Fitness trainer and media personality Jillian Michaels is urging parents to “keep the pressure on” social media companies, warning about the platforms’ allegedly “addictive” algorithms and content.
Michaels made the comments during an appearance on “The Faulkner Focus” while promoting her new Fox Nation documentary, “Toxic 2: A Generation on the Brink.” Michaels advised parents to limit their children’s access to online activities.
“You have to do everything you can,” Michaels said. “And that means putting parental controls on your kid’s phone, period. Take the phone away at night, limit the sites that they can access, have communications with them regularly about the content that they’re seeing online. But you also have to be realistic about what they’re going to do when they’re not with you.”
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“This is the part where we also have to continue putting pressure on the social media companies to make their algorithms safer for kids,” she said. “They created an addictive product, they know it, and we need to keep the pressure on.”
In the documentary, Michaels examines the risks she says children face in the modern age, including excessive screen time, mental health issues and over-medicalization.
“The truth is, a lot of parents probably don’t realize the scale of what kids are dealing with today,” she said. “From day one, the fragile little bodies and brains of the tiniest and most vulnerable among us are being targeted, treated and toxified from all angles.”
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Michaels is joined by several experts in “Toxic 2: A Generation on the Brink,” including psychology researcher Jean Twenge, who argues that individuals who begin using smartphones at an early age are more likely to experience mental health issues later in life.
“In some of the best design studies, the heaviest users of social media are about twice as likely to be depressed as lighter non-users,” Twenge said. “Even in other studies, you see at least often a 40% or a 50% increase in depression from not using social media to being a heavy user of social media.”
“Gen Z and Gen Alpha know how bad these technologies can be for them,” Twenge added. “They’re the ones who came up with phrases like ‘chronically online,’ which make it sound like a disease, ‘brain rot,’ that it’s bad for your attention span and your focus.”
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Social media companies have faced increasing pressure to be regulated and be held accountable for the potential effects of their platforms. In August, Meta agreed to pay as much as $17.1 billion and implement restrictions on teen accounts to settle claims that it designed Facebook and Instagram to addict children and misled the public about the platforms’ safety. Meta denied the allegations.
For more on the potential risks personal tech and other issues pose to young children, make sure to watch “Toxic 2: A Generation on the Brink,” now streaming on Fox Nation.
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