The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Parenting was hard enough. Then came social media.

By Lisa Lacy

When social media platforms like Friendster, Myspace and Facebook debuted in the early 2000s, they ushered in a dazzling new era in which people could easily reconnect with long-lost classmates, share photos of their weddings and breakfasts alike and laugh together over the latest GIFs and memes.

Since then, we’ve discovered some unintended consequences, which range from more heated political arguments at the dinner table to cyberbullying, misinformation, data privacy issues and mental health concerns.

Libby Milkovich, a developmental and behavioral pediatrician at Children’s Mercy Hospital and ambassador for the AAP’s Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health, cited the impact of social media on executive functioning skills, like learning to work through boredom or practicing delayed gratification.

“It interferes with our ability to create healthy coping skills,” she said. “We go to our phone or to social media as (a means of) avoiding. And so that does not allow us to practice more beneficial types of coping when we’re distressed.”

Read the full article via The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

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