Early access to social media and the hard-to-reverse impacts on children

Early access to social media can leave long-lasting marks on children’s cognitive and socio-emotional development - effects that teachers and psychologists say they are already seeing in classrooms and clinics, and which they argue make a stronger regulatory approach necessary. This Tuesday marks World Social Media Day.

“One of the first things I notice is the ability to hold attention for a consistent period - long enough to learn something and retain knowledge,” says Rita Mendes.

A music teacher, Rita Mendes is also active on social media herself, where she has tens of thousands of followers. Even so, she is firmly critical of minors being on these platforms: in her view, they should not be there.

Regulation proposals and the World Social Media Day context

In February, the Assembleia da República approved in general terms a PSD bill proposing to regulate access to social media for under-16s - an approach recently debated by several countries that acknowledge the risks for children and young people.

Two weeks ago, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that the United Kingdom would join Australia in banning under-16s from accessing the main social media apps. At the time, Rita Mendes welcomed the decision in a video posted on TikTok.

With World Social Media Day being marked this Tuesday, Lusa spoke to the teacher and to the Ordem dos Psicólogos about how the risks of early access are noticeable both at school and in psychological practice.

What teachers see in the classroom: attention and language

Teaching pupils from pre-school through to the 3rd cycle, Rita Mendes says it is easy to tell which pupils have access to social media and which do not.

Beyond difficulty concentrating, she points to gaps in vocabulary among the more “digital” children, along with a greater difficulty expressing feelings or, for instance, explaining a conflict that happened during break time.

“On social media there’s constant absorption of content, but there’s no real ownership of anything, because the brain doesn’t have time to retain it,” she argues, contrasting that with reading, where “the brain has time to take in the text and process it”.

Júlio França, a psychologist, also highlights the effect that early access can have on language development, explaining that this is linked in particular to the absence of an appropriate context in which those skills are built.

“Whether it’s time with parents, with friends, or in nursery, there’s a whole set of behaviours that act as model behaviours and make it easier for language to develop,” he says, adding that in an unsuitable context, “language can develop, but with errors”.

Socio-emotional development, motor skills and exposure to inappropriate content

Among younger children, Júlio França - who sits on the Education Psychology Specialty Council of the Ordem dos Psicólogos Portugueses - also points to impacts on emotional regulation and the development of motor skills. But he adds that there are risks for older children too, stemming from screen exposure, especially when it is excessive.

“If we talk about older children, social media can bring other kinds of consequences, linked to exposure to content that isn’t appropriate for that stage of development,” he stresses, citing as examples violent content, content that incites hatred, or sexual content.

On the other hand, when social interactions are pushed into the background, the development of socio-emotional skills is undermined. In that context, the psychologist recalls the impact of lockdown during the covid-19 pandemic, while also emphasising the addictive potential of digital platforms.

“I notice that as well with some of the children I work with. It feels like time is never enough - there always has to be more,” he says.

Júlio França and Rita Mendes accept that “not everything is bad” on social media, yet they agree that, weighing both sides, the negative aspects count for substantially more than any potential benefits.

Parents, monitoring and the difficulty of enforcement

On the option of banning minors from social media, the teacher says that would be the ideal scenario, but she acknowledges it is a challenging aim because children often show greater familiarity with new technologies than adults.

“There are some parents who let their children use social media, but they do very active policing of what is being consumed and how long their children spend on the phone,” she says, offering that as a positive example, while noting, however, “that most parents don’t have that availability”.

“Without regulation, there are various dangers,” emphasises Júlia França, warning that many of these consequences “can then be very difficult to resolve”.