Digital Wild West

On a foggy morning in Rolling Hills Estates, a city in Los Angeles County on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, a line of cars filled with parents and middle-schoolers has formed outside Peninsula Heritage School. As each child says goodbye, the line of cars slowly disappears and the kids walk to their classrooms at the small private school, bleary-eyed and seemingly still half asleep. As they enter, they drop their cell phones into a bag, which is stored out of sight until the end of the school day. It is more than halfway through the school year, so the kids seem to know the drill and show no signs of protest over the fact that, for the next seven hours, they will have no access to these devices that are such a big part of their world.

"At first, it takes getting used to because they don't like that we're taking their phones, but after the first two weeks of school they're fine," said Danielle Standart, the seventh-grade teacher at Peninsula Heritage School. "It was put into place after an incident in sixth grade where a few students were caught texting on their phones during recess and lunch."

Many schools in California, across the U.S. and in other countries have started implementing more rules barring phones and devices at school, and more may soon follow. In March, California State Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance) proposed a bill that would require school districts in California to develop policies either prohibiting or restricting the use of smartphones but would leave it open for schools to decide the level of restriction.

"Growing evidence shows excessive smartphone use at school interferes with education, encourages cyberbullying, and may have adverse effects on teenage mental health, including increased rates of depression and suicide," Muratsuchi said in a press release announcing the legislation. "This bill will require school districts to adopt their own policies that strike a balance between allowing appropriate student use of smartphones while making sure that smartphones are not interfering with a student's educational, social and emotional development."

The bill unanimously passed the California Assembly in May and is currently in the Senate. A 2017 survey by the makers of the documentary "Screenagers: Growing Up in the Digital Age," found that 56% of middle schools allowed students to carry their cell phones, even though 82% of parents would rather their child not use cell phones during school hours. That finding inspired the filmmakers to launch the initiative known as "Away for the Day," which advocates for elementary and middle school students to have their phones physically off of them during school hours.

The Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District, where Peninsula Heritage School is located, adopted a new policy in February stating that "cellular devices and other electronic signaling devices must be powered off or placed in 'Do Not Disturb' mode and stored out of sight at all times while school is in session." Studies show that even having a phone in close proximity, such as in a bag, can result in lower productivity scores than if the phone is in another room. Psychologists have found that when we switch back and forth from our main task, the brain is unable to truly focus and creates a phenomenon known as "switch cost," which lowers efficiency by 40%. Researchers have also found that phones cause a spike in anxiety levels, especially among younger generations, every time there is a notification. Both of these findings make it hard for kids to truly be engaged in learning when devices are around. With more schoolwork and homework being done online, kids are put in a position where it is harder for them to resist the temptation of going on social media sites.

"Anxiety is definitely up because of constant alerts. That is a disruption and it's perceived by the nervous system as threat," said Ofra Obejas, a clinical social worker and therapist.

Although phones being misused in classrooms is not a new problem, the amount of time kids ages 8 and younger spend with their devices has grown exponentially from 5 minutes a day in 2011 to 48 minutes a day in 2017, according to a report by the nonprofit organization Common Sense Media, which advocates for "kids' digital well-being." Television and video viewing on mobile devices and tablets also went up for this age group from 4% total screen time in 2011 to 35% total screen time in 2017. Even though kids are spending 40 minutes less in front of the television set, or playing games on handheld consoles, that time is being made up with an increase of 43 minutes spent viewing videos on mobile devices. In 2017, video viewing still made up the greatest percentage of screen time for kids 8 and younger at 72%, compared with 18% of time spent gaming and 2% spent reading.

The increase in internet connectivity on devices allowed for the appearance of apps that become known as social media. One of the first social media apps built specifically for a mobile device was Instagram, which was released in October 2010. The app was meant to share photos and quickly grew in popularity, reaching 100,000 users in one week and 1 million users after only two months. Instagram's success prompted already established social media companies geared toward computer usage, such as Facebook and Twitter, to invest in creating and launching their own mobile apps. Now there is a slew of social media apps on mobile, ranging from gaming to dating and everything in between.

The same Common Sense Media report states that "social media have become increasingly difficult to define decisively, as sites like YouTube, virtual worlds such as Club Penguin, and apps like Musical.ly can all involve communication with others online and therefore be considered social media." The study found that 5% of kids between ages 0 to 8 years old use social media sites and 22% use social games. A 2019 study by Ofcom, the UK's communications regulator, showed similar results when it comes to social media sites. This study found that 4% of kids ages 5 to 7 had a social media profile. However, Ofcom's study goes further showing that the number of kids that have a social media profile jumps to 18% in kids ages 8 to 11, and then jumps again to 69% in kids 12 to 15.

It has been 30 years since Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, which marked the beginning of the global information sharing era. In those 30 years, however, there have been limited regulations on children's content, with most of them focusing on data privacy but none on advertising or design features used by apps. The web has been fairly open when it comes to the content that is published, and the ability to distribute anything online with a few clicks makes it easy for misinformation to be spread. Advancing technology has allowed for a rise in videos, photos, and text containing incorrect, or intentionally misleading, information that is difficult to distinguish from content that is real. Parents are afraid because they know that, if adults have a hard time figuring out what to trust, kids are even more vulnerable.

On April 9, lawmakers in the U.K. proposed new regulations for social media networks, with their main focus on Facebook. These new laws would be the first complete overhaul of the rules online and could become a template that other countries could possibly adopt as well. One of the biggest changes that U.K. authorities have proposed with these new regulations is holding CEO's, such as Mark Zuckerberg, accountable for any content deemed harmful that appears on their platform.

While these regulations are focusing more on the general problems of the internet, there is also a huge gap in regulations for children, with both content and data protection. The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) celebrated its 20th-anniversary last year, and yet its writer, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), released a statement in March saying that COPPA still needs to be updated and extended to protect more children. Markey also introduced new legislation called the Kids Internet Design and Safety (KIDS) act, which would be the first new bill to focus on children's content since he introduced the Children's Television Act in 1990.

Development

While new efforts are underway to regulate the digital world, scientists are still trying to understand the physical and emotional effects on children. Research shows that it is harder for kids to monitor themselves while their bodies and brains are still developing. The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for "executive functions" including decision making and impulse control, has not fully developed when kids start spending more time on devices.

"That does not finish developing until you're around 30 years old," said Mark Carrier, a professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills who holds a doctorate in psychology, and focuses on the brain and technology use. "That is the last part of the brain, as far as neuroscientists know, that reaches maturity. The old mindset was that by the time you're a teenager, everything is pretty much fixed. Yet, this area seems to still develop."

The prefrontal cortex also plays an important role in managing emotions. A lot of online content is meant to trigger an immediate emotional reaction, which kids also have a harder time regulating because their developing brains have not yet learned to recognize when they need to stop and do something more emotionally positive.

"It goes back to that prefrontal cortex. That's the part of the brain that has a big role in emotional regulation," Carrier said.

Jennifer Silvers, an assistant professor of psychology at UCLA with a doctorate in psychology, who also works as the principal investigator at the Social Affective Neuroscience and Development (SAND) lab and a researcher at the UCLA Brain Mapping Center, explained why it is important for people to learn to regulate their emotions, during a seminar at UCLA.

"It's important that we learn how to adaptively regulate our emotions so as to preserve our relationships, to hold down our jobs, to figure out how to get off of social media when it's no longer helpful, to keep our new year's resolutions. There are many reasons that learning how to regulate emotions are a really big deal," Silvers said.

This is even more challenging for children because of all the extra pressures they face while growing up. Silvers' research, which has been replicated multiple times by her, and by other researchers, shows that kids ages 10 to 13 are the least able to regulate their emotions. That means that the prime age group signing up for social media accounts are also the most vulnerable to being negatively affected.

"The transition just from elementary to middle school is enormous with regards to the self-regulatory demands being placed on an individual," Silvers said. "Moving from having one teacher giving you the structured educational context, to switching and having to navigate yourself from class to class, figure out how to allot time to homework, having to resist the temptations of watching a million YouTube videos and get your stuff done."

These emotional reactions translate off-screen as well. When parents try to get their kids to shut down the apps, they are faced with a struggle.

"Parents have to fight with their kids to make them stop," Obejas said. "Literally, like turn it off and the kids have a tantrum. I had a kid who was hitting the parents when they were taking it away. Because they're not in their reasoning mind they're in their emotional mind."

Addiction

While kids' development is a big concern, the problems may go even deeper. There are many advocates, including psychologists, parents, and teachers, who argue that implementing regulations on social media apps is even more crucial because they believe device usage can turn into an addiction.

Whenever a notification goes off on the phone, the brain releases a neurotransmitter called dopamine, which makes a person feel good says Corina Gheorghiu, a marriage and family therapist. The rush from this chemical in the brain acts as a reward and makes us want to repeat the action that caused it. Dopamine is the main reason why kids are constantly pulled back into those video games and social media accounts.

"When you see that someone calls you or someone texts you, it gives you this 'Oh I'm in, I belong, I'm wanted, something is going on for me.' It's an excitement. You start associating your internal well-being with the external factors, and then, if for a longer time you get used to this, you don't look internally for your own emotional regulation," Gheorghiu said. "We kind of need to learn to focus on us, on our internal resources, and not as much on getting it from the outside. I think this is the biggest problem because whenever you expect it from the outside, you form a connection with that instead of a connection with yourself."

Dopamine is a big piece in the debate about whether social media can be an addiction since it plays a central role in many documented forms of addiction. Design features, such as auto-play videos on sites like YouTube or Netflix, are implemented into apps in a way that keeps kids in a cycle of use.

"The people who designed it and made it, they designed it to be addictive," Obejas said. "That's not even debatable. It is addictive."

However, other researchers and social media experts disagree with the characterization of heavy screen use as an addiction, saying there has not been any significant proof that a true addiction to these devices can occur.

"A pattern of use certainly, but you used the word addiction which is a pretty big word in psychology," Carrier said. "It's been over 20 years and it's been hard for researchers to establish that it's a real addiction."

Either way, kids are consuming more media and having a harder time limiting their screen usage. Obejas says that parents are the main role models that kids are basing their actions on when it comes to social media and device usage. Parents have to show kids that they have limits with devices as well, so kids can learn from an early age how to implement those limits in a healthy way.

"The parents are more responsible than the kids because the parents cannot get off their phones. You expect your kids to do something and then you're not able to do it," Obejas said. "I do not see adults being more responsible with devices than they expect the kids to be. In fact, they're setting the example that if my phone buzzes I need to check what it is."

Some of the reason for this increase in addiction fears seems to go back to the fact that many kids have to be online more often for school. A 2016 study by the American Academy of Pediatrics found that "children who spent two to four hours a day using digital devices outside of schoolwork had 23 percent lower odds of always or usually finishing their homework, compared to children who spent less than two hours consuming digital media." These findings get worse for every additional two hours spent on digital media, so children who used media for four to six hours were 49% less likely to finish homework, and children who used media for six or more hours were 63% less likely to finish homework.

"School and a lot of the homework and a lot of the work things that we do are [done] digitally, and we have things like Google Classroom," said Elise, a seventh grader from Manhattan Beach. "A big portion of my week on electronics is doing my homework on there. It's my entertainment and added school work."

These lines getting blurred makes it harder for children to resist the temptation of distraction. Parents also see screen time going up and worry about what their child is actually doing when they are on the computer after school. Elene Nezis, a single mom and contract site manager for Neutrogena, has experienced the difficult task of separating entertainment and school work with her 12-year-old son.

"My child is actually saying 'Mom I'm studying' and when I do my check-ins, sometimes he's studying but he's good enough to toggle, and when he toggles, he's either on Instagram or playing a game," Nezis said. "It gets to a point where I say I'm going to take these tools away and I'm going to make you study with hard copy books and packets and he's like 'I can't everything's online.'"

Teachers are also seeing the effects of increased technology use, with kids coming to school sleep deprived after staying up late on their devices.

"I see kids coming to school tired because they have been up late the night before playing Fortnite and it makes it really hard for them to focus and learn," said Jeff Ahn, the eighth-grade teacher at Peninsula Heritage School.

Influencers

Since kids are spending more time online, marketers are finding loopholes in regulation to more easily target advertisements to children.

"When you go on to Facebook it's filled with ads, so there's a loophole right there just built into the social medium and how kids access that material," Carrier said.

The main type of targeted marketing is done through creators, known as influencers. These creators have large followings on websites and apps, like YouTube and Instagram. Many of these influencers are paid to promote products on their pages in exchange for free merchandise, discount codes, or a portion of the money made through their sales. According to Markey, in a video from the Truth about Tech conference in Washington D.C. posted to Common Sense Media's YouTube page, "research shows that over three-quarters of kids trust commercial recommendations in YouTube videos more than traditional commercials." Children themselves also have a huge influence, with more than half of kids having "tried, purchased, or asked their parents for toys because they saw them on YouTube or Instagram." Influencer culture seems to be playing a big role in making kids super aware of branding. According to Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, teens 13 to 17 have conversations about brands twice as much as adults do per week.

"More and more of children's lives are lived online, and brands are targeting kids on the internet so they can lock young people in as customers for life," Markey said.

The content creators and celebrities that kids follow can also have a major impact on them since kids are more vulnerable and can easily be swayed to believe the things they see online.

"I tend to follow musicians and artists, athletes, TV stars, and influencers," said Nicole, one of the seventh graders at Peninsula Heritage School.

Many of the kids at Peninsula Heritage School had similar responses. All of these people have the ability to influence their audience members and many of them do this by promoting products on their pages.

"I don't really buy any of it because I just don't really need that," said Elise from Manhattan Beach. "I mean sometimes people who are really big fans think it's better, but I'm just not that interested"

One of those big fans is Nezis' son. Nezis says she has spent hundreds of dollars on Legos because of influencers that her son watches on YouTube.

"He collects Legos from different parts of the world and he actually has Legos that are modified or made by other custom Lego people that actually create the little soldiers," she said.

For a while, influencers did not have to disclose that they were getting paid to talk about the products in their posts. Not having this disclosure made it hard for followers to know if what they were looking at was real or just an advertisement.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has recently been cracking down on influencers to add these disclosures and make sure they are extremely clear about when they are promoting a product for compensation. The FTC suggests that influencers do not just rely on the in-app disclosures, but also include #ad at the beginning of their caption. In 2017, the FTC sent out more than 90 letters to influencers after checking their posts for disclosures, only to find that many of them did not meet the requirements. In 2018, a study looked at how many influencers tried to disclose. It was found that 71.5% tried, but only 25% did it correctly.

"Social media is at this really interesting stage where there's not a lot of enforcement," said Eric Galen, a partner at the brand agency, Group Seven.

The FTC cracking down is one of the first big examples of a government agency attempting to regulate social media marketing. However, people aren't the only ones who can influence. TV shows and movies can also act as influencers because they have their own social media pages where they can use characters in many different ways, including to sell products.

"You can go to a page for your favorite show and there's going to be a lot of content," Carrier said.

Payton, a seventh-grader at Peninsula Heritage School, says she likes to keep up with things in the entertainment industry.

"I also follow movie stars and stuff like that," she said. "I like to follow all those ones that have trailers so you can see all the new movies coming out."

Watching funny and entertaining content seems to be a theme for many kids in the tween age group. Elise's mom, Marie Murphy, says that her daughter also watches similar content.

"She, right now, loves all the Marvel movies. So, anything that she sees about the actors doing an interview, then she's on Jimmy Fallon or Jimmy Kimmel watching interviews," Murphy said.

With all types of content available on multiple platforms, it is easier than ever for advertisers to figure out children's habits and target ads directly to them through different apps.

"The content is available anywhere, so a TV show can be watched on your iPad or your phone or on your computer or on the television set," Carrier said. "It almost doesn't matter what device you're using as long as you have internet you can get access to anything and that includes the kids."

But advertising seems to have become more targeted in general.

"The advertising has changed in a way and it's not as obvious as a TV show where it's right there basically for everyone to see," Murphy said. "It's targeted to each individual. My ads might be different than your ads. So, then it's the same with kids. They really target what they're looking at."

Data Privacy

The main source of advertisement targeting starts with data collection. By taking a person's data, advertisers find out what that person has recently been searching for, get a clear picture of their interests, and know what ads they will be most likely to click on. In May 2018, the EU implemented a new regulation called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It protects people in the European Union from this invasion of privacy. However, the U.S. has yet to implement a comprehensive law such as this one. The closest thing to it is the California Consumer Privacy Act, which will go into effect in 2020 and give California residents the right to know what information is being collected, the right to say no to a business collecting their data, and the right to make sure those businesses are keeping their data private.

"I think greater regulation and greater privacy is coming. We have government efforts and industry efforts with Europe," said Neal Shaffer, a social media speaker, consultant, author, and educator.

The U.S. does have a regulation for kids' online data safety, called the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). In March 2019, Sen. Markey, who is one of the authors of the act, announced an update he calls COPPA 2.0, which would include more protection for teens, ages 13 to 15, and new options for parents and children to tell companies who have their data to erase it from their servers. COPPA currently protects kids under 13 from having their data taken without consent from them and their parents. Even though this protection exists, the FTC requires kids to be 13 or older to get a social media account. However, children begin asking to get accounts much younger and many parents find it hard to deny their constant requests. The majority of the kids at Peninsula Heritage School said they wanted to sign up for an account around age 10, because that is when many of their friends started getting accounts. For this reason, Markey believes that a Youth Privacy and Marketing division, which would be responsible for addressing privacy and marketing directed at children and minors, should be established at the FTC.

"It is about time the Federal Trade Commission had a Youth Privacy and Marketing Division so that they could have people dedicated to patrolling this beat every single day," Markey said in the Truth About Tech YouTube video.

Even kids who do not have the main social media apps at least use YouTube, which is accessible to anyone even without an account.

"I don't have social media really," Elise said. "I have YouTube but that's pretty much it 'cause my parents won't let me have it yet. I've been pleading my argument and they've been warming up to it a little bit."

When it comes to advertisements, YouTube is just as bad as any other platform, with ads playing at the beginning, or even at intervals during, the video. One of the biggest channels as of April 2019 is Ryan's Toy Review, which is based on 7-year-old Ryan Kaji reviewing products. He has over 19 million subscribers, many of which end up wanting to purchase the items he talks about for themselves.

In addition to this, the majority of kids' time on social media is spent on YouTube. In a 2018 study done by the Pew Research Center, 81% of parents said they let their children under age 11 watch YouTube. Of those same parents, 61% said their children had encountered material that was unsuitable for their age. YouTube Kids came under fire in February when parents found a video of a man explaining suicide spliced into their children's cartoons. After the first video was reported and taken down, more of the same video popped up in other cartoons. Another issue that YouTube faced was with a large pedophile ring using the comments section to have inappropriate conversations in a way that cheated the algorithm meant to block these kinds of comments. After this came to light, many large advertisers such as Disney, McDonald's and Nestlé began pulling their advertisements from the site. Since YouTube depends on these advertisements to make money, having so many companies pull their ads caused YouTube to be hurt financially. With all the issues they have been having, YouTube has decided that they want half of trending videos to be produced by creators on their site instead of traditional media.

YouTube has become a source that is used in many different ways, and kids are not the only ones who are using the website extensively. The same Pew Research study found that even adults now go to YouTube to learn new things, pass the time, decide whether to buy a product or get their news. One problem with YouTube that makes it hard to regulate is that kids, like the ones at Peninsula Heritage School, and some parents do not think of YouTube as social media even though there are social aspects to it, such as commenting. The lack of association is cause for even more concern and may account for many of the disagreements between parents and children.

New Regulations

It has been nearly three decades since lawmakers last took aim at ads targeting children. The Children's Television Act of 1990 required that youth programming be a certain length and promote the educational and informational needs of children. The number of ads was limited based on the length of the show and characters from the current show could not appear in those ads, because researchers found that this made it harder for children to determine where the show ended and where the advertisements began. A study conducted by Viacom in 2018 showed that kids are 87% more likely than their parents to remember commercials they see on TV. The study also found that 77% of parents say kids have asked for something they have seen on TV and 73% of parents purchased the products kids requested.

"There was some research about how television could encourage children to get their parents to buy more sweet things," said Robert Kozinets, a professor of journalism and public relations at USC who has studied social media extensively. "I think commercials on YouTube might be similar to this. Promoted social media is a lot like television in this way."

Once these networks started to move primarily online, their content no longer fell under the regulations set forth in the act, because it could no longer be labeled under traditional television. Without any restrictions holding them back on the internet, the networks were able to go back to their old ways of advertising.

"Advertising to children on TV is monitored by the FCC, but I'm not sure if they have the same checks or balances for online advertising," said Dawn Chrissanthos, an account executive at CoxReps, a television advertising representative company.

Even after all this time, there are still no regulations against online advertising for kids. However, there may be a change in the system very soon. Markey, who created the Children's Television Act and COPPA, introduced new legislation at the Truth about Tech Conference in Washington D.C. on April 5 called the Kids Internet Design and Safety (KIDS) act.

"In 1990, I wrote the Children's Television Act to put limits on the amount of advertising that can appear during kids' television shows and Congress passed that law and stopped advertisers from flooding children with an endless stream of commercials. Those rules remain critical, but no analogous rules exist for online advertising," Markey said in the Truth About Tech YouTube video. "It's an ecosystem untouched by regulation, in terms of how it impacts children. Marketers have taken advantage of this regulatory black hole in marketing guardrails and as a result, kids are pushed to buy products at every turn online."

The bill is in its early stages and still has to go through the committee process to become finalized before being sent to Congress. If accepted it would impose much-needed regulations on websites and streaming services that are currently not bound by the Children's Television Act. The two main features of the bill would be to protect kids against online ads, and manipulative design features that keep kids hooked to their games and other apps. It would also fight against algorithms that promote more disturbing content if kids accidentally click on that type of video, and create clear labeling so parents can easily tell which videos will promote educational development.

"Kids deserve information, not infomercials," Markey said. "Let us try, in the next two years, to get these laws on the books."

There is some debate between advertisers on this topic though. On one hand marketers, such as Chrissanthos, think advertising tactics have gotten out of hand.

"Yes, I believe advertising to children online is a problem. It seems like it would be too easy for children to stumble across commercials that they should not be seeing when searching online," Chrissanthos said. "Kids may be getting exposed to images and concepts that they are not mature enough to digest."

However, others see this as their job and believe digital advertising is the only way to reach younger audiences now.

"Overall, I do not believe it is a problem since the younger generation uses the new media as their primary means of communication," said Karineh Artoonian, who is the senior director of marketing at F. Gaviña and Sons, Inc., a gourmet coffee company in Los Angeles.

Artoonian believes that it is the parents' responsibility, not the advertisers, to monitor what children are looking at online. She also believes that not all ads are bad.

"Some ads promote educational material and help the child to explore his or her curiosity," Artoonian said. "This is a good ad unless it is served as an in-app purchase without parental control. This can be both costly for the parent and may, with a few clicks, take the child to other sites which are not age appropriate."

While some ads may be educational, it seems the majority of ads that children see, and remember, are not appropriate for their age. One of the boys at Peninsula Heritage School said his friend, True, was getting scammed with a bunch of drug ads.

"I don't get them anymore, I just had them for a period of time," True said.

Once these advertisements were mentioned, more students seemed to remember having similar experiences.

"Oh yeah, I got some of those ads," Nicole said.

Other types of ads, such as ones that sound like scams, also seem to make an impact on the students.

"I get those kinds of ads when I'm on Instagram," Rachel said. "Like for AirPods, they say 'Oh these AirPods were 200 dollars and now they're 25 or 50 dollars.'"

Without their phones on them, the seventh graders at Peninsula Heritage School are more able to connect with their peers and disconnect from all the distractions for a little while. During this time, they are able to do things that kids are supposed to do, like go outside and play. Maybe not having their phones for this period of time has allowed them to become more aware of the influence caused by these devices. Payton had some advice that is good for people of any age to remember.

"You don't have to watch other people doing this stuff," Payton said. "I know some people that were like 'I saw this person on the beach, I really wish I could go.' I'm like we live in California. If you want to go to the beach, go to the beach. How 'bout you put the phone down, stop watching people there, and go there."