By Rose Molina, LICSW
Analysis
For nearly 20 years, I have had the privilege of working alongside children and adolescents as a school social worker. During that time, the environments in which young people grow, connect, struggle and develop have changed dramatically.
Their relationships, identities, conflicts, coping strategies, sources of belonging and exposure to risk increasingly exist within digital spaces.
Social media is not separate from the world of young people. It is part of their world.
That is why the recent settlement with Meta deserves the attention of the social work profession.
Why the Meta Settlement Matters
In 2023, a multistate coalition sued Meta, alleging that the company intentionally designed features on Instagram and Facebook to keep young people engaged, misled the public about risks to children, and harmed young people's mental health. Meta disputed the allegations and did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement. CNN reports that Meta has agreed to pay about $18 billion to resolve the litigation.
But the significance extends beyond the financial settlement.
According to the Rhode Island Attorney General's Office, Meta must implement a range of protections for young users, including daily time limits, restrictions on overnight access and school-hour notifications, stronger age-assurance measures, and additional protections related to potentially harmful features and content.
These changes matter because they shift part of the responsibility for online safety back to the environment itself.
For years, our conversations with young people about technology have often sounded like this:
“Put your phone away.”
“Stop scrolling.”
“Get off social media.”
“Make better choices.”
Young people certainly need opportunities to develop self-regulation, digital literacy and responsible decision-making. But we must also ask whether we have placed too much responsibility on developing children to successfully regulate themselves within digital environments intentionally designed to hold their attention.
Protecting young people online cannot rest exclusively with young people and their caregivers. Technology companies, policymakers, families, schools, and social workers, all have a role.
Person-in-Environment Includes the Digital Environment
Person-in-environment is ground zero for us as social workers. We do not look at behavior in isolation. We seek to understand the relationships, families, schools, communities, cultures, policies and systems surrounding it.
Digital environments belong in that assessment.
I think about a student I will call Maria.*
Maria came to school visibly preoccupied with a conflict involving another student. Later, she was found in the bathroom on her phone. From the outside, the problem seemed straightforward: she was out of class and using her phone.
But curiosity revealed something different.
A weekend conflict between two young people had acquired an online audience. Peers were commenting, choosing sides and pressuring them toward a physical confrontation when they returned to school. Maria wasn't simply "on her phone." She was trying to monitor a social environment that had become increasingly threatening.
That distinction matters.
Digital assessment should move beyond asking, “how much screen time?” Social workers can also ask:
- Where do you spend time online, and what do you like about those spaces?
- What makes you feel connected? What makes you feel worse?
- Does being online interfere with sleep, school, relationships or things you want to accomplish?
- Have you experienced harassment, pressure, exclusion or unwanted contact?
- What would make your online experiences feel safer?
These questions help us understand risk, relationships, regulation, identity, safety and belonging. These are the same domains we routinely explore elsewhere in a young person's environment.
Connection, Not Just Restriction
Boundaries remain important. But boundaries work best within relationships.
After nearly 20 years of working alongside young people, our goal should not simply be raising children who comply with technology restrictions. We should also be developing young people who can eventually make healthy decisions about technology when adults are no longer making those decisions for them.
The American Psychological Association's 2023 health advisory on social media use in adolescence emphasizes that social media experiences should be tailored to young people's developmental capabilities and that features designed for adults may not be appropriate for children and adolescents.
Young people also need a voice in these conversations. They can tell us where restrictions help, where harms are occurring that adults have not noticed, and why particular digital spaces hold such powerful meaning.
Protection and participation do not have to compete.
What This Moment Asks of Social Workers
Meta's new protections should not simply become information we pass along to parents. They should change our practice.
For clinicians, digital experiences may intersect with anxiety, depression, sleep, self-esteem, identity and relationships. In schools, they may affect attendance, peer conflict, bullying, engagement and school climate. In child welfare and family practice, they may intersect with safety, exploitation, family relationships and access to support.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has similarly called for a broad approach to adolescent social media health that includes platform design, accountability, digital literacy, online harassment and shared responsibility.
I welcome Meta's new direction because they acknowledge something fundamental to social work:
We cannot continually teach young people to cope their way out of every harmful environment. Sometimes we also have to change the environment. Perhaps our question should not only be: “How do we get young people off their phones?”
We should also ask: “What are young people finding there, and how do we make sure the worlds they inhabit, online and offline, are worthy of them?”
School Social Worker Rose Molina, LICSW is NCSSW Director of Special Education.
*Name and identifying details changed to protect student confidentiality.
Learn more by watching our latest Back to School NAW Live Event:
What Social Workers Need to Know: Preventing Online Harms to Children and Youth