By Andrew Malekoff

In a three-week period from April 14 to May 4, 2022, The Pew Research Center conducted an online survey of 1,316 adolescents ages 13 to 17. The survey found that since 2014 -15, there has been a 22 percentage point increase – from 73% to 95% – in the number of teens who say they have access to a smartphone.

Teens who believe they spend too much time on social media (29%), say they would have a very hard time giving it up altogether. On the other hand, most teens who see their time spent on social media as just about right (58%), contend that it wouldn’t be hard for them to give it up.

Or so they say.

Almost all teens who responded to the survey (97%) say they use the internet daily, only a slight increase (5%) since 2014-15. Needless to say, the internet has a pervasive presence in our teenage children’s lives. And, I would venture to guess, our own.

The survey asked whether U.S. teens use 10 specific online platforms: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, WhatsApp, Reddit and Tumblr. Among these, YouTube is most common online platform teens use (95%), followed by TikTok (67%), Instagram (62%) and Snapchat (59%).

By comparison, the percentage of teens using Facebook has dropped substantially in the past eight years. Today, 32% of teens report ever using Facebook, a sharp decrease from when 71% said they ever used the platform in 2014-15.

Other platforms that have shown declines in teen usage include Twitter and Tumblr. It is notable that, while today’s teens do not use Facebook as widely as they had in the past, there is extensive usage of the platform among adults.

In 2016, Pew found that 79% of adults who are online in the U.S. used Facebook. It is not surprising that teens would distance themselves from a platform that has risen in popularity among adults.

“The social media landscape for teens is dynamic and changing,” Pew Research Associate Emily Vogels told the Washington Post. “It’s worth remembering these platforms themselves are changing over time,” she added.

The teens were asked, in focus groups, why they choose the apps they do. They said that it is mostly a function of where they can find connections with others.

This begs the question, who is it that teens are engaging with and to what end?

If a child’s job is to explore and a parent’s job is to protect, it is essential that parents become more proficient in digital technology in order for them to help their children navigate the many risks and dangers of the digital world, including predatory behaviors by extremists.

Erin Walsh, commenting for the Spark and Stitch Institute on May 23, cautions, “it’s clear that we need to expand our understanding of online exploitation beyond bullying or sexual exploitation.” She continues, “Extremists share common patterns with other forms of online predation. [They] work to separate young people from their circle of trusted adults.”

That means you, parents.

Online extremist predators groom their targets incrementally, beginning with more benign, content-like video games, music, sports or fashion. Little by little, Walsh explains, extremists provide frameworks that often include: “Simple, false solutions to complex problems; black and white thinking that encourages directing anger toward people different from themselves and a false sense of security and certainty.”

If teens’ online activity is aimed at engaging with others for social fulfillment, adults who care about them must be aware of who they are connecting with especially given the spread of hate cultures that aim, through any means possible, to undermine multiracial societies and perpetrate violence against them.

Highly encrypted apps aimed at hosting content that would be barred from mainstream sites must be taken seriously. However, even mainstream apps can be used by extremists to host hate speech online. Common Sense Media found that 64 percent of adolescent social media users say they have been exposed to hateful content on social media.

The question is, who do teens have conversations with about the hateful content they are exposed to? Anyone? No one? How do they sort it out?

Responding to extremism, as Walsh advises, is about more than keeping a lookout for it online. “It is also about creating healthy spaces of belonging and modeling our commitment to our shared humanity wherever we go,” she says.

We have come a very long way since the shelves of local libraries and home collections of World Book encyclopedias served as major sources of information for adolescents. If most teens have access to smartphones and use the internet daily, as the Pew research study found, parents need to make it their business to have regular conversations with their children about the influence of online communities.

Our future depends on it.