Dr. Nicole Siegfried, Chief Clinical Officer at Lightfully Behavioral Health discusses how teens are affected by social media.

Recently, Instagram announced that the social media platform would be adding parental controls to its accounts. These changes after waves of backlash from concerned parents that take issue with how not only the content on Instagram may be affecting their child, but also with how their child and their peers may be interacting with one another. Time and time again, social media has been linked with an increase in depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues. These mental health disorders stemming from social media sites like Instagram certainly also manifest in children and young adults. These mental health issues start because of how the social media platforms children use are giving feedback to the user. Children who use social media start to see the number of likes and interactions on their posts as a metric of self-worth. As a parent, your internal alarms are already sounding off at the implications of that self-worth attribution for your child and their mental health.

In the video below, you can watch the KCBS interview with Lightfully Behavioral Health’s Chief Clinical Officer, Dr. Nicole Siegfried, as she details the importance of these parental controls and what parents can do to best support their children’s mental health without ostracizing them from social media.

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