able to move forward.

I was listening to a radio program about phone-free schools the other day and one of the panelists said that if school is a place where we prepare young people for their life after school, there’s only one kind of job where they ask you to put your phone away: a low-paid service job. Do you have any ideas on that?

Gustafson: That goes back to what I was saying at the beginning: Using technology appropriately is integral to someone’s ability to be a leader in today’s society, so it is a huge mixed message when you’re telling somebody to lock a device away throughout the day instead of actually being able to utilize it when there are practical applications — and denying them that opportunity to learn the right time, place and manner to use that piece of technology. And you can think about that for phones, but you can also think about that for tablets and computers, which can be equally distracting during the school day.

Godfrey: We’ve had the opportunity to meet with students and have focus groups. Students are savvy and they’re smart. A lot of times with phone bans, are we saying that students can’t learn self-regulation and they can’t learn impulse control? When you talk with students, they’re saying, “Hey, I want schools to help me learn self-regulation. I just don’t necessarily agree we should pretend the phone doesn’t exist.” And in our focus groups, we have students come back and say, “Why is it so wrong if I believe the phone is my device of choice? Maybe it’s the only thing I can afford. Maybe it’s just what I’m used to using because they’re so sophisticated now and just readily available. But if I’m using it for academics, and I choose the academic app or to upload my Google Classroom or to submit an assignment or a chat in Google Classroom, why can’t I use my phone for that if that’s the appropriate time? Why can I use my computer in class but not my phone? If you’re helping us learn time, place and manner, then why is the phone so wrong?” You’re almost saying one thing but then asking them to do another. 

Let’s talk about The Commons: If I’ve got a game on my phone that doesn’t need Internet access, I’ve got access to that as well. What’s your thinking on that?

Gustafson: We do track the amount of time students are spending on that on their phone during the school day, so if a student downloads a game that doesn’t need Internet access, we can see on the admin dashboard that Greg has spent two hours on his phone today. That’s a little odd. Let’s go check in and see what the scoop is. So that’s one of the ways that we can try to prevent students from doing that. And then I’ll also just add that The Commons isn’t the school’s cell phone policy. This is a measure that gets inserted into the school cell phone policy to just help make it easier for that right time, place and manner, and for students to comply with it. So if I’m sitting there playing a game for two hours on my phone, I’m sure that someone is going to notice that, and that’s when that policy comes into play.

Turning off the Internet, for lack of a better term, seems like a smart move — with obviously these other sites whitelisted for school use. I guess somebody might squint and say it’s kind of the same thing as putting a phone in a pouch. What’s the difference?

Gustafson: The pouch doesn’t have any guardrails. So if a teacher decides, “Hey, everyone, take out your phone for Duolingo” in language class, it’s unfettered access all over again. You might get 100 notifications. It all comes back. But with The Commons app, you have the guardrails up at all times. You don’t actually need to lock a phone away. You don’t need to spend time taking a phone out of a pouch or getting it or retrieving it, plus it constantly has guardrails on so the focus can always be on the task at hand.

Can you dig in a little bit more deeply? What are students learning?

Gustafson: Behavioral economics really is the science about making the right choice the easy choice, by helping people make decisions that are ultimately the best for them. And so in the case of school, it’s being able to stay off of distracting applications. 

What are you actually learning to do better using this app?

Gustafson: We just interviewed some teachers right before the holiday break. What they were saying is, “We see that students just have more control over their phones. They’re not fiddling with them as much. They have better impulse control.” And that’s a huge win. We talked about behavior change. So much of this is an impulse for people to reach out to their device without actually understanding that they’re doing it until they’re already in their phone. If we can start controlling those impulses and allow people to develop the skill set of controlling their phone use when their phone is still next to them — because that’s the skill they’re going to need when going into college or their career — that’s a huge win for us.

Godfrey: We’re giving them a feedback loop. They’re taking their real device — they don’t have to lock it away and pretend it doesn’t exist — and learning how to manage it in the wild. Our students are recognizing that when I set foot on campus, this is time to put our phone away. It’s sometimes that subtle nudge I need, but it’s helping me build this habit. It’s helping me remember, “Yep, this is school time. This is my time to engage, my time to learn, my time to focus.” 

And it’s been phenomenal. I’m getting better grades, and I’m playing with kids during recess, and we’re checking out basketballs, and I’m noticing my peers are interacting with us, and we’re paying attention to the teachers.

So the phone is sitting in front of me. I don’t have to put it in a pouch. I don’t even necessarily have to put it in my backpack. Yet all the things that I would use it to have fun with aren’t there. They essentially aren’t working. So how am I learning impulse control? 

Gustafson: Because of all the addictive apps on the phone that people are hardwired to reach out to it, even if it doesn’t buzz, even if it doesn’t do anything, sometimes even the sight of it — it’s now wired in my brain that the minute I have a sense of boredom I’m pulling out my phone to cure that boredom. By reducing all of the fun and addictive apps on it, we’re actually helping rewire the brain to not want to continue. 

So it’s saying, “In certain conditions, this phone is not the same kind of machine.” 

Gustafson: If for eight hours during the day when they’re at school, we’ve shifted their brain to understanding that this is a boring device and they have control over it — they have impulse control over that device — they’re now having the awareness to practice those same skills outside the walls of the school. 

One of the appeals of a phone-free school is that it’s very clean and easy for the adults. If every kid’s phone is in a bag, I don’t have to worry about it. What The Commons is doing, in a sense, could make life more complicated for certain adults, having to chase down the kid who’s on Tik-Tok, or using some site they shouldn’t be. 

Godfrey: It’s interesting. From our experience and talking with schools, we see that a lot of programs with pouches roll out really successfully at the beginning, but then there are damages to pouches happening, or students faking a phone into the shoe rack. They’re working the system. Our schools are spending more energy playing Whack-a-Mole, and as those inconsistencies continue to creep up, the fidelity of the program starts to go away. And as the fidelity goes away, students are realizing that they can get away with it. And so then they do.

With our schools, what we’ve been able to do for the first time is actually help focus our administrators on where to put their attention: Where are students actually struggling with being able to put their phone down? Are these students who actually need more support and intervention? And when we also look at grades, attendance and some of these other data points and factors, if the phone is traditionally a root cause to a lot of these problems, how do we really support that student before they get off task and have a greater risk of not graduating?

Teenagers’ digital feeds are filled with graphic images and claims about U.S. immigration enforcement, including civilian deaths in Minneapolis; geopolitical brinkmanship involving Venezuela and Greenland; and ongoing conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine. These events arrive on kids’ phones, compressed into memes and clips long before facts are verified or meaning can be made.

At the same time, schools are locked in public conflicts over cellphone and book bans, curriculum restrictions and artificial intelligence policies. In this environment, many educators understandably see avoidance of potentially contentious topics — including and — as a survival strategy. Discussing the war in the Middle East can be read as advocacy. Talking about immigration raids — or even the meaning of the rule of law — can spark backlash. Staying silent often feels safer.

But young people are not waiting for adults to dive in.

They encounter war, political upheaval and social fracture in the same digital spaces where they flirt, joke and pursue their interests. When something trends or becomes a meme, it immediately shows up in group chats, tests friendships and erupts in classrooms as debates over who belongs.

That is the civics problem hiding in plain sight: Young people are learning how public life works — grappling with evidence and the best resolutions to issues, especially when there are disagreements — in environments that reward certainty and spectacle while punishing nuance and humility.

Since 2024, our researchers have studied how young people and educators are navigating this reality. Through in-depth interviews with more than 100 middle and high school students, educators and school leaders in New York City and Southern California, as well as college students and faculty across the country, we examined how young people make sense of contentious events and decide what information to trust, and how digital media shapes their views and relationships. We are releasing those findings in a new report, .

We found that most teens do not hold extreme views but believe their peers are far more polarized than they are. Many care deeply about issues like immigration, antisemitism, racial justice and climate change but worry that what they say will be misunderstood or weaponized.

Young people are also keenly aware that digital environments distort what they see. They know algorithms are not neutral. Some try to block accounts, follow posts with different perspectives and like content on multiple sides of an issue. But they are also teenagers. They want their feeds to be social and affirming. And they can’t fact-check a disappearing clip the way they can revisit a textbook or compare sources side by side.

The result is a corrosive belief that we heard again and again: Nothing is really true. Every claim has a counterclaim. Every source has an agenda. When nothing feels verifiable, cynicism grows — and creates fertile ground for disengagement.

Teens see classrooms as one of the few places where they can slow down, ask real questions and change their minds. But school functions as a counterweight only when adults establish shared evidence standards and structured opportunities to practice disagreement over time.

This is where many schools are falling short — not because educators don’t care, but because they are being asked to improvise under pressure.

Teachers told us they view engaging complex, controversial issues as part of their responsibility to young people, but they fear being perceived as biased or vulnerable to backlash. In today’s climate, classrooms can feel like both a refuge and a pressure cooker.

Too often, the tools teachers reach for are fragmented: a digital literacy lesson that assumes students encounter information mainly through websites; lessons on active listening divorced from content that would require such skills; and content related to social issues that doesn’t match what students see in their feeds. Teens notice when discussions are avoided or abruptly shut down, making them confused and anxious.

If America’s education leaders are serious about civic learning, they cannot keep treating tough topics as extracurricular.

That includes conflicts like Israel-Palestine and the rise in antisemitism and xenophobia — issues that are deeply personal for many students. Our research probed students’ and teachers’ perspectives on teaching about the Middle East conflict because it is a strong example of what happens when young people are pressed to pick a side on a hotly contested topic before they have had time to learn, debate and sit with moral complexity. These challenges are not limited to any one issue; students we interviewed also disclosed how affected they were by other news they encountered first in their feeds, from Charlie Kirk’s assassination to immigration raids by ICE.

Schools cannot resolve geopolitics. But they can teach the habits of mind and heart that democratic life depends on. Our research points to three practical commitments that school systems and education leaders can act on now.

First, make evidence-building a core civic priority — not “my truth” and “your truth,” but shared texts, verifiable sources and clear norms about what counts as evidence, both for in-person discussions and in digital forums, from social media to group chats.

Second, treat discourse as a practice, not a personality trait. Civil discourse is not about being nice. It is a teachable skill set: asking honest questions, acknowledging uncertainty, resisting easy answers, and maintaining peer relationships even in disagreement.

Third, teach tough topics with good guardrails. Avoidance does not protect students; it abandons them to confront challenging issues alone in digital spaces designed to amplify their outrage rather than understanding. What students need are structured opportunities — in classrooms — to slow down, examine evidence and ask hard questions.

Beyond those more immediate changes, teachers need longer-range help in managing rapid technological change — including how the content that students encounter online inevitably spills into the classroom. Schools need AI-driven learning tools that update easily to include current events, designed to help students learn how to transform information into knowledge and disagreements into deeper understanding of one another.

Young people are not asking for perfect adults or painless conversations. They are asking for adults who will not disappear when things get hard.

At a time when public life rewards outrage and withdrawal, schools are one of the last places where young people can be encouraged to lean into the discomfort of talking through their differences long enough to think, listen and better connect with ideas and with one another. That is education’s most urgent calling.

The parents of called on Indiana lawmakers to limit minors’ access to social media after their daughter’s death was linked to a 39-year-old man she spoke to online.

The original version of SB 199 would have banned social media operators from allowing Hoosier children to make accounts on their platforms and limited access for older teenagers. But this language was stripped in the Senate.

Now, House lawmakers are considering adding a version of the restriction back with an amendment.

Speaking at the House Education Committee Wednesday in support of the amendment, Beau Buzbee said 17-year-old Hailey had been lured away from their home by an online predator last month. Law enforcement announced Feb. 1 that she is believed to be deceased and that an Ohio man was arrested in connection with her disappearance.

Buzbee said their experience showed glaring gaps in Indiana law that needed to be addressed.

“We are losing the fight to protect our children. The internet and social media are the devils’ and predators’ playgrounds, and it’s on this front that we must fight,” Buzbee told lawmakers. “Please do not let this opportunity slip away.”

Supporters of have also called for schools to provide mandatory updated predator education and for updates to the state’s missing person alert system. they would add an expansion to the alert system as an amendment to HB 1303, a bill that increases the penalties for child exploitation, and that they would discuss adding more education to the existing health standards.

Indiana— but ultimately — a social media ban for minors under 14 and restrictions for those under 17 this year.

The most recent iteration of the ban is the amendment to SB 199, which requires social media providers to estimate the age of an account user and seek permission from the parents of users under 16. For minor accounts, the amendment forbids social media providers from using an algorithmic feed or selling data for advertising purposes, restricts who can contact the user, and gives parents monitoring tools.

Critics have raised First Amendment concerns as well as the possibility that the state will be drawn into an extended legal challenge over the law.

But supporters of a restriction on social media, including Secretary of Education Katie Jenner, say the state must act to address the risks of social media to children and teens the way it does for other dangerous activities, like tobacco use. Social media use is linked to depression, irregular sleep, and a lack of physical activity and social emotional support, said State Health Commissioner Lindsay Weaver. And these issues spill over to classrooms and affect learning, school leaders said.

House lawmakers heard hours of testimony overwhelmingly in support of the language on Monday, but did not take action to add it to the bill.

Supporters of the amendment included South Bend student Rima Bahradine-Bell, who said social media use promises community and affirmation but actually leads to comparison and dependency.

“I’m coming to you as a teenager and a high schooler, and I’m telling you that I would have liked to not have any social media at that age,” she said. “My friends are telling me to tell you that we did not want this.”

Amy Klink, a school counselor at Guerin Catholic High School, said she frequently speaks to students experiencing mental health crises as a result of social media and to their parents, who struggle to restrict social media access.

“Even when parents are aware of a social media account, they can’t be aware of every account with a new name. Parental verification could help with this,” Klink said. “It’s not the magic pill, but it will help.”

SB 199 will return to the House Education Committee on Wednesday for lawmakers to amend and vote.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

A new Department of Public Instruction (DPI) says that 100% of traditional public school districts currently have a 1-to-1 digital device-to-student ratio, though many districts are struggling to replace old or damaged devices due to a lack of funding.

Dr. Ashley McBride, a digital learning initiative consultant at DPI, the Statewide Trends in Student Digital Learning Access report at the State Board of Education meeting on Wednesday.

The compiles data on students’ access to digital devices in and out of school, as well as their out-of-school internet access, from 115 school districts and 239 charter, lab, and regional schools. Among those 239 nontraditional schools, 84% had a 1-to-1 digital device-to-student ratio.

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The report says that in total, these public school units had 1,190,045 digital devices available for students in 2024-25. Chrome devices make up 90.3% of this fleet; 8.7% were Windows devices, and Apple devices made up 1%.

Students can take less than half of these devices home, as 56% of them must stay on school campuses.

“Together, these findings demonstrate that North Carolina continues to rely heavily on school-issued, portable devices to support both in-school instruction and extended learning opportunities beyond the school day,” the report says.

The also included findings from a survey on out-of-school devices with responses from families representing 55,082 students.

In this sample, 42% of families said their student uses a school-provided device at home, while a third said their student uses a device owned by the family. Around one in five families reported that their student has access to both family-owned and school-provided devices at home. However, 4% of families reported their student does not have access to a digital device at home.

Families who did not have devices at home said they were too expensive, they chose not to purchase one, or the devices they owned were broken, damaged, or outdated, according to the report.

A survey with 36,365 respondent families found that 93% had consistent and adequate internet access for their students at home. Families with limited or no access to the internet at home said that was due to high costs or the internet connection not being dependable.

Still, those families described several alternatives they use to ensure their students can access the internet, including using the internet at public libraries, hot spots, other people’s homes, school parking lots, among other options.

“My rural county, still one third of it, does not have internet capability. And after Helene, many parts of our community do not have Wi-Fi coverage, nor do they have cell coverage. That’s typical in the western part of the state,” said Board member John Blackburn, who represents the state’s Northwest region. “I just want to remind everybody that there are still points of darkness in the state of North Carolina.”

Beckie Spears, , said that her rural elementary school had one Chromebook cart per grade level prior to 2020. Now, there’s one in every classroom, she said, but the devices are aging and the district doesn’t “have any ways to replace them.”

“The reality is we have stretched every resource as far as we can, and in Tier 1 counties and Tier 2 counties where local funds are not accessible, this is a real and urgent problem that needs attention from our legislators,” Spears said.

The report says that these findings highlight the importance of school-provided digital devices for students. But since pandemic-era funding from the federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) and the Emergency Connectivity Funds (ECF) has ended, many schools are struggling to sustain student device programs.

McBride’s presentation said 88 out of the state’s traditional school districts — nearly 77% — as well as 97 charter, lab, and regional schools, don’t have dedicated funds to refresh students’ school-provided digital devices.

“Large portions of the current device fleet have aged beyond expected lifespans, resulting in higher failure rates, declining performance, and reduced reliability for both classroom and at home use,” the report says.

The report says some schools have limited or stopped take-home access for their device fleets because they don’t have inventory to replace them.

According to McBride, prior to ESSER funding, only 16 school districts had a 1-to-1 digital device-to-student ratio.

DPI recommends that the state allocate recurring funding to support student device programs to reduce reliance on short-term federal funding, according to the report. This legislative session, for a 1-to-1 device refresh over a four-year period.

The report also recommends providing statewide guidance on devices’ life cycle management, including cost considerations and multiyear budgeting strategies. The department also recommends using data systems to track devices’ age, availability, and take-home capacity, and “exploring how to improve parental participation in reporting on home connectivity and device access.”

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

Indiana’s Senate Education Committee on Wednesday advanced two bills aimed at reshaping how young Hoosiers interact with technology — one that would restrict minors’ access to social media platforms and another that would require schools to strengthen technology plans and give parents greater control over at-home device use.

, authored by committee chair Sen. Jeff Raatz, R-Richmond, passed the panel 11-2 and was recommitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where it must be approved before moving to the full chamber.

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Democrats Sen. Andrea Hunley, D-Indianapolis, and Sen. Shelli Yoder, D-Bloomington, were the only “no” votes against the social media.

The measure contains multiple provisions, but a highly-discussed section would substantially restrict minors’ access to social media. Under the proposal, social media companies like Meta would be required to obtain written parental permission before a minor under age 18 could create an account.

social media restriction language but ultimately stalled in the House.

Supporters argued in committee that the bill is a response to growing concerns over social media’s impact on children’s mental health and school environments.

Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner emphasized the toll she said social media is taking on students across Hoosier schools.

“For most of us in the room, social media arrived when we were already well into adulthood,” Jenner said, adding that “our children growing up today do not have that same luxury” of a childhood free from constant comparison, cyberbullying, algorithm-driven content and addictive features.

But critics raised concerns about enforcement, privacy and rights of students.

Samantha Bresnahan with the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, for example, argued that such restrictions could infringe on minors’ constitutional rights and require intrusive data collection to verify age and consent.

Parents get more say

, authored by Sen. Spencer Deery, R-West Lafayette, takes a different tack on technology.

The measure, which passed the education committee 12-1, would require Indiana’s traditional public and charter schools to include in their technology plans a description of how they will enable parents to exercise control over school-provided devices when they are not in school and strengthen internet use and wireless communication policies.

If approved, schools must adopt policies by Jan. 1, 2027, that would let parents increase the strength of content filters on school-issued devices and limit the time students can use those devices outside school hours. The bill also directs schools to prohibit use of school equipment “for noneducational purposes during instructional time.”

Hunley was the lone vote against the proposal.

“I think that our school boards can already do this if they would like to,” she said. “I’m a big fan of home rule and local control, and I think that the level of government that’s closest to the school building should be the one to make this decision and enact this policy, not the state.”

Sen. Stacey Donato, R-Logansport, voted in favor but urged additional consideration of how parental controls might apply during e-learning days.

“We talked about the parental controls on an e-learning day, that (parents) may not want a YouTube video or a TikTok or pick-your-poison that may be used in structure for the educational experience,” she told Deery. “I just encourage you to look into that.”

Democrats also pressed for clarity on potential costs to schools.

Sen. Fady Qaddoura, D-Indianapolis, asked whether districts might need to spend money to implement stronger parental controls.

Deery said his office could not identify any examples where Hoosier schools would take on additional costs because most already contract with vendors that offer such functionality. “

We’ve yet to find any institution that does not have a contract with a vendor that does not offer this,” he said. “I’ve confirmed with virtually all of the major vendors. So, I’m not aware of (any costs schools would incur).”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com.

An administrative law judge has ruled that an Iowa school teacher committed job-related misconduct when he posted negative Facebook comments about conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Matthew Kargol worked for the Oskaloosa Community School District as an art teacher and coach until he was fired in September 2025. Kargol then filed for unemployment benefits and the district resisted, which led to a recent hearing before Administrative Law Judge David Steen.

In his written factual findings of the case, Steen reported that on Sept. 10, 2025, Kargol had posted a comment to Facebook stating, “1 Nazi down.” That comment was posted within hours of authorities confirming Kirk had been shot and killed that day while speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.

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When another Facebook user commented, “What a s—-y thing to say,” Kargol allegedly replied, “Yep, he was part of the problem, a Nazi.”

Steen reported that Kargol posted his comments around 5 p.m. and then deleted them within an hour. By 6 p.m., the district began fielding a number of telephone calls and text messages from members of the public, Steen found.

According to Steen’s findings, the district’s leadership team met that evening and included Kargol via telephone conference call. District leaders asked Kargol to resign, and he declined, after which the district officials said they were concerned for his safety due to the public’s reaction to his comments.

The district placed Kargol on administrative leave that evening, Steen found. The next day, district officials fielded roughly 1,500 telephone calls and received 280 voicemail messages regarding Kargol’s posts.

“These calls required the employer to redirect staff and other resources from their normal duties,” Steen stated in his ruling. “The employer also requested additional law enforcement presence at school facilities due to the possibility of physical threats, which some of the messages alluded to. The employer continued to receive numerous communications from the public for days after the post was removed.”

On Sept. 16, 2025, Superintendent Mike Fisher submitted a written recommendation to the school board to fire Kargol, with the two primary reasons cited as a disruption to the learning environment and a violation of the district’s code of ethics. Upon Fisher’s recommendation, the board fired Kargol on Sept. 17, 2025.

According to Steen’s findings, the district calculated the cost of its response to the situation was $14,332.10 – and amount that includes the wages of the regular staff who handled the phone calls and other communications.

As for the ethics-policy violation, Steen noted that the policy states that employees “are representatives of the district at all times and must model appropriate character, both on and off the worksite. This applies to material posted with personal devices and on personal websites and/or social media accounts.”

The policy goes on to say that social media posts “which diminish the professionalism” of the district may result in disciplinary action, including termination, if it is found to be disruptive to the educational environment.

The district, Steen noted, also has a policy on “employee expression” that states “the First Amendment protects a public employee’s speech when the employee is speaking as an individual citizen on a matter of public concern,” but that “even so, employee expression that has an adverse impact on district operations and/or negatively impacts an employee’s ability to perform their job for the district may still result in disciplinary action up to and including termination.”

Based on the policies and Kargol’s conduct, Steen concluded the district fired Kargol for job-related misconduct that disqualified him from collecting unemployment benefits.

The issue before him, Steen observed, wasn’t whether the district made a correct decision in firing Kargol, but whether Kargol is entitled to unemployment insurance benefits under Iowa law.

In ruling against Kargol on that issue, Steen noted Kargol was aware of district policies regarding social media use as well as work rules that specifically state employees are considered representatives of the school district at all times.

Kargol’s posts, Steen ruled, “reflected negatively on the employer and were against the employer’s interests.” The posts also “caused substantial disruption to the learning environment, causing staff at all levels to need to redirect focus and resources on the public’s response for days after the incident,” Steen stated.

Kargol’s federal lawsuit against the school district, alleging retaliation for exercising his First Amendment right to expression, is still working its way through the courts.

In that lawsuit, Kargol argues that in comments made last fall, Fisher made clear that his condemnation of Kargol’s Facebook posts “was rooted in his personal beliefs, not in evidence of disruption. Speaking as ‘a man of faith,’ Fisher expressed disappointment in the state of society and disapproval of Mr. Kargol’s expression. By invoking his personal religious identity in condemning Mr. Kargol’s speech, Fisher confirmed that his reaction was based on his own values and ideology, not on legitimate pedagogical concerns.”

The district has denied any wrongdoing in that case. A trial date has yet to be scheduled.

have been filed against their former employers by Iowa educators, a public defender and a paramedic, all of whom allege they were fired or sanctioned for online comments posted in the immediate aftermath of Kirk’s death.

Earlier this week, and its executive director, alleging they improperly solicited complaints related to anti-Kirk social media posts.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com.

The author of two college textbooks and five books for non-academic readers, she is equally at home researching and writing about adolescent mental health, sleep disorders, digital technology, homework and narcissism. She was one of the first experts to warn nearly that smartphones could hold negative consequences for our mental health. A decade after the advent of the iPhone, Twenge went viral in 2017 with an that asked, provocatively, “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?”

A professor at San Diego State University, she has collaborated for years with the researcher and author Jonathan Haidt, whose 2024 book was a mega-bestseller that has helped build momentum for school cellphone bans in a growing number of states — .

And she is one of the few experts in the education and mental health world to have appeared on HBO’s .

Twenge’s 2017 book, , looked at how modern teens are somehow both more connected than previous generations and less prepared for adulthood. In it, she theorized that depression rates among teens are rising because they spend more time online, less time with friends in person, and less time sleeping — a problematic combination. 

The dilemmas Twenge identified in 2017 are only getting worse: By 2023, the typical American teen was spending nearly five hours a day using social media, recent research finds, with severe depression rates rising. In , girls who were heavy users of social media were three times as likely to be depressed as non-users.

Her , out Tuesday, offers practical guidelines for parents raising kids in the age of ubiquitous connectivity and sophisticated — some would say addictive — social media.

Twenge doesn’t shy away from challenging harried parents to do better. Among her suggestions: No one — parents included — should have electronic devices in the bedroom overnight. Likewise, she says, the first handheld device a kid should receive is a “basic phone” that allows calls, texts and not much else.

“It’s a really big myth out there that if kids are going to communicate, it has to be on social media,” she said. “That’s just not true.”

Ahead of its publication, Twenge spoke with ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s Greg Toppo about her rules, her work with Haidt and her belief that we need stiffer laws that keep young people off social media until they’re old enough to drive.

Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.  

I wanted to start with a quote from your book. It’s a parent’s description of his 10-year-old after she got her first smartphone: “She suddenly wasn’t playing with her younger siblings as much. Novels were promptly cast aside. She wasn’t around to help with dinner anymore. She danced less, laughed less. She was quieter. Our home was quieter.” That’s so heartbreaking, but I’m guessing it’s not unusual.

I don’t think it is. Many, many parents describe how their kids are different after they give them a smartphone. And it’s especially heartbreaking when that’s a 10-year-old, but even when it’s a 16-year-old who might otherwise be ready. It’s very noticeable how they change after they get that phone in their pocket.

Were there any particular data points about smartphones and social media that persuaded you they were causing a mental health crisis?

It was a slow process for me, and it wasn’t an immediate conclusion when I first started to see these trends in adolescent mental health. It was first a process of ruling out obvious causes, like the economy, which wasn’t aligned at all, and any other big events that might happen. I would trace it, really, to the big that I work with on teens, where there was just this combination all at once of not just rising depression, but teens spending less time with each other in person and less time sleeping. And then realizing, “Well, wait: What might explain all of those things happening at the same time?” 

And it seemed clear that a good amount of that answer is probably smartphones and social media, particularly after I found a Pew Research Center poll about the ownership of smartphones, that [it] in the U.S. at the end of 2012. And that’s right around the same time all these changes were happening.

I want to dig into a few of your rules. No. 3: “No social media until age 16 or later.” That seems a lot tougher than what most families practice. Why 16? And what do you say to parents who worry about their kids’ social isolation and FOMO or Fear Of Missing Out?

I have not found that with my kids — that they’ve been socially isolated for not having social media. Most other parents I talked to who have put off social media have also not found that with their kids. Social media is just one mechanism for communicating. There’s so many others. Kids can call each other, they can text each other — they do a lot of texting. They can FaceTime each other, they can get together in person. Usually that ends up tilting toward texting, but it does not have to be social media. It’s a really big myth out there that if kids are going to communicate, it has to be on social media. That’s just not true.

And that leads to rule No. 4, where you advocate “basic phones” — your phrase — before smartphones. In a world where even school assignments need Internet access, is that practical for most families?

Yeah, because kids have laptops. And if the family can’t afford to buy them a laptop, almost all schools provide a laptop. So they have Internet access on their laptop even if they don’t have it on their phone. And laptops have come so far down in price too, that if you haven’t bought a laptop recently, or if you use Mac laptops like I do and my kids do now, you might not realize you can get a . So that’s another big thing: Maybe 10 years ago, if a kid doesn’t have Internet access on their phone, then they don’t have Internet access at all. That’s just not true in the current landscape.

Although you do have problems with school laptops.

Oh, yes. I mean, this is a thing! They get Internet access on the laptop, whether it’s a school laptop or a personal one, and then that opens a whole other can of worms. Absolutely true. Laptops are the bane of my existence as a parent, particularly the school laptop, although they’ve gotten a little bit better, at least in my district. 

Actually, that was going to be my next question, this parental controls thing. It sounds like your district is being responsive.

Well, on that issue, they still don’t have a coherent phone policy during the school day. In the high school, it’s especially bad. That’s something I’m hoping will change. It is changing in a lot of schools around the country, thankfully. A lot more schools are doing “no phones during the school day, bell to bell,” which is what needs to happen.

A big message of the book is phone-free schools. And I know you’ve worked with , who has pushed for schools to get rid of phones. A few critics have said that this is a to a complex problem, and that it’s not entirely clear that phones are actually causing the mental health issues that Haidt has become a best-seller writing about. How do you respond to that criticism?

There are a couple of things to unpack there. For one thing, even if you take mental health out of the equation, kids should still not have their phones at school for academic and focus reasons, for the reason of developing social skills by talking to their friends at lunch, for the reason that a bell-to-bell ban is actually easier to enforce than a classroom-by-classroom ban. There are so many reasons for it that don’t even include mental health. 

The second question is [about] the research on phones and social media and mental health: We’ve known for quite a while that teens who spend more time on social media are more likely to be depressed or unhappy. Almost every single study finds that. Where you sometimes get more debate is, “O.K., that’s correlation. What about causation?” But in the last 10 years, we’ve gotten a lot more studies, and the studies that ask people to cut back or give up social media for at least three weeks a month or so, almost all of those studies show an improvement in well-being. And I don’t want to get too in the weeds here, but that’s actually a little bit shocking, because by definition in those experiments, you’re taking people who are at average use and having them cut back to low. 

That’s actually not where we see the biggest effects in the correlational studies. The heaviest users are much more likely to be depressed than the average or light users. So, you know, you can’t ethically do an experiment that would really answer the exact question: You can’t take 12-year-olds, randomly assign them to spend eight hours a day on social media, and then see what happens. At least I hope not.

In the book, you talk about the 10 rules “creating a firewall for kids against anxiety, attention issues and constant insecurity.” I think most parents would get behind that. But let’s be honest, they’re users of these tools themselves. How do we craft rules around web dependence and social media without being hypocrites?

Parents have to be role models. Parents are also allowed a small amount of what I call “digital hypocrisy.” Because they’re adults, they have jobs, they may be responsible for elderly parents, etc. But that said, parents should think about their technology use as well. They should get their phones and electronic devices out of their bedroom at night. They should also consider doing things like not having social media on their phone. If they want to use Facebook or Instagram or Twitter, do it on your laptop. That’s what I do. I mean, I don’t have much social media to begin with. I have X, but I don’t have it on my phone, and that’s very much a purposeful decision. During family dinners, unless there’s a really specific reason for me to have my phone with me, it’s upstairs.

That seems to be an easy one: Phones away at dinner.

Well, you’d think so, but you’ve got to get the whole family on board, and sometimes husbands are not really into that.

I want to skip to Rule No. 8: “Give your kids real-world freedom,” which will probably be met with some resistance. I have a 4-year-old grandson, and when I read your recommendation to let 4-to-7-year-olds go find items a few aisles away in the grocery store, I shouted, “Hell no!”

Why? Why is there, do you think, a resistance to that idea?

I have nightmares about this child being snatched from me at Safeway. I guess I want you to just pull me back from the edge, if you would.

I mean, that is not just unlikely to happen — the chances of that are so infinitesimal it probably shouldn’t even factor into our decision making. There’s one stat in there, and I forget the exact number, but someone calculated that if you wanted your kid to get kidnapped, how many hours — it turned out to be years — would they have to be in your front yard for that to happen? It’s something like 100,000 years. 

O.K., well that helps.

And a four-year-old loves that stuff! They love being grown up. I mean, look, even if you don’t do the grocery store thing, make sure they learn how to tie their own shoes, that they know how to get dressed. I remember when my girls were that age, and it occasionally amazed me when I would be with other moms in various situations and their kids couldn’t dress themselves at that age, and that’s where it starts. 

At pretty much every age, the great thing is that giving kids independence makes it easier for parents. It is easier as a parent if your 4-year-old can dress themselves. It is easier if your teenager makes dinner once a week. It’s good for everybody.

A lot of people might see this freedom rule as somehow contradictory to some of the other rules, in which you talk about adults being “in control.” Can you parse that?

For sure. Jon has said this as well — and I completely agree: We have kids in the real world and underprotected them online, and these principles are just trying to get those two to balance. When you’re talking about the real-world freedom thing, it’s not a matter of letting kids completely run wild and do whatever they want. We’re talking about giving kids some of the freedoms that parents themselves had when they were kids, and to build independence in a way that is really good for kids and good for them as they grow up. 

I can’t even remember who said this to me when I had young kids: “You’re not raising children, you’re raising adults.” And that’s just so true. That is your job as a parent. Giving kids some freedom and independence is a really, really key part of raising an adult.  

I wrote a whole book about learning games, and one of the powerful ideas that I took from that reporting is that many adults don’t realize video games have become. You acknowledge that, saying gaming is the primary way that some kids spend time with friends. But I gather that you see the risks as well. And I wonder if you could talk about that.

It really comes back to the principle of “Everything in moderation.” Many games are not as obviously toxic as social media. Games tend to be more in real time, more interactive. But is it a good idea for kids to be spending five or six hours a day gaming? Probably not. There have to be some limits.

You quote , the Facebook founder, admitting they’re “exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology” to keep users on the app. Given social media’s sophistication, are mere parental rules sufficient? I mean, don’t we need a bigger hammer, like legislation and policies? 

Absolutely! Yes! Yes! It would be absolutely amazing for parents and for kids if we had laws that verified age for social media. I mean, ideally, that would be age verification to make sure they’re 16 or older, to raise the minimum age to 16. But even if we just enforced existing law with the minimum of 13, that would be progress, given the enormous numbers of 10-, 11- and 12-year-olds who are on social media, often without their parents’ permission — often explicitly against their parents’ permission — and actually against the law [Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule] that was passed in 1998.

What is the biggest obstacle to getting better regulation, or, to your point, to enforcing the existing regulations?

It’s interesting. The barrier is not the inability to verify age or the inability to verify age without a government ID. There are so many companies that will verify age now that they have their . It can be done in many different ways. The biggest barrier is tech companies themselves. Any time a state passes a law about verifying age on social media or even pornography sites, the companies — every single time. They have sued to keep those laws from going into effect.

Are any emerging technologies that parents should be concerned about? Do your rules need updating for AI or virtual reality or whatever comes next?

AI chatbots are what a lot of parents are rightly worried about. And yes, you could certainly modify or add to the rules and say, “No AI chat bots until 16 or 18 — probably 18.” And of course, it depends on what we’re talking about. It is common for kids to use ChatGPT when they need to look up something for homework or even have it write their essays — that’s a whole other horrible discussion. But what I’m specifically referring to is the many chatbots out there right now that are supposed to be AI friends, or worse, . There’s already been a tragic case of a child who , apparently due to one of these AI girlfriends. It’s just really scary to think of kids having their first romantic relationship with an AI chatbot. It’s terrifying.

The good news is, if you follow that rule about your kids having basic phones, if you give them one of the phones that’s designed for kids, those phones do not allow AI relationship chatbots. It’s on their banned apps, just like social media and pornography and violence apps. Parents have such a tough job, and it’s nice that there are at least a few tools out there that can make their lives easier and keep their kids off of things like AI girlfriend and boyfriend chatbots.

In keeping with the theme of overwhelmed parents, I wonder: If I were to come to you as a parent and say, “Oh my God, Jean, 10 rules is a lot. If I could only do two or three, where would I start?” Is that even a smart thing to do? And if so, where would you start?

I would say, “No electronic devices in the bedroom overnight.” Start there, because the research is so solid on it, and it’s such a straightforward rule, and it works for everybody, of all ages. Your teenager can’t say, “Well, you do it differently,” or, “You get to be on social media.” No, actually, my phone is outside my bedroom when I sleep at night too. So that’s a great place to start. And then, just because they have so much utility, I would probably say the second rule, about basic phones, because even with all of the mess of the laptops, I’m just so happy and grateful that my kids did not have the Internet or social media in their pocket until they were older.

As a parent and a grandparent, I really appreciate you using your real life to inform a lot of these rules. In a way, it hardens them a bit, makes them more durable. Anything I haven’t asked you about that you feel needs to be in the mix?

Two things I’ll throw out there just in terms of pushbacks: With “No phones during the school day,” the pushback is often “What about school shootings?” And it’s actually less safe for students to have access to their phones during an active shooter situation. And I go through the reasons for that in that chapter. 

And then the real-world freedom piece: When you look at the things that I’m suggesting in terms of how to give your kids freedom, obviously letting them go off on their own in the real world is important, and you should do that too. But there are lots of things in that list of suggestions you can do without even leaving the house: teens making their own doctor and hairstylist appointments, for example, or middle-school kids, or even elementary school kids, cooking dinner for the family. Those are great experiences for kids to have without too much parental interference. 

You do have to — and I know this by experience — step back, especially with the cooking piece, and let them do it by themselves and learn how to make mistakes. It’s tempting to just be there when they’re doing that, but you learn quickly that if you leave them alone, they’ll figure it out. And then you can go do something else. Go and read that book you’ve been meaning to read for a while. Go for a walk. Watch TV. Have some relaxation time that you wouldn’t otherwise get. 

I wrote a piece a couple weeks ago on unschooling, this idea of pulling kids out of school and letting them find their own level and their own interests. This almost strikes me as unparenting.

It is — and I’m not a huge fan of unschooling, because it’s a rare kid it would actually work for — but it is. It’s the general idea that not being up in your kids’ business all the time is better for both parents and kids. It’s something we really have to consider more.

Social media platforms have begun to respond.

TikTok, for instance, is partnering with the through the , a network of healthcare influencers dedicated to raising good health content and fighting misinformation, to amplify credible health voices. This includes redirecting online searches for topics like depression and post traumatic stress disorder to trustworthy sources like the National Institute of Mental Health and the Cleveland Clinic. These steps show what is possible when platforms and public health align.

Pinterest has banned all weight loss ads and promotes body-neutral inspiration boards. YouTube collaborates with health nonprofits to highlight verified content and redirect viewers to professional help.  Instagram offers content break tools and resource prompts when certain hashtags are used, such as #selfcare, #mentalhealth, and #takeabreak. These efforts show that platforms can evolve when they listen to the public.

We are not just online. We are alive in these spaces. Many of us take care of each other when institutions fall short. From WhatsApp support groups to creators addressing burnout, we’ve built a vast, informal support system. It’s powerful. It shouldn’t be our only one.

That’s why I joined the , a group created to bring youth voices into the center of global health decision-making. We share with WHO leadership the realities of youth digital experiences, including mental health and taboo topics.

For example, we’ve highlighted how young people turn to digital platforms like Instagram or WhatsApp to discuss sensitive issues such as depression or sexual health, often because offline support is inaccessible or stigmatized. These insights help WHO leaders understand where young people are seeking help, what barriers they face, and how health information actually circulates among us.

The council’s Health, Education and Literacy Working Group specifically focuses on making WHO’s health information more youth-friendly, adapting technical guidance into formats and languages that resonate with young people.

Despite our efforts, evidence-based health information often struggles to compete with viral trends, memes, and misinformation. Even when good content exists, it can get buried. Many young people continue to face stigma, lack of access, and language barriers when trying to find answers to personal health questions online.

Our recent , developed and launched by young people, calls for equitable health education, accessible healthcare, and youth leadership in decision-making. It places digital literacy and mental health at the center of these efforts.

WHO’s Fides Network, launched in 2020, plays a big role. The network includes more than 1,300 creators globally who together, have posted hundreds — if not thousands — of videos across platforms in support of WHO’s broader public health mission. The mental health campaign with TikTok began in May 2024 and is just one part of the broader Fides initiative.

Fides doesn’t throw lectures at us. It gives professionals the tools and space to meet young people where we are, with content that feels real, trustworthy, and doable. Since 2024, more than 55 creators across 10 countries have shared 282 videos. These have reached 850 million people and been viewed over 1.3 billion times.

These creators — doctors, nurses, scientists, and public health professionals — share short, evidence-based content tailored for platforms like TikTok and YouTube. This work does more than inform; it helps rebuild trust.

Creators like , a psychologist who now reaches people through short videos, are helping shift how we talk about health. They do this not with clinical jargon but with honesty and clarity.

What we need now is action, not just acknowledgment. Public health leaders must move beyond issuing statements and begin working directly with young people to create real, lasting solutions. That includes deeper partnerships with digital platforms to increase access to evidence-based health advice and tackle misinformation.

These platforms are not temporary. They are part of our everyday lives and will continue to shape future generations. Their improvement depends on informed, empowered users who are not afraid to speak up and demand better.

My vision for youth leadership in digital public health is bold: I want to see young people not just as messengers, but as architects of the systems that shape our wellbeing online. Imagine a world where mental health campaigns are designed by youth creators and clinicians working together, where social media algorithms aim to promote empathy and accurate information, and where youth-led digital health innovations receive real, sustained funding — not just token support.

Right now, less than 2% of global health funding is directed toward adolescent mental health, and even less reaches youth-led digital initiatives, . That needs to change if we’re serious about empowering young people.

That means ensuring three things:

•  Trust: A world where a 17-year-old feels safer asking about anxiety or depression from a WHO-verified youth creator than from an anonymous internet search. 
•  Equity: Local language and culturally relevant content must be the foundation, not an afterthought, in digital health communication. 
• Resilience: Young people need to feel equipped, not overwhelmed, when sharing health content online. That means providing training, safeguarding, and mental health support for youth creators.

If, in five years, young people are co-leading WHO communication labs, influencing digital platform guidelines, and shaping national mental health plans from the inside out —
I would call that real success.

We were born on social platforms. We want to grow up informed, resilient, and healthy. Let us lead the way toward a better internet, one where health information is trusted, clear, and built for everyone, not just the loudest voices.

The measure classifies devices as any piece of technology that can access the internet, data or media, including cell phones, tablets, headphones, smartwatches, and even e-readers. These devices can still be brought to school, but they must be put away in lockers, a classroom caddy, or a phone-locking pouch.

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As a rising high school senior, I recognize this is an important step. But I firmly believe this new law will add to each teacher’s workload rather than directly alleviating the technology crisis.

To understand the extent of the problem, I recently spoke with my English teacher’s fourth grade son. He told me that a handful of his classmates are actively on their phones during class, specifically “playing Minecraft or watching YouTube.” Although this may seem insignificant, his account is staggeringly different from my own fourth-grade experience just seven years ago. Neither my peers nor I ever brought a personal device to school.

What caused this increase in device usage? It may have something to do with the overall increase in children’s tech ownership.

Common Sense Media’s 2025 Census Report reveals that 51% of children under age 9 owned a personal mobile device in 2024, a more than fourfold increase from the 12% ownership rate in 2013.

The effects are obvious at my high school. I’m accustomed to seeing my peers sneak a look at their phones to search for answers, swipe-text on their Apple Watches, and watch movies on their personal computers, leading to minimal learning. Why pay attention in U.S. history when ChatGPT can tell you what dĂ©tente is? Why learn the equation of a circle if Gauth can solve a geometry problem within seconds? And, with this level of exploitation in high schools, what’s preventing our elementary and middle school students from doing the same?

However, it’s not clear that a legislative ban will fix the problem. The bill leaves punishment up to local districts, suggesting a verbal warning or device confiscation. These proposed penalties leave one party responsible: teachers.

By passing the buck onto educators, a technology ban may be rendered useless. I saw this in my own high school this past school year. Our administration provided each classroom with a numbered phone caddy, requiring all students to put away their cell phones in their designated spot. Teachers followed the rule stringently in August then became increasingly lenient. By October, the policy was rarely obeyed; for the remaining school year, phones were only found in the caddy if an administrator was observing the classroom.

If phone bans aren’t going to be followed, how can we fix class disengagement?

One thought is creating engaging lectures. For example, my psychology class used a random popsicle-stick method. A cup has popsicle sticks, each with every student’s name. When our teacher asked a question, she pulled a stick and called on that student. This prompted us to pay attention, as we never knew who would be called.

A teacher could complement this with a weekly participation grade, compelling students to focus and give every question their best shot. During our conditioning unit, my psychology teacher gave us a star stamp if we answered a question correctly. With 16 stars, we could go into the treasure box, which included erasers, candy, and +10-point passes. Despite its simplicity, this method worked. Students were more attentive and eager to answer questions. By increasing student engagement, educators could see more motivated classes.

Aside from teaching methods, teachers could implement simple fixes for tests to prevent cheating. During test days, my Spanish teacher required all bookbags to be placed at the front of the classroom. On TikTok, I’ve heard some schools follow an “empty your pockets” policy, negating the need to worry about hidden notes or phones. Taking away cheating methods could motivate students to care more and actually learn class content.

The new Georgia law also urges districts to promote distraction-free learning and less personal device use to families, suggesting town halls and workshops. This is where I see the most benefit.

If our government used its bully pulpit to inform parents about device-free activities and methods to lessen tech use in the home, both families and the education system could see staggering benefits. As parents become more informed, their kids could become less reliant on devices, alleviating the need for a full ban in the first place. It is through educating the public that we could see improvements in technology use.

Of the nine states that have enacted technology restriction legislation in their public schools, only Virginia has incorporated a clause that advises districts to promote healthy device use. With Georgia becoming the second state to enact a law with such a provision, this could set a precedent and spark a movement in our nation to educate families about the dangers of technology reliance.

Educators and parents need to recognize the destruction personal technology has had on our educational system. Our privilege to learn is diminished when technology is easily accessible in the back of our pockets. Yet, creating legislation to ban devices only hinders our teachers from teaching. Instead, through some classroom changes and district initiatives that promote healthy technology use, we can make a dent in this crisis and get back to what really matters: learning.

As much as possible, the high school junior has tried to set up guardrails on rapid-fire social feeds to limit scrolling and the allure of algorithms’ suggestions. “For my own self control,” she said.

Murphy may be an outlier among her peers, but increasingly many teens share her feelings of information overload and awareness that they can’t trust everything they read on social media. “There’s just so much bad information out there that it sometimes gets jumbled up,” Murphy said. “It’s just hard to discern what someone’s intent is with something.” 

As members of Gen Z — born between 1997 and 2012 — high school students like Murphy have grown up with smartphones and social media. It’s a digital world where algorithms fuel endless scrolling and conspiracy theories feel like the norm. 

That’s particularly true for Murphy and her classmates at Owasso High School in Owasso, Oklahoma, a quickly growing Tulsa suburb of 39,000. It’s a place that last year felt the intense glare of going viral and the chaotic flow of news, half-truths and hate following the death of Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old nonbinary student who an altercation in the girls’ bathroom. 

As a news literacy expert working to support educators, I recently spoke with 12 students at Owasso High School about their news habits and what it’s like trying to find credible information in an online environment that constantly tests their ability to know what’s true. 

Here are four takeaways from our conversations. 

1. Teens are drawn to conspiracy theories — and may not realize they can lead down dangerous rabbit holes. 

A by the News Literacy Project found that eight in 10 teens on social media say they encounter conspiracy theories, with 81% of those teens reporting that they are inclined to believe at least one of them. 

Senior Elijah Wagner, 18, told me he often turns to X, formerly Twitter, and sorts through “the chaos” of content on the platform to keep up with news. 

“There’s a lot of conspiracy theories on Twitter,” Wagner said, adding that much of what he sees are “people who just want to make a big deal about something.” 

For some young people, part of the appeal is that these narratives feel fun and entertaining. Students I spoke with rattled off viral rumors they’ve seen about celebrities like BeyoncĂ©. But as with the teens in our national survey, Owasso students also reported seeing conspiracies that went well beyond celebrity gossip, including disproven theories about the Earth being flat and falsehoods about 9/11. 

Though exposure is not the same as belief, seeing a claim repeated enough — even one that starts out as a joke — true. “It gets to the point where it’s kind of hard not to believe some of them,” said Kelsey Perry, 18. 

2. Peers can play an important role in fact-checking. 

In online spaces, fact-checking is something many students try to do. Among teens who engage with news-related social media posts, nearly eight in 10 report that they at least sometimes fact-check these posts before sharing or liking them, according to our study. Those who were taught media literacy were more likely to say they frequently check for accuracy before posting online.  

Research that we’re more likely to believe fact-checks from people we know. 

On the winter day of my visit, the Los Angeles wildfires dominated online conversation. News of the fires had reached students not only through the mighty curation of their TikTok For You pages, but also through family and friends. 

One student admitted she hadn’t kept up with the fires because they seem far removed from their Oklahoma community. She added that the fires, after all, were happening all the way “in Atlanta.” 

“No, it’s in L.A.,” an 18-year-old classmate said, chiming in with a fact-check.  

The group laughed, agreed and moved on to describe videos they’d seen of the destruction. 

During their lunch hour in the library, these students continued cycling through a process of shared meaning-making: offering information, testing it against each other’s knowledge and interpreting it as a group. 

When conspiracy theories came up, a junior mentioned seeing posts suggesting the Holocaust didn’t happen. “But I’m pretty sure that did happen,” she added, “because isn’t there, like, museums for it and stuff?” 

Another student confirmed, saying they just learned about the Holocaust in history class the day before. A win for real-time social correction — and a reminder of why it’s crucial for students to feel comfortable stepping into the role of fact-checker to share what they know with peers.  

3. Yes, teens turn to influencers, but standards-based news still has a place. 

We know many young people see social media influencers as trusted sources, even over news outlets. In fact, our survey found that eight in 10 teens say that the information news organizations produce is either more biased than or about the same as other content creators online. 

In each of my conversations, it didn’t take long for talk of social media to broach the story that last year turned this high school into a national fixture of grief and viral debate. Reflecting on the death of their classmate and the crush of national attention that ensued, students recalled when misinformation became personal and painful.  

Hateful comments flooded school-associated social media accounts. Classmates stayed home following against the school. Students described seeing a protest unfold outside classroom windows while following along on a TikTok livestream. One student remembered eating lunch with a teacher rather than in the cafeteria because a friend felt scared.  

They also watched celebrities and influencers weigh in. 

For Murphy, who tries to limit her social media use, last year marked a turning point. She said an influencer she followed for political commentary on current events posted about the Owasso student’s death before many details had been confirmed. “Seeing them make that post really made me see that maybe they weren’t as credible as I originally thought they were,” Murphy said. 

Now Murphy said she tries to check multiple credible sources for news to compare what she’s hearing. 

Other students told me something similar: Though many people their age follow influencers, news outlets still have a place, especially for stories that meet a certain threshold of importance. (“If it’s big enough,” or “if I’m scared about the news,” one 16-year-old said.) 

4.    They want news literacy instruction. 

The News Literacy Project’s study shows that an overwhelming majority of teens (94%) want media literacy instruction, but most aren’t getting it. 

I heard much the same at Owasso High School. Some students said they’d heard terms like “lateral reading” in school: when you leave a source of information and do a quick search to learn more about the claim or source. But they also told me they wished media literacy could be woven throughout their classes, from statistics to science. 

Library media specialist Melinda Gallagher has been teaching news literacy lessons for about eight years in her role at Owasso. “I feel like this is one way we can help our students — and help ourselves, to be frank — with figuring out what is real and what is not,” Gallagher said. “It’s very important for our future as a country.” 

Students didn’t ask for this online quagmire or create it. But it’s a world they’re expected to navigate. “Social media is so prevalent 
 it’s not going away,” said Makenzy Holm, 17. “We might as well learn to use it to our best ability.”

Rebecca McMurrin, principal of venerable Ulysses S. Grant High School in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley, takes a creative approach to leading the , which boasts exceptional graduation rates and climbing admission numbers this year.

McMurrin says what started as a tool to build school spirit by showcasing student achievements has become something more powerful — a secret weapon that’s part of a toolkit to help her school thrive.

“I cannot show you any data to prove it,” said McMurrin, who began at Grant as an assistant principal over a decade ago and in 2019, “ but I believe it’s our .”

With more than 3,600 posts and 2,000 followers, McMurrin’s Insta account is an active reflection of campus life that draws an appreciative audience of students and families. Recent posts highlight athletics, academics and staff. 

But McMurrin, who comes from a family of educators and began her career as a teacher, knows that there’s more to a successful school than running a fun social media campaign.  

And leading Grant, a comprehensive high school that first to serve L.A.’s post-war population boom, would be a worthy challenge for any educator. 

The school has changed over the decades to serve the local population and is currently configured in three programs. 

Grant’s main high school has about 1,400 kids; the College Prep/Digital Arts Magnet (CPDA) has 381 students; and the Humanities Magnet for Interdisciplinary Studies has 200 students. 

In February McMurrin was named , for exceptional achievements with Grant’s main school and two magnet programs. 

CPDA, for example, graduation rate, better than 86% college attendance, 15 sports teams and more than two dozen student clubs.   

The award snagged by McMurrin was part of a record showing for LAUSD schools at the awards.

McMurrin said a rich program such as the one at Grant is the result of a lot of hard work, but reflecting on her recognition, she said the award is humbling more than anything.

McMurrin believes Grant’s success stems from three key efforts: consistently showcasing the school’s offerings to the community (such as with Instagram), understanding student needs, and maintaining constant outreach.

Ongoing, in-person tours of the school are particularly important for growing enrollment, she said. 

“We offer community tours every single month for either current parents or prospective parents, so they can come in and actually see for themselves what’s happening at Grant,” she said. “They get very excited.”

Beyond the school tours boosting enrollment, and the social media campaigns boosting school spirit, McMurrin also credits the efforts of her attendance counselor, who provides supports and services for families experiencing chronic absenteeism. 

“She works with our students who are struggling,” said McMurrin, and “she’s able to provide resources for families.”   

McMurrin speaks like she was born to be a school leader but says she didn’t always see herself as a principal — or even an administrator. 

Her father, sister, niece, and husband all work in education, but McMurrin said the field wasn’t pushed on her. 

“I remember my mom telling us all that, like the clichĂ© things when we were little, like, ‘You can do anything you want. You can be whoever you want,” McMurrin said. Still, “there was never any other position that I ever intended other than being a teacher.” 

After earning her certification and spending some years as a teacher and a mentor, McMurrin pursued a master’s degree in educational leadership — not to become an administrator, but to earn extra salary points.

“My intent was to always remain in the classroom, and then just the way things worked out, I ended up getting promoted and different opportunities presented themselves,” McMurrin said. 

Still, the classroom-level perspective is one she prizes. “I still try to maintain that teacher view — my teacher lens — even though I have the principal lens as well,” McMurrin explained. “I’m trying to make things best for students.”

This article is part of a collaboration between ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

They are journalism advisors, volleyball coaches, mentors, authors, learners, environmental conservationists, meditation guides, literacy coaches, and equity advocates.

Their communities range from a small island in America Samoa serving multilingual, Indigenous students; a rural town in Pennsylvania; an immigrant hub in Denver; to a proud but underserved Black neighborhood in Washington D.C. 

Though the communities they serve cover a broad spectrum, 2025’s Teacher of the Year finalists recognized by the Council of Chief State School Officers are united in their commitment to children. 

Chosen from a pool of 56 local winners,they have found ways to make kids excited about school in a particularly difficult period in public education’s history. 

The finalists, all English and history educators, have designed lessons and extracurriculars for students to reflect on some of the most pressing issues today: Gun violence, substance abuse, suicide, poverty, food insecurity, health and hygiene, and the environment. 

They acknowledge the world outside school walls, involve local organizations to expand students’ opportunities, and prioritize building relationships with kids and their families. 

“Students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care,” said elementary teacher Jazzmyne Townsend, Washington D.C.’s finalist. 

Utilizing family interview projects, field trips to hydroponic farms and herbal gardens, all four find ways to bring students’ experiences, cultures and curiosities into the classroom.  

At a time when public education is under fiscal and political threat from the Trump administration, finalists share what has nourished their careers and how they keep joy in learning: 

Mikaela Saelua 

All of ’s high school students are learning English as a second language. Their mother tongue is Samoan – poetic, full of expressive vowel sounds and unique – leaving most words without a direct English translation. 

To break up the monotony of reading and writing, she launched a song translation project. In what culminates in music videos, students learn figurative idioms, metaphors and words to capture the soul of Samoan songs. 

“The goal isn’t just to teach them English; it’s to help them appreciate and express themselves in a way that feels true to who they are,” Saelua wrote in her finalist . 

Saelua encourages student expression outside the classroom as an advisor for a peer leader club, which with the help of a local nonprofit, performs skits at local elementary schools to discuss hard topics, from substance use to suicide. 

America Samoa for suicide for over 20 years. Saelua’s school in particular has lost two students in the last three years. Their teachers are learning to spot warning signs in things like journal entries. 

Saelua, a proud product of America Samoa’s public education system who returned after  a spell of homesickness in California, is the first finalist from the seven islands in the program’s history. 

“I’m carrying that with me and I don’t carry it lightly,” she said. “
 it’s more than just me. It’s now me and all of American Samoa.” 

Ashlie Crosson

As wildfires raged in Los Angeles earlier this year, two former students ran into ’s Pennsylvania classroom, cell phones in hand. 

The sophomores shared headlines about the Trump administration’s – exclaiming how taking away resources during a catastrophe was exactly like what they’d read in Dry by Jarrod and Neal Shusterman. 

They were curious: How was the media covering this? What would happen next? 

Dry was the only fiction text from their course Survival Stories, a half-year elective designed by Crossen for students to build media literacy and talk about what they see happening in the real world. And though they’d read it months earlier, they were making connections and eager to chat.

In Survival Stories, they’d discussed humanitarian crises through the lens of young people surviving them – such as and stories about families navigating the DariĂ©n Gap. 

Survival is not new to their community, deeply impacted by the opioid epidemic. 

Crosson brings in texts that show them “what you’re experiencing here isn’t isolated. These are problems that exist all over the place. Your hometown is not the ‘problem.’” 

Now in her fourteenth year teaching, she stays attuned to body language, emotional reactions, attendance. A kid’s experience in her classroom clues her into their world.  

She has also found ways for young people growing up in poverty to challenge negative associations with their area and build hope for future careers by .   

“I teach English, but I can’t really get to that content if I don’t have a rapport and understanding of my students and what their needs are,” Crosson said. “… There’s no content mastery happening in American schools right now if we’re not evaluating and meeting the needs of students and families.” 

Jazzmyne Townsend 

Coming from a family of teachers, wanted to carve her own path in business. 

But today the Washington, D.C. Teacher of the Year is a self described “big kid” – eager to be on the floor, immersed in sand, Play-Doh, and paint, modeling active listening and motor skills.  

“I’m willing to hold your hand and walk you through it until you are in a place where I can release you to do that independently,” the special education teacher explained about her approach with her second and third graders. 

She’s the teacher that knows their families and weekend plans, who notices their haircuts and new shoes, who shows up to games that are important to them. 

Townsend launched a , a place for kids to gather twice a week to chat about their bodies, social media, healthy relationships and whatever was weighing on them. 

She makes a point, too, of sharing her experiences with kids so they can dream big. A children’s book author, she explained the process of drafting a manuscript, pairing with an illustrator and publishing. 

Her kids then became authors and illustrators themselves. Their book publishing project became a community showcase, with one student choosing the ability to manage the world’s trash, to keep the planet clean and healthy. 

“I’m showing you in my actions, how we interact and how we engage,” she said. “I’m showing you that I’m invested in you
 Kids need people who are irrationally passionate about them.”

Janet Renee Damon

After 25 years in the classroom, high school history teacher finds herself working at a transfer high school, a culmination of “all of my skills, all of my heart and all of my joy.” 

She spends her days joking and encouraging introverted, empathetic “diamond souls,” kids who’ve faced undue pressure who are still shining through parental death or incarceration, the trauma of immigration, homelessness, gun and gang violence and teen pregnancy. 

Over half of Damon’s students are immigrants, from Rwanda to Honduras and Iraq. All have mourned someone killed by gun violence. 

She guides students in breathing and meditation exercises, a tool for emotional regulation. They create “life maps,” imagining how to prepare for life’s milestones, like renting an apartment. 

She explores, “how history has impacted your own community, your own family.” After a project where students explored how the body’s DNA is impacted by generational trauma, one student told her he never used substances again. 

She and her administrators are committed: When kids don’t show, a team goes looking, conducting home visits. 

Damon also helped students’ bridge past and present through an ongoing podcast program. Students researched the history of mental health disparities and called attention to their high needs for support amid clinical shortages, landing on Colorado Public Radio.

Only 5% of registered psychologists nationwide speak Spanish. After their podcast went on air, a Therapists of Color collective reached out to provide care free of charge. The student podcast project led another to discover her family were survivors of the federal government’s Indian Residential Schools. A different high schooler interviewed a relative about his history with incarceration. Both said the work was “healing” and helped them feel closer to their families and identity.

“We have to make school a place where kids want to be,” Renee Damon said, “not just have to be.”

A quarter of the 13-18 year olds in the study used devices for two hours each school day, which lasts around seven hours. The averages outnumber minutes allotted for lunch and period breaks combined, showing youth are distracted by phones throughout huge chunks of class time. 

, is the first to accurately paint a picture of adolescent phone behavior by using a third party app to monitor usage over four months in 2023. Previous studies have relied on parent surveys or self-reported estimates. 

“That’s pretty alarming 
 It’s too much, not only because of the missed learning opportunity in the classroom,” said researcher Lauren Hale, sleep expert and professor at Stony Brook’s Renaissance School of Medicine. 

“They’re missing out on real life social interaction with peers, which is just as valuable for growth during a critical period of one’s life,” she told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ. 

Hale and the other researchers’ early findings come from 117 teens for which they had school data, just one slice of a pool from over 300 participants, which will be analyzed and used to consider how phone usage impacts sleep, obesity, depression and other outcomes. 

Teens most often used messaging, Instagram and video streaming platforms. While most spent about 26 minutes on Instagram, in one extreme case, a student was on the app for 269 minutes — nearly 5 hours — during the school day.

Data reveal particular groups of students are using their phones more than their peers: Girls and older kids, aged 16 to 18, spent a half hour above the average 1.5 hours; and Latino and multiracial students spent on average 15 minutes above average. 

Additionally, though researchers cannot hypothesize as to why based on the descriptive data, kids who have one or more parents with a college degree used smartphones less during the school day. 

The findings are particularly concerning given young people missed key social years with peers during the pandemic, the impact of which is felt in ways big and small, like being hesitant to work with peers in groups.

Teachers in contact with Hale since research went public in early February say of the 1.5 hour average, “that’s too low an estimate. They think we underestimated.”

is among several districts with plans to institute a cellphone ban, though such bans are inconsistently implemented and new research from the UK suggests bans alone .

“These results are consistent, supportive evidence of anecdotal stories from across the country about kids missing out on learning and social opportunities. [They] can help justify efforts to provide a coherent smartphone policy for schools,” said Hale, adding that such policy should not be left up to individual teachers to enforce.

Ritika Shroff had the typical Gen Z experience with social media. At 13, she signed up for Instagram, then Snapchat. Later, she downloaded TikTok and worked her way through other popular platforms.

But in high school, she began to see downsides, feeling pressure when comparing her number of followers, test scores and experiences with those of her peers online.

“They’re doing X, Y and Z with their lives, and I think I got pulled into it,” Shroff said.

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Today, Shroff, a 19-year-old sophomore at American University in Washington, D.C., still sees the benefits of social media, such as allowing her to stay in touch with hometown friends from Des Moines, Iowa, and family in India. While she thinks there should be more rules around social media, she doesn’t think individual state actions, such as a state suing a platform, would make much difference.

“These small things won’t make an impact in the broader landscape,” Shroff said.

More states are hoping to rein in the harm that social media can do to teens’ mental health and privacy by approving laws that require age verification or parental consent, prohibit “addictive feeds” or ban the apps for minors. They also are taking social media companies to court.

But some experts say such efforts won’t make social media any safer. Instead, they fear the moves might infringe on people’s privacy and First Amendment rights — while potentially making the platforms harder for everyone to use.

“This is global media, and trying to regulate it at the micro level 
 the fear for a lot of people is that we’re going to end up with different rules for different states, which is just going to undercut the whole promise and potential of internet-based media and communication,” said Kevin Goldberg of the Freedom Forum, a nonprofit aimed at protecting First Amendment rights.

Some social media disputes are playing out at the federal level. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a bipartisan federal law banning TikTok, a popular video sharing platform, unless its China-based parent company agreed to sell the app. The ban briefly went into effect before President Donald Trump, who had tried unsuccessfully to ban TikTok by executive order in his first term, signed an executive order it for another 75 days.

But absent other federal action to curb social media’s effects on young people, many states are considering new legislation. In New York, a enacted in June prohibits social media platforms from providing to minors so-called addictive feeds without parental consent. New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, is drafting to enforce the law.

Social media feeds are designed to keep kids scrolling longer and longer to drive up ad revenue, noted state Democratic Sen. Andrew Gounardes, who sponsored the . Kids who are addicted to social media suffer mental health issues, and people who spend more time scrolling tend to struggle to navigate real-life relationships, he argued.

“So social media, for all the positives that might exist, has some real, deeply negative and dark downsides that we are finally seeing manifest, and we have to reconcile it,” Gounardes said.

But tech developers are concerned new state laws could weaken privacy protections for users, take away online mental health resources for marginalized communities and restrict the flow of online information, said Paul Lekas, the senior vice president and head of global public policy and government affairs at the Software & Information Industry Association, a trade association representing the digital content industry.

“The bills are all different, so it’s hard to say that all of them are good or all of them are bad,” Lekas said. “But a lot of concerns come up in a number of these bills.”

Age restrictions

Some research suggests that excessive is worsening young people’s mental health. Teens who spend the most time on social media are significantly more likely to exhibit negative emotions, such as sadness and anger, according to a 2023 Gallup .

A Florida that went into effect this month prohibits kids who are under 14 from having social media accounts. A user who is 14 or 15 would have to get parental consent before starting an account.

Ashley Moody, Florida’s Republican attorney general at the time, agreed not to enforce the law while a alleging it would restrict minors’ freedom of speech plays out. Moody was sworn into the U.S. Senate this week to replace Sen. Marco Rubio, the new U.S. secretary of state.

More measures are expected across the country during 2025 legislative sessions.

A new bill in would prohibit anyone under the age of 16 from creating social media accounts without verified parental permission. A similar bill was introduced in , but with an age limit of 18. A prefiled bill in would set the age at 13.

To verify age, some apps may require all users to upload a photo of their ID. This could be of particular concern for adult users who would have their full legal identity tied to their social media account, said Ash Johnson, a senior policy manager at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, a think tank focused on public policy surrounding technology.

Rather than an outright ban on social media accounts for users under a certain age, increasing transparency and accountability measures for social media developers would improve the safety of the apps, Johnson said.

She pointed to California as an example. The state’s Age-Appropriate Design Code Act was partially from enforcement by a federal appeals court last year. It would have required companies to ensure that online services likely to be accessed by children are designed to eliminate the risk of harm to them.

Parental controls, Johnson said, also could make it easier for parents to oversee their child’s media presence by deciding what content they can access.

Instagram’s new , for example, automatically place teenage users into an account that limits who can contact them and the content they see — and anyone under the age of 16 will have to get parental permission before changing any of the safety features.

“It would give children a really customizable experience on social media depending on their individual developmental needs,” Johnson said.

A lot of the laws around the country are specifically designed to prevent younger people from either accessing certain content online or entire social media platforms, said Goldberg, of the Freedom Forum. Changing the way in which social media developers control who can and can’t have an account could change what people see on their feeds.

“We’ve seen a lot of this, especially at the state level, which is concerning,” he said. “Many of the laws that we are seeing proposed — and even passed — raise First Amendment concerns.”

States go to court

States also are turning to lawsuits to address social media effects on young people.

In October, attorneys general in California, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Vermont, Washington and the District of Columbia TikTok, alleging violations of state consumer protection laws.

Led by California Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta and James of New York, the lawsuits allege that TikTok exploits and harms young users and deceives the public about the social media platform’s dangers.

Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a similar suit that same month accusing TikTok of violating a protecting children online. The law prohibits digital service providers from sharing, disclosing or selling a minor’s personal information without permission from a parent.

TikTok has disputed the claims, calling them “inaccurate and misleading” in a . The company says its platform is safe for kids and offers time limits and parental controls.

States have also taken aim at Snapchat and Meta. In September, New Mexico Attorney General RaĂșl Torrez, a Democrat, filed a against Snap Inc., Snapchat’s parent company, alleging the app’s developers were ignoring reports of sextortion, failing to implement age-verification rules, admitting to features that connect minors with adults and more.

And in 2023, more than Meta, claiming Instagram and Facebook worsened the youth mental health crisis.

The social media companies need to be held accountable, said Julie Scelfo, of Mothers Against Media Addiction.

Scelfo, a career journalist who covered youth mental health for years, said she was disturbed after finding out that more and more young children wanted to commit suicide as social media became more mainstream.

“Social media can connect people for positive things, but it has also been a very convenient conduit for all of the worst forces in society,” Scelfo said.

But tech companies are winning some fights — and going on the offensive.

In addition to the partial block of the Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, a federal judge has until Feb. 1 another California law designed to protect children from addictive feeds. The Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act would prevent social media platforms from providing minors with “personalized feeds.”

Across the states, companies are challenging dozens of laws restricting social media — and in some cases, they’re winning.

“I think that shows that courts are skeptical that either there’s no proof behind the goals of the legislators or that they’re not being precise enough,” Goldberg said. “So, I’m skeptical. I don’t think this is going to help because there will always be ways for children to access content on the internet or social media — it’s almost impossible to truly enforce.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

Everywhere you look, it appears that the U.S. teaching profession is in a state of crisis. While the severity varies by state, the nation continues to see in teacher education program enrollment and perceptions of teaching as a prestigious career. From my regular interactions with students, it’s clear that negative messages about the profession are deeply ingrained in their minds. So where are these messages coming from? Why aren’t young people interested in teaching? While these are complex questions without simple answers, TikTok, the ultimate message spreader, offers us a window into one part of the puzzle.

Over half of Americans aged 18-34 . However, the fate of the app is now uncertain. On Sunday, TikTok shut down as a nationwide ban was set to go into effect. On Monday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order granting a 75-day extension, allowing the Chinese company more time to consider selling. Whatever the future holds, it’s crucial to reflect on what it taught us about the field of education.

TikTok has been a paradoxical tool for education: both damaging and useful. For every report about the app’s negative effects on teaching and learning (e.g., mental health concerns and “destructive challenges”), there are reports of the app’s benefits (e.g., open-source instructional strategies and community engagement). When I began researching teachers’ use of TikTok, I was struck by how videos tagged with the hashtag epitomized this duality.

#TeacherQuitTok, with over 400 million views, serves as a digital repository of teachers’ resignation stories. Scrolling through these videos reveals raw emotion and unfiltered truths. Teachers across the U.S. share their journeys of leaving the profession, often capturing poignant moments packing up classrooms, bidding farewell to students, or speaking directly to the camera through tears. These videos combine personal footage with text overlays, music, and storytelling to underscore the gravity of resignations and expose systemic challenges that push educators to the brink.

Teachers’ reasons for quitting echo decades of : unmanageable workloads, insufficient pay, deteriorating mental health and a lack of support. One teacher shares, “I quit my teaching job in the middle of the year because of the daily stress. I developed anxiety and fell into a depression. I had to take meds just to cope.” Her story is far from unique. Many educators on TikTok describe similar struggles, reflecting a profession under immense strain.

In a sense, #TeacherQuitTok has become a digital picket line, allowing teachers to bypass traditional exit interviews and speak directly to the public. The sheer volume of posts transforms individual resignations into a collective statement: The U.S. teaching profession is unsustainable under current conditions.

While some may dismiss these posts as venting, I argue that #TeacherQuitTok plays a vital role in shaping public discourse about the profession. TikTok’s algorithm amplifies these stories, enabling some to reach millions of viewers. For instance, one viral video of a teacher resigning has garnered over 13 million views––an unprecedented audience for a workplace grievance.

This amplification is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it reinforces the perception that teaching is a profession riddled with stress and systemic obstacles, potentially deterring young people from pursuing it. On the other hand, it validates educators’ struggles, fosters solidarity, and pressures policymakers to address the systemic issues driving teachers away. For researchers, social media platforms like TikTok provide valuable data to gauge public sentiment about teaching and identify critical areas for reform.

In this case, the popularity of #TeacherQuitTok is a clarion call for urgent action. These stories underscore that teacher well-being is inexorably linked to the quality of education students receive. Schools cannot function without teachers, and if the profession continues to erode, the consequences for students and communities will be severe. To create an environment where teachers can thrive, schools must address foundational issues such as manageable workloads, competitive salaries, and mental health support.

Whatever happens to TikTok, let’s not forget the lessons it taught. Teachers are voting with their feet and sharing their decisions online. Whether it’s on TikTok or another app, teachers are no longer leaving quietly. By sharing their resignations online, they expose the challenges of the profession to the next generation. At a time when recruitment is plummeting, the country cannot afford for young people to be disillusioned before they even begin. Reforming the profession is no longer optional; it is essential for safeguarding the future of our education system.

As school districts struggle to control the spread of cyberbullying, pornographic images and online exploitation among their students, Texas lawmakers could consider banning social media from minors, among other sweeping measures, in the upcoming legislative session.

Over the last decade, Texas lawmakers have attempted to slow the spread of social media’s harmful effects by and preventing online platforms from collecting data on minors, the latter of which has faced court challenges by social media companies.

While law enforcement and prosecutors have traditionally been responsible for cracking down on these online dangers, lack of resources in those agencies has meant enforcement has fallen onto educators, who already struggle to meet the demands of instruction, let alone stay knowledgeable on all the ways children use the internet.

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“Almost every kid comes to school these days, regardless of background, regardless of socioeconomic status, they have some type of smartphone device in their hand. So they will have access to unfettered content most of the time, no matter what we try to do,” said Zeph Capo, president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers.

Lawmakers have suggested several initiatives next session to address the online dangers affecting Texas children, including a filed by Rep. , R-Frisco, that would prohibit minors from creating accounts on social media sites and require age verification for new users. Other include adding funds to internet crimes units in law enforcement agencies, in artificially created pornographic images, and making of the dangers of the internet.

“Social media is the most dangerous thing our kids have legal access to in Texas,” Patterson .

While they welcome any efforts to reduce harm to children, school officials and cybercrime investigators say more needs to be done to hold social media companies accountable for enforcement.

“We need these businesses to be responsible business people and throttle some of this tremendously negative content, particularly when it comes to kids,” Capo said. “But, you know, they don’t want to do anything like that.”

Schools are hunting grounds

During a Senate Committee on State Affairs hearing in October, lawmakers listened to a litany of stories about how social media has affected young people in Texas: a middle school girl who developed an eating disorder after watching a TikTok video, a middle school boy addicted to cartoon pornography after his YouTube algorithm took him to a porn site, and a woman who testified to being groomed for sex work in high school as her images were posted on social media applications.

Most of these incidents had a starting point at school where children have frequent access to technology and teachers and administrators are too busy to provide oversight. Add in the fact that they know ways to circumvent campus firewalls, students are being groomed via social media on school grounds, said Jacquelyn Alutto, president of Houston-based No Trafficking Zone, during the hearing.

“Right now, schools are a hunting ground,” she said.

The Texas Tribune requested interviews with several school districts about online dangers in schools, including the Austin, Round Rock, Katy and Eanes school districts, but they did not respond. The Plano school district declined to be interviewed.

Last year, the American Federation of Teachers and the American Psychological Association, among other national organizations, called out social media platforms for undermining classroom learning, increasing costs for school systems, and being a “root cause” of the nationwide youth mental health crisis. The admonishment came after a detailed how school districts across the country are experiencing significant burdens as they respond to tech’s predatory and prevalent influence in the classroom.

The same year, in an attempt to hold social media companies more accountable, Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law , known as the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act. The SCOPE Act requires covered digital service providers to provide minors with certain data protections, prevent minors from accessing harmful content, and give parents tools to manage their child’s use of the service.

It also school districts to obtain parental consent for most software and social media applications used in the classroom and to look for alternatives to the internet for instruction.

However, many of the family-friendly websites and games that children might use for entertainment are also rife with potential sexual predators who pretend to be children.

“A little boy can be playing Robloxs in the cafeteria, and during that lunch break, a trafficker can target him, and he can be sexually groomed or exploited within a few weeks or months,” Alutto said.

And even harder to control is when students share pornographic images of themselves online, a reason why some child welfare groups want social media platforms restricted or outright banned for minors.

“This has also helped human traffickers groom and recruit children,” Alutto said.

Unknown damage

show 95% of youth ages 13 to 17 report using social media, with more than a third saying they use social media “almost constantly.”

Nearly 40% of children ages 8 to 12 use social media, even though most platforms require a minimum age of 13 to sign up, according to a study by the U.S. Surgeon General.

This has created a generation of chronically online children, and the medical community is still unsure of their longterm effects.

Although the SCOPE Act was passed to restrict kids from seeing harmful online content and give parents more control over what their children do online, social media companies have watered it down.

A federal district court judge earlier this year of the law that required them to filter out harmful content, saying it was unconstitutional under the First Amendment free speech right.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced in October that he was suing TikTok by allowing their algorithm to affect minors. TikTok denied the state’s allegations, pointing to about how parents in certain states, including Texas, can contact TikTok to request that their teen’s account be deleted.

This lawsuit, like across the country, is playing out in court, forcing Texas lawmakers to wait and see what more they can do in the upcoming session to hold social media companies accountable.

social media from children under the age of 16.

“The state needs to ensure that if technology providers want to do business, they must protect our children, stop the flow of (child pornography and child sexual assault) and report it,” Brent Dupre, director of law enforcement at the Office of the Attorney General of Texas, told The Texas Tribune.

Potential solutions?

Dupre’s department is one of three Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces in the state, and his agency alone covers 134 counties. His office receives 2,500 cyber tips per month for investigation from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, an overwhelming number of cases for an agency with only 11 officers.

The problem is so persistent that Dupre said his office was conducting a live training session with law enforcement officers a few months ago on how to pose in chat rooms as a minor when the trainer noticed a real adult was already trying to solicit their fake minor for sex.

“These proactive investigations aren’t done as frequently as we like because of the sheer caseload that we got,” Dupre said, noting how they work with other law enforcement agencies who are suffering with staff shortages.

Christina Green, chief advancement and external relations officer for Children’s Advocacy Centers of Texas, said her agency serves more than 60,000 child victims yearly, a majority of these cases being child sexual abuse, with very few of these cases not having a technology component. She said law enforcement agencies as well as hers need more resources to protect children.

“This field is rapidly developing, and the tools needed to continue must also develop,” she said.

Echoing school officials, Dupre said social media companies should enforce more restrictions on what minors can do on their platforms. He said companies should be required to track attempts to upload child pornography and other internet harm and be held accountable for allowing sexually explicit content to stay on their websites.

Dupre suggested lawmakers require chat and social media companies use artificial intelligence to scan for child pornography and child sexual assault material and block users from sending this kind of material on their platforms.

“To me, children who try to upload self-produced material should automatically have their accounts disabled,” he said. “Many technology providers scan for these photos and videos, which are then quarantined and reported, but not all providers lockout or cancel that user end-to-end encryption.”

She believes many efforts can be implemented to combat online crimes, including awareness and education for children and parents.

Green said one of their centers teaches children in schools about online risks as early as the third grade and repeats training yearly.

“We have been talking to parents about when you drop your kid off at someone’s house, do you know if devices will be used there? It’s like asking if there is a pool in the backyard. These types of questions need to become commonplace,” Green said.

This article originally appeared in , a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.