A psychologist’s take on children, social media, anxiety and mental health
Parents need reliable information on navigating their kids’ screen time and social media use. The Albanese government’s looming social media ban for under-16s is a world-first but more needs to be done, a leading expert says.
Scene one: A parent is in the local food court with their preschooler and baby. The baby is crying and the older child is loudly demanding to play on the iPad.
Scene two: A 13-year-old, already worried about fitting in at their new high school, is in their room late at night. Their phone pings.
In these two moments decisions are made. The parent in the food court acquiesces while they change their baby’s nappy. Peace returns. The teen responds to the dopamine rush and checks out the latest post from a classmate.
This is a play performed by millions of Australian families every day and night, with profound consequences for the social and emotional health of children and adolescents.
Clinical psychologist Danielle Einstein has specialised in treating anxiety among children for almost 30 years. She sees first-hand those consequences within her own private practice and among the many schools she advises.
Einstein also sees a voracious thirst for information and advice from parents, teachers and medical practitioners about the increasingly clear nexus between anxiety and depression and screen overdependence. We know screens and social media are part of life now, and we have to live with it, but how?
With Australia gearing up for new, world-first, laws that ban social media platforms for under-16s starting in December, Einstein, who gave expert testimony to a Senate inquiry on the legislation in 2024, says it is no time to think the problem has now been solved.
She describes the ongoing battle over screens as “the defining parenting challenge of our generation”.
It’s a struggle made harder by parents being exposed to years of mixed messages about the impact of social media use among children and teenagers, Einstein says. This includes the myth that social media use can provide its own community to help protect a child’s wellbeing.
What’s at risk?
On her Substack site, The Einstein Report, the psychologist has a presentation pulling together some of the potential issues children face resulting from overuse of screens and social media:
concentration difficulties, mood control, insufficient sleep, concerns about body image, self-esteem issues, susceptibility to anti-social influence, cyber bullying, depressive symptoms – it goes on.
“Research consistently shows that adolescents spending more than three hours daily on social media (the average time spent by young Australians on social media is estimated to be around two to three hours a day) face double the risk of poor mental health outcomes, including depression and anxiety,” Einstein and co-author Judith Locke write in their book Raising Anxiety.
“Those consuming four or more hours of screen entertainment daily are three times more likely to experience depression, social anxiety or severe worry.
“Without intentional boundaries … their capacity for sustained focus erodes under the constant pull of notifications and digital stimulation.”
One of the concerns about screen overdependence is children of all ages losing the capacity to be what Einstein calls “pleasantly bored”.
“For example, singing is a nice way to feel good about yourself and help pass a bit of time. But it can quickly become corrupted if you start to share that online. What becomes important about singing is how many likes or views or how popular it is.”
What to do?
In Raising Anxiety, Einstein and Locke have some practical advice for parents with regard to screen time.
But first, what would Einstein’s advice be in the two examples above?
“It’s really important that younger children can calm themselves down without a screen when they’re having a tantrum,” she says.
“When young children aren’t looking at a screen to calm themselves down, that’s when they’re actually more interested in the outside world. They’re more curious. They’re more likely to finish things that they start.
“And when they get to school, which is really what we’ve got to start thinking about, they’re actually more ready to learn and more ready to be social.”
The 13-year-old hearing the phone ping late at night is likely to have a dopamine hit at the sound or sight of their computer, believing it may bring good feelings. It is a hugely addictive pull, but all too often it disappoints, Einstein says.
That cycle of looking to a screen to pick their mood back up is likely only to compound anxiety. For some it will be hours lost to meaningful communication as they scroll. For others it will be missing sleep signals, or deferring to over-depending on others to deal with every worry.
“When you’re getting overanxiety or depression, you need to have offline activities that you use to lift your mood, and you need to be happy to sort of push yourself to face tricky things.
“So that might be going to school when there’s a day of a maths test, or when there’s an athletics carnival and you’re not actually a good runner. Even though you might not do well in the race you actually learn as a teenager that it wasn’t as bad as you thought.
“What’s so crucial is that we’re not thinking that the only way we got through this is because we had a phone in our pocket, or an online team ready to cheer us on every second, or that we had to listen to music before we could do anything that was tricky.”
More generally, Einstein and Locke offer some hard and fast guardrails for parents.
• No personal devices for children under seven years old.
• Don’t fall for the “but everyone else has one” line. Changing mores across the past half-dozen years means your child will not be a social outcast without a phone.
• All screens in your house fall under your jurisdiction to control. Set additional chores rather than removing devices if rules are not respected.
• Designate screen-free times, especially dinner. That applies to children and adults.
• Devices handed over an hour before bed.
Einstein adds two more that are perhaps a little more challenging for parents.
• Model good screen behaviour – this relies on having your phone and computer out of reach and sight in certain areas in your home.
• Unless you have really good screen discipline at home, no devices in bedrooms, for anyone!
Will the new social media ban for under-16s do the trick?
The Albanese government has amended the Online Safety Act to now include an obligation on age-restricted social media platforms to prevent children under 16 from having accounts on their services. Previously it was 13.
Passing through parliament with bipartisan support, it becomes effective in December and will impose penalties of up to $50m for non-compliance. It is expected to cover Facebook, Instagram, X, Snapchat and TikTok, but controversially exempted YouTube on the basis it was required to deliver educational content. That exemption is under review amid a backlash from advocates.
In an address to the National Press Club on June 24, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said a new survey conducted by her agency of more than 2600 children aged 10 to 15 found seven in 10 “encountered content associated with harm, including exposure to misogynistic or hateful material, dangerous online challenges, violent fight videos and content promoting disordered eating”.
“Children told us that 75 per cent of this content was most recently encountered on social media. YouTube was the most frequently cited platform, with almost four in 10 children reporting exposure to content associated with harm there.”
Einstein says YouTube should not be exempt.
“I’m not sure why YouTube was excluded in the first place. It’s got the same addictive components (as other platforms),” she says. “YouTube has, of course, worked out exactly how to exploit all the different fears we have, all the different needs we have.”
More broadly, Einstein is concerned that the government will consider the issue of harmful social media interaction by children fixed once the law is in place.
“We can’t just raise the age and walk away. It’s time to stop sending mixed messages – and start protecting young Australians.
“Social media regulation will not be enough unless accompanied by government-funded accurate, clear messaging distributed to the public, schools and everyone working in the mental health space.
“This would have a huge influence on public opinion, but they (the government) seem reluctant to lead clear, consistent warnings about screen dependence. This endangers the legislation’s impact.”
One of the “mixed messages” Einstein highlights is that social media offers “connection”, offering young people support for their mental health through their posts and other interactions.
“A study from Italy shows 10 to 15-year-olds have less emotional intelligence with more social media use,” she says. “This would indicate that social media does not foster thoughtful friendship skills or resilience, and young people can be drawn into a downward spiral of self-preoccupation, needing feedback from an online audience to feel good about themselves.”
She is also arguing the laws need to be augmented by the development of “digital health assessments” in mental healthcare and the inclusion of tech overdependence as a treatment target for children with anxiety.
“Currently, everyone is flying blind; medical professionals are getting mixed messages from leading organisations; doctors have not been educated to insist device use be addressed as part of a mental health plan – and even when it’s obvious, too often they feel out of their depth to call it out.”
Understanding the impact of technology on children and their mental health is now quickly catching up with the technology itself. But for an unlucky generation, it may come a little late.
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