Imagine that you’re running late to a new class where everyone has yet to meet each other. You sit down and note that the class is already full. But something else is weird with so many people in the room…the silence. This silence has become surprisingly normal due to our generation’s favorite accessory, headphones. These days it’s common to see most people out and about plugged in and tuned out. Is this a cool convenience or a problematic habit? Check out today’s GKIS article and see what you decide.
Excessive Headphone Use
In the university that I attend, most students have headphones in place until the moment the instructor says their first word of the lecture. The only people that are talking before that are the few people who’ve already established a friend group. The truth is, I’m so in the habit of wearing my headphones the idea of joining in on a conversation is stressful. My headphones are a sort of safety blanket that saves me from feeling awkward in new social situations.
My friends agree with me. We even admit that sometimes our headphones aren’t even on when we have them in! We keep them in to discourage people from talking to us or expecting us to respond. Sometimes it’s also a cover while we listen in on other people’s conversations. Headphone use is commonly a tool to socially distance.
We at GKIS aren’t the only ones who’ve noticed this phenomenon. BloggerClaire Hubble shared her story of being a self-proclaimed “headphone addict” in a blog post. In her post, she mentions the dangers of constantly keeping your headphones in, such as not being able to hear an oncoming vehicle or people calling for you. Hubble also brings up an important guilty pleasure we’re familiar with here at GKIS, podcasts.
For those of you who are not yet addicted, podcasts are like radio shows with multiple episodes that usually follow a theme or tell a story. Fans can subscribe to a podcast and follow their favorite podcaster personalities. Hubble said she loves podcasts as a way to avoid forced small talk. She goes on to share that without her headphones, she feels anxiously disconnected and even bored. She posits that headphone may be and up-and-coming addiction.1
Dangers of Excessive Headphone Use
Psychological
In a 1994 study on the psychological effects of Walkman use, researchers predicted that portable listening devices could potentially grow to be silencing technology. Silencing technology is the social and psychological separation of individuals. This study interviewed 36 individuals and concluded an impaired ability to interact socially with prolonged device use.2
A later 2005 study measured the use of headphones and portable audio use on college students using several self-administered scales and surveys. The 2005 study also found that frequent headphones use leads to social isolation and feelings of loneliness.3
Physical
Physical damage from increased headphone use has also become a growing concern. Potential health risks include:
Ear infections
Hearing loss
Tinnitus (ringing in the ear)
Headaches
Dizziness
Pain in ear
Hyperacusis
Excessive ear wax 4
Recommended Headphone Use
How much headphone use is excessive? According to the World Health Organization (WHO), anything over an hour a day is excessive for all listening devices.[5] Rather than eliminating the accessory altogether, steps can be taken to implement safe and healthy listening for your kid on-the-go.
How to Manage Headphone Use
In her book, Screen Time in the Meantime, Dr. B offers the following recommendations to help your family unplug:
Teach netiquette skills.
Introduce screen-free zones at the dinner table and other areas where a family conversation is common.
Decide on tech blackout times, like mornings before school and bedtime.
Start a conversation on safety with our free Connected Family Screen Agreement.
Safe Kid-Friendly Alternatives
Have you heard of noise limiting headphones? Noise limiting headphones are headphones that can be set to a specific volume the consumer decides.6 Researchers have concluded that noise-limiting headphones pass the “safe” listening range set by the World Health Organization (85 decibels) and were the favorite among the kids and teens in the study who tried them out.5 This is a quick solution if you know you won’t always be able to monitor headphone use but want to limit possible hearing or distraction injuries.
Special thanks to Aroni Garcia for researching and co-writing this article. If you liked the article, and you’re interested in learning more tips on how to break this trending habit, go over to 5 Back to School Tips for the Digitally Overtasked and Disorganized Parent to learn more about how you can keep on track with managing device and media time.
It seems everybody is on their screens all of the time. Whether you’re working on your computer or your kids are texting and walking back from school, screen use can take an unexpected toll on your body. Find out about “text neck” and what you can do to avoid damaging and even dangerous distractions and repetitive use injuries.
What is a repetitive strain injury?
According to the CDC, device use has contributed to a 10% increase in unintentional child injuries.[1] Overuse or repetitive strain injuries (RTI) refers to bodily injuries that result from reduced blood flow to the muscles, bones, and ligaments as a result of poor posture or repeated movement.[2]For kids, repetitive strain injuries can occur from repeated movements typical in sports play, video controller use, or from repeatedly swiping or texting on smartphones and from excessive screen use.
Preventable Repetitive Strain and Misuse Injuries
Tendonitis
Repetitive strain injuries from excessive screen use include tendonitis in the shoulder, elbow, forearm, wrist, and hand and back or neck strain.
Ocular Migraines
Migraine headaches, particularly ocular migraines, are also becoming increasingly common due to excessive screen use. Symptoms of ocular migraines include visual disturbances like temporary vision loss, blind spots, auras, flashing lights or seeing stars, and zigzag lines.
Tinnitus
Tinnitus refers to a hissing, buzzing, whistling, roaring, or ringing in the ears that result from exposure to excessive and loud noises. Not only can the tiny hairs in the inner ear be damaged by loud and excessive noises, but they can also occur due to aging, sudden impact noises, middle ear infections, stress, negative side effects from medications, neck or head injuries, and other untreated medical conditions. Currently, tinnitus is incurable, but symptoms can be relieved with techniques like sound therapy (listening to specially selected distracting sounds).
Postural Injuries
A postural injury refers to injuries that result from accumulated pressure due to poor posture while sitting, using your computer, driving, wearing high heels, or standing. If you’re not using good posture your bones don’t properly align and your muscles, joints, and ligaments can’t work as they are designed to.
The most common postural injuries include
lower back pain
neck pain
shoulder impingement
knee pain
carpal tunnel syndrome (numbness, tingling, and weakness in your hand and arm due to nerve impingement in your wrist)
piriformis syndrome(pain that radiates down the back of the legs when the piriformis muscle compresses the sciatic nerve when sitting or crossing your legs)[3]
Text Neck
Another common type of postural injury among kids and teens is text neck. Text neckrefers to premature degeneration and malformation of the neck and spine caused by looking down at the screen for texting.
In the past, these types of injuries were only seen among aging dentists and welders. Now physicians are seeing these injuries in teens.
Hanging your head at a sixty-degree angle while texting places sixty pounds of force on the neck. This is far beyond the ten pounds of force your neck is designed to support when your head is in the neutral position.
Kyphosis
Poor texting posture can be particularly problematic for young users whose spines are still developing and could lead to arthritic changes in the spine, bone spurs, or muscle deformities. Research findings indicated that kyphosis, which refers to an S-curve of the spine or rounded back, can be caused by the loosening of ligaments in the spine aggravated by screen use.
Prevention
Instead of taking away the screen device or video controller altogether, simply implement healthy screen practices in your family.
Here are some great injury prevention ideas
Balance off-screen and on-screen activities.
Download an app, use parental controls like those we offer in our Screen Safety Toolkit, or provide a simple kitchen timer for time limit compliance and body-healthy rest and stretch breaks. Suggested break times are fifteen-minute for every forty-five minutes of play.
Encourage your kids to refocus their eyes for twenty seconds after every twenty minutes of screen time
Set up kids’ yoga, which helps with strength, stabilization, balance, and range of motion. Plus, kids learn more about their physiology and how to optimize healthy posture and avoid painful injuries. We recommend watching Youtuber AloYoga’s video “Yoga for Kids with Alissa Kepas.”
Implement ergonomics, the study of people, and their efficiency when interacting in different environments. The primary goal of ergonomics is to arrange a workplace so that it fits the individual working there.
Ergonomic computer setups include:
Eyes leveled with the top of the screen
Head and neck balanced and in line with the torso
Shoulders relaxed
Elbows supported and close to the body
Wrists and hands in-line with forearms
Feet flat on the floor
Overhead lighting dim to prevent glare
Curious to learn more helpful tips on RTI prevention? More information can be found in Dr. Bennett’s book, Screen Time in the Mean Time.
Distraction Injuries
We’ve all seen this form of injury in headlines about car accidents due to texting while driving. We’ve even had a laugh at trips and falls while texting in programs such as America’s Homes Funniest Videos where a person may trip and fall while texting. A distraction injury is an injury resulting from one’s attention being taken by screen use (texting, viewing, talking, or video conferencing).
While Walking
On CBS News you can find an article where a woman was texting and so distracted, she fell into a mall fountain.4 Or maybe you saw the viral video of a guy who literally ran into a bear while walking and staring into his phone. The Internet is alive with videos of injuries that have resulted from distracted walking or bicycle riding. The possibility of bringing harm to yourself has become such an issue that New Jersey has proposed a ban on walking and texting.5 Remind your child that there is a time and place to be sure you are being extra cautious towards your surroundings, such as walking in the streets.
While Driving
Distracted driving accounts for 60% of all teen accidents.6 Teens are more reliant on their phones and lack experience behind the wheel. According to CNN Health, texting is the most distracting form of device use and has been proven to limit the number of times an individual will look up and look both ways before crossing.7
TheCDC Youth Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) reports that 39.2% of teens will use devices while driving.8 While you may assume that your teen knows better, it’s always a smart choice to play it safe. This can be as easy as putting devices out of sight while driving or adopting helpful tech.
Tech Tools That Can Help
Use the “Do Not Disturb” mode on their smartphone to ensure safety practices when you’re not around.
On iPhones:
Go to settings
At the very top, there will be a search bar, type “driving”
Press “Do Not Disturb While Driving”
Activate the Feature at the bottom
If your phone doesn’t already have the Do Not Disturb feature, the following are GKIS-approved apps that can assist in distracting free driving!9
The AT&T Drive Mode App silences incoming alerts and calls. The application automatically activates once you’ve reached a speed of 15 mph or higher. If you’re concerned about not calling your kid and being left on voicemail with no notice, the app has customizable automatic responses that will let the parent know they are driving and will answer them afterward.
The OMW (On My Way) app works similarly to the AT&T app, but rather than activating at 15 mph it starts at 10 and higher. Aside from this you could earn points and win discounts for being a safe driver.
The Safe 2 Save app also allows you to earn points for being a safe driver by giving discounts to local businesses. The app also encourages users to include pictures of loved ones as a reminder of who they’re driving safely for.
Think you’ll need a helping hand in implementing all these tips? Contact ourscreen safety expert and founder of GKIS Dr. Tracy Bennett for a telehealth coaching session to discuss specific outside-the-box screen safety tips! In a quick, fun, and customized family workshop, you’ll feel more at ease knowing you have the tools to continue to have important safety conversations with your kids.
Special thanks to Aroni Garcia for researching and co-writing this article. If you liked the article, you’re interested in learning more tips on how to manage device time to avoid distracted driving and repetitive tech use, look at What Age Should We Allow Smartphones?
We at GetKidsInternetSafe love fun, educational, and safe screen time. But even better than that? We love creative offscreen play activities that help family members get to know and bond with each other, teach initiative and problem solving, and make forever memories. Sometimes great ideas are hard to dream up on-the-run with busy families. Enjoy these fun at-home indoors or outdoors activities that we at GKIS are sure your kids will love!
Indoor Fun
Let Your Kid be the Media Star
Record your kid as their favorite video star doing fun activities
Create an old movie recorder from cardboard boxes and black paint, don’t forget the director’s board so you or your kids get to yell “cut!”
If your kids like do it yourself videos, set up a station and let them surprise you with the results
If your child wants to be a movie star, let their imagination run wild and have them do small skits of their favorite scenes
Share videos with friends and family and have them comment and let them “like” the videos as fans
Don’t forget to follow up on their roles and nominate them in their own awards show for a later idea.
A thank you speech from your kid is highly encouraged
Up-Cycle Old Games
Give your old board games new meaning by breaking them apart and making a new game
Create cards with inside jokes that only friends and family will know
Use a Jenga game and tape truth or dares to pull out for twice the amount of fun
Create fun Loteria cards! Customize cards to make up members of your family such as the overprotective father or the daughter who says “like” in every sentence
Update trivia games and have your kids teach you a thing or two about new pop culture words and celebrities
Need Inspiration? A blogpost by Claire Harmeyer demonstrates how games are currently being reused with an old Guess Who game!
At Home Art Gallery
Let your child show their artistic creativity in a variety of ways by hosting an art gallery!
Remember that there are various forms of creating art, encourage them to complete at least three different “sections” to their gallery which may include the following:
The painting room
Play-dough or moon sand sculptures room
Origami room
The Barbie fashion showcase room
Photography room
The popsicle architecture room
Live art with temporary tattoos or a henna kit
Food art room
As the art critique, give reassuring feedback to encourage their creativity
Home Lab
Have your kids play mad scientist with some of these fun science creations
Follow scientist Joe and create a storm in a glass.
You’ll need: shaving cream, large glass, water food coloring, and a spoon
Help your kids create a baking soda volcano by following Science Bob’s easy steps
Something to put the liquids in, baking soda, liquid dish soap, food coloring, water, vinegar
Createa tornado in a bottle by looking at the young Youtuber Ryan lay out the steps with his dad
You’ll need: 2-liter soda bottles (same shape), duct tape or connector, water, lamp oil (any color)
You’ll need: Stones, a pencil, and a piece of clay
Outdoor Fun
Backyard Scavenger Hunt
Set up an imaginary scenario that will fit your child’s interests whether that be finding a treasure chest to a vial that will cure the zombie apocalypse
Entice your child: add something of interest to their treasure
Set up a list of instructions that may include:
Riddles
Math problems
Guessing an image outline
Word association games
DIY puzzles
Connect the dots images
Phone a Friend! (have them call a loved one for their next clue)
Create steps such as stacking stones or doing cartwheels to unlock the next set of instructions
If you’d like to play along, act as a helping hand and create a character that will help them
Balcony Garden
For those in apartments, set up a small garden for your child if you have a balcony available.
Be sure everything is easily accessible so that there is no need for leaning or climbing on the railing
Consider easy to maintain plants such as succulents
Customize pots with markers/paint or give them name tags to personalize
Make paper insects like butterflies and prop them into the plants for decoration
Use stick skewers for food or popsicle sticks to glue to your paper insects and stick them into the edge of the pots
Color skewers green to act as plant stems
Set up Christmas lights around the balcony so your child can admire their plant friends at night
Home Triathlon
Set up a backyard triathlon using whatever sports equipment you have or can make.
The idea is to do each obstacle non-stop until they reach the finish line
Get creative and work with what you have!
Ideas for challenges include:
Pitch up a tarp/sheet and have your kid’s army crawl under
Draw a challenging hopscotch segment
Set a designated amount of hula hoops swirls
Have two volunteers be ready with a double dutch jump rope obstacle
How low can you limbo station
Basketball into a hoop
Making a soccer ball into a goal that’s
guarded
Jumping jacks
Backward walking
Set up a finish line using items such as ribbon or even tied up rags
Outside Movie Nights
Pull up some chairs, snacks, and whatever else you’ll need to be comfortable
If you have a projector get a flat white surface to hang to a wall
If you’re trying this on a balcony, prop the backdrop on the sliding door
No projector? No worries, this idea will work fine with a device that’s big enough for you and your kids to see
Watch your favorite films under the night sky
Or make your own movie story
Grab a flashlight and have the family show their storytelling skills.
Give the group a movie genre they can work with
In a bowl you can add random folded words they will need to incorporate into their story
Set a timer that works for everyone
Deem the new storytelling king or queen of the night
The newest king or queen will get to be the judge for the next game
Added bonus! Stargazing till your kids are pooped and ready for bed
Wrap-up: These stars have a story, share a one constellation story and have them excited for the next one
Special thanks to Aroni Garcia for researching and co-writing this article. If you liked these fun tips and want to stay updated on new fun ways to keep your kids entertained follow GKIS on social media! Follow our @GetKidsInternetSafe Instagram and Facebook pages and @drtracybennett Twitter for our latest posts! And, as always, thanks for sharing us with friends and family. Cheers to happy memory making!
We are all under one of a variety of different directives due to COVID-19. The news is full of videos of people wearing masks and gloves and others panic buying at grocery stores. At a time when we need our wits about us, we feel overwhelmed and anxious. Our fight, flight, freeze, or fold responses are on hair-trigger standby. We are all freaked out and definitely all in this together.
That’s where psychology comes in. Our anxiety is guiding the ship and clogging the pipes when it comes to concentration and problem-solving. How we respond to this threat will make all the difference for how we feel for the next coming weeks.
For today’s GKIS article, I’m going to focus on YOU, helping you recognize where you’re at in regard to mental health and how to bring yourself down a notch. After all, the people around you are syncing with your heart rate and mood. If you are calm, they too will settle in better for the long stay-at-home haul. So let’s start with how you’re feeling right now . . .
If you’re like me and trying hard to keep busy, you may notice that intrusive, unwanted anxieties pierce your veil of concentration more often than you’re comfortable with. Maybe you are panic browsing the Internet or watching television for the most accurate and up-to-date news. Or you’re hitting the overstressed grocery stores to make sure you have two weeks’ worth of food just in case. Maybe you’re feeling irritable and angry and tempted to blame the politicians for underreacting or overreacting or annoyed with panic shoppers who once again bought up the last roll of toilet paper. Or maybe you’re pulling fighting kids apart and trying to figure out how to keep them busy so they’re not climbing the walls. However you’re coping, please know that a variety of stress responses are expected right now. Although uncomfortable, anxiety about COVID-19 is “normal” and “healthy.” Those feelings alert us that something new is underfoot, and it’s the right time to peek your head up from normal daily activities to make sure you’re equipped for whatever is coming your way.
Of course, not all responses are staying in the healthy coping category. Red flags that your moods or anxiety may be tipping into the “impaired” category include reduced or increased appetite, trouble sleeping, panic attacks, or excessive use of addictive substances to numb out like carbs, sugar, tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana.
Whether you’re a little bit anxious or a lotta bit anxious, here are some wellness and coping tips to help you through the COVID-19 crisis:
Wake up with an intention for independent psychological health.
That means facing the problems of the day with your thinking brain rather than your crisis-driven nervous system. My favorite tool for keeping my psychological stability is the 6-second exhale. Simply said, that means filling your belly with a deep cleansing breath and breathing out for 6 seconds. Repeat several more times with an easy breath and always a 6-second exhale. For extra calmness, imagine gathering up your stress with each breath and releasing it into the sky with each exhale.
Create best-coping language.
I’ve been speaking to a lot of clients this week about stress and fear. Rather than focusing on how scary and difficult things are right now, I focus on the language of empowerment. That means reminding people about how their safety measures are putting some control into their hands. Focusing on choice, smarts, strength, and love gets us into a far better place than focusing on vulnerability or fear.
Protect yourself from information overload.
Limit news to once in the morning and once in the evening and avoid constant COVID chatter amongst colleagues, friends, and family. A check-in is important but then change the subject. Endless conjecture about the what-ifs moves you too far away from empowerment.
Balance on-screen activities with off-screen activities.
Our brains need a variety of activities to stay healthy. To do this, stage your home for success. GKIS offers two great tools to help with this. First, use our GKIS Screen Safety Toolkit Course to implement tech tools that filter and manage technology. Second, implement out free digital contract (Connected Family Agreement) to avoid an exhausting and damaging habit of asking > pleading > yelling > threatening > fighting with your kids. A negotiated agreement saves you from all of that. Third, create a block schedule with balanced activities in the work and play categories. Following a routine helps. And finally, if you need help getting your kids to get creative with healthy activities on- and off-screen without the fight, implement our Connected Family Course.
Schedule opportunities for connection.
Schedule a morning digital coffee hour with a chosen group of friends and family. Ask people to join you for a walk or a hike. Reach out to friends, family, and neighbors who may need help with grocery delivery or animal care. Schedule an evening digital happy hour with a chosen group of friends and family. Game night!
Remember, this is temporary, and we will get through it.
Stay in the moment and recognize this is a temporary time, not a permanent one. That will help you distance from the current fear and shelf your anxieties while you focus on other things throughout the day.
Exercise your mind with productive, creative activities.
Touch the earth. Dig into projects you’ve been putting off, whether it’s digitizing your photos, making sense of the DNA genealogy test you got for Christmas, or mending fences (literally and figuratively). Journal your feelings once a day with words or art. Feed your brain something delicious, like that novel you’ve been dying to get to or that craft or building project that sounded so fun (jewelry making, an owl box, trivets out of corks – whatever, Pintrest is your friend).
Exercise your body with nurturing, health-promoting activities.
Take a run. Incorporate meditative and yoga practice (we love the free NIKE Training app for all things fitness).
Sleep well.
Practice good sleep hygiene practices like setting your room up to be cozy for all the senses, avoiding caffeine and alcohol, and practicing imagery to set yourself up for good dreams. (We love the apps Headspace or Calm for meditative and mindfulness practice).
Most of all, lower your expectations of yourself and others. Perfection is not the goal right now. Instead, set an intention to be good to yourself. Intentions allow you the slips without guilt and approximations for perfection without shame. It simply means that you commit to going in the direction of self-compassion right now and a lot of love and togetherness.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
More information and resources for managing anxiety and stress:
If you need some TLC and some real coping skills from an experienced clinical psychologist, schedule a telepsychology session with me at DrTracyBennett.com
If you’d like some great ideas about how to positively parent during this overwhelming time, schedule a coaching session with me at GetKidsInternetSafe.com.
NAMI (National Alliance for the mentally ill) is offering a “warmline,” a confidential, noncrisis emotional support telephone hotline staffed by peer volunteers who are in recovery at 800-950-NAMI (6264) and has a great list of COVID-19 (CORONAVIRUS) INFORMATION AND RESOURCES
For more information about stress and coping check out these articles:
If you’re on Facebook or other socials media apps, you’ve seen digital combat between friends and relatives over politics. Maybe you’ve even strained or lost relationships due to passionate posts and comments. Your beloved Uncle Benny who amused you when he got too loud at family barbeques is now in the enemy camp. Your cousin Christine seems to live on an entirely different planet from you. We all seem to read different sets of news. And this collection of different world views will be sitting around the Thanksgiving table soon. How are you going to manage?
DEFLECT
Before you hang out with your relatives, identify something you have in common that is drama-free. Maybe you both like podcasts or mystery novels or Game of Thrones. Do your homework and write down a few topics you can bring up to get an agreeable conversation going in place of a contentious one.
SET INTENTION
Before you walk into the potential war room, commit that you will not engage no matter what the provocation. Remember that the holiday is intended to strengthen family relationships rather than test them. Stay true to course.
EXHALE
Best coping techniques are in order whenever you are walking into a potential trigger. My two top favorites are a cleansing breath into the stomach with a 6-second exhale and a time out. Avoid holding your breath or breathing from the chest. Also, remember that you can always walk out of the room for a bathroom break or a walk around the block. Excusing yourself from the room is always an option.
GAMETIZE
If Uncle Benny loves to win, create a challenge for conversational self-restraint with prizes. Set up a penny jar and collect $5 to $10 from each adult player. Everybody is a referee. Each time somebody mentions “Trump,” “President,” “Impeach,” “Climate Change,” or any other trigger word, they lose a penny. At the end of the day, most-pennies gets the biggest prize. Last-to-lose-penny gets a prize. First-to-lose-penny gets a prize. Putting names in a hat for a booby prize is also fun.
DISTRACTION
Plan some fun activities so everybody isn’t sitting around bored and ready to tangle. Create a Wiffle ball game. Challenge your nephew to Uno. Buy the Left Center Right Dice Game from Amazon for only $6.99. It’s a fun group game and inexpensive enough to send home as a prize. We love a long game of Mexican Train in our family.
UNPLUG
GetKidsInternetSafe follows the research about how screen time can interfere with relationships and overall well-being. When the generations come together, digital natives stick their noses in the screen and digital resistants rant about the good old days. Then the digital immigrants get blamed for bad parenting. It can get ugly. Save yourself some headache by establishing doable unplug rules, allowing some well-deserved screen time and putting a basket on the table for screen-free discussions and meals. Also, read a few of our GKIS blog articles to prep yourself for interesting, informed discussions. I particularly recommend teaching the room about online dark patterns (I didn’t know about those until I read my intern’s research), and figure out how to become a meme lord so you’re armed with some funny memes to share a laugh or two. A little bit of prep with planned words of support for the kids may curb criticism.
Finally, fill your heart with gratitude for feisty family opportunities, delicious food, and togetherness. One day Uncle Benny will no longer be with us, and Cousin Christine will create different holiday traditions with her in-laws. Today family togetherness has real meaning. Soak it in. My interns and I at GetKidsInternetSafe thank you for your ongoing support and personal emails and comments sharing your wild family scenarios. We love you and wish you happiness this blustery holiday season.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
At one time or another, many of us will think about becoming vegetarian. Cutting out meat, especially red meat, has environmental and nutritional benefits that have the average person considering changing their eating habits. “Going vegan,” where anything coming from an animal is removed from one’s diet, is seen as the ultimate step in curbing wasteful eating and improving health. Making the change to eat vegan can be hard. Young people look to social media, especially Instagram, for inspiration and advice on the best ways to lead a vegan lifestyle. Influencers are proposing diets that impose such high standards and strict regimens that the influencers themselves are unable to sustain them. These influencers have such a large reach, that followers often inaccurately perceive them as experts with true credibility. Should we trust Instagram influencers with dietary advice?
#Vegan
A casual Instagram search of #vegan brings up 77,937,967 posts.[1] Vegan images boast recipes meant to look and taste like delicious, non-vegan dishes like pizza, cupcakes, and brownies. This wide array of beautifully photographed options makes veganism seem desirable. However, with so many niche recipes, it can be overwhelming and confusing when selecting who really knows their stuff.
After all, veganism isn’t just a nutrition plan for most influencers. It appears to be a lifestyle. Doting followers scrutinize and memorize each carefully crafted post to share the vegan identity. However, even the most popular influencers are proving that pure veganism is hard to maintain long-term.
Another One Bites the Dust
Influencers are increasingly coming under scrutiny for straying from the vegan ideals that they’ve branded their image around. For instance, one notable vegan influencer lost all credibility and popularity after abandoning a dangerous “water-only” diet that lasted a whopping 35 days.[2]
Another popular vegan blogger received an outpouring of online hate after a video showed her eating fish.[3] Her supporters quickly turned against her, despite her pleas that she needed to quit being completely vegan to restore her health. In the world of vegan bloggers, there is no room for cheating. Only the most committed survive.
Where are the experts?
These influencers failed, not because being vegan is impossible, but because their fad diets were not sustainable. There’s significant danger in following diets created by somebody without expert nutritional training. Only a licensed professional can give accurate, informed nutritional advice.
As vegan influencers cultivate more and more followers, the risks become increasingly clear. Nutritionists are seeing more cases of malnourished teens due to unsafe vegan eating practices.[3]
Where is influencer credibility? There often isn’t any. The Internet is a buyer-beware digital marketplace. Teaching kids and teens how to assess expert credibility and defend themselves against unfair marketing techniques is crucial to good judgment and healthy eating choices.
Instagram: The Platform Your Kids Trust
Teens are genetically programmed to intensely focus on identifying and building their tribe. Looking to friends for uniquely identifying features, like dress, music, and slang is a vital part of growing up. Identification with popular food practices is often overlooked as an aspect of adolescent development.
A 2014 study explored the way peer relationships affect kids’ eating choices and attitudes toward food. When exposed to a peer they did not already know happily eating foreign food, children as young as preschool age began to show a liking for that food. This social referencing and modeling behavior can be conceptualized as children perceiving this peer as a “hero,” or someone to idolize.[4]
Instagram influencers carry this same appeal. Although strangers, they are similar enough to our kids to be perceived as peers. They carefully craft their brand to be perfectly positioned for influence, inspiration, and, ultimately, profit.
It isn’t simply a case of monkey-see, monkey-do. Teens may have good reasons for making dietary lifestyle choices. The trouble begins when unsafe dieting practices are blindly followed without realizing the risks.
A 2019 articledubs “Dr. Instagram” a threat to millennial health, citing that 38% of millennials have greater trust in their peers when it comes to health concerns than they do for actual medical professionals.[5] This highlights a legitimate concern that our kids may be dangerously ill-informed when it comes to health decisions.
Start Talking, Stay Healthy
Everyone should have the right to make dietary choices that make them happy and healthy. If your child is curious about going vegan or already is, consider these steps to ensure they remain healthy and safe.
Stress that Instagram content is entertainment only.
Help them set up a relationship with an informed adult to help them make good decisions when it comes to online influences.
If your child is considering a radical nutritional shift, require that they see a licensed nutritionist for healthy planning.
Encourage your child to prioritize personal health over popular fads.
Thank you to our GKIS intern Chelsea Letham for reminding us that teaching our kids how to accurately assess expertise and credibility is a critical life skill. To help your kids use good judgment online and not fall victim to risky diets and lifestyle choices, pick up your quick-and-easy supplement How to Spot Marketing Red Flag Supplement today.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
[1] https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/vegan/?hl=en
[2] Libatique, R. (2019, February 20). Ex-vegan Tim Shieff dropped by vegan clothing company ETHCS. Vegan News. Retrieved from https://vegannews.co/
[3] Horton, H. (2019, March 24). Instagram vegan diets are risking malnutrition among millennials, Harley Street nutritionists warn. The Telegraph. Retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/
[4] Houldcraft, L., Haycraft, E., & Farrow, C. (2014). Peer and friend influences on children’s eating. Social Development, 23(1), 19-40. doi: 10.1111/sode.12036
[5] Jackson Gee, T. (2019, April 7). Is Dr. Instagram ruining your health? The Telegraph. Retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/
