The Digital Wellness Lab has been established at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School to address concerns about the impact of tech products on children.
The founder of the lab, Michael Rich, says that parents and pediatricians need to recognize when social media becomes a problem for children.
Digital Wellness Lab provides research for consumers and producers of technology and aims to establish ground rules based on science and common sense.
- Rich believes that unhealthy internet use is not an addiction but a disorder called "Problematic Interactive Media Use" (PIMU).
- PIMU indicates underlying problems, including mood disorders and ADHD.
- While TikTok recently set a 60-minute screen time limit for children under 18, Rich and his colleagues recommended more muscular rules.
- Serious social media use has been linked to mental health issues, most notably depression in girls.
- The Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders (CIMAID) at Boston Children's Hospital, which Rich co-runs, is a medical program for kids with internet and social media issues.
- Rich advises parents to sit down and play games with their children instead of yelling at them to stop playing video games.
Seattle Public Schools' recently filed a lawsuit against social media giants, including TikTok and Meta, for contributing to a youth mental health crisis.
