Although concerns have mounted about the use of social media by young people, school districts often use Instagram to communicate. (Eric Thomas illustration for Kansas Reflector)
Even though this fictional dentist’s office doesn’t exist, imagine it for me.
This office is a small pediatric practice that treats Kansas kids for the normal stuff of childhood mouths: cavities and teeth cleanings. The dentist who runs the practice is trusted in town as an expert with her years of medical training and work with patients.
Week after week, she sees how candy destroys children’s teeth. Sometimes, the kiddos in her exam chair will literally have bits of gummy bears and gumdrops lodged to her teeth during their exams with her. She sees the gleaming sugary flecks on the enamel of their teeth. The high fructose corn syrup is on their breath.
Candy is everywhere she looks, and it’s the root cause of all that drilling and Novocaine and discomfort and insurance claims. Nearly every day, she shakes her head in disappointment as yet another child, having had four cavities filled, groggily walks out the front door holding their parent’s hand.
But this dentist has one odd habit. She gives every patient candy. She knows it’s wrong, but right there in the waiting room, there are jars of candy. They are lined up on a counter and refilled every day. It’s not the kids’ favorite candies: Skittles and Sour Patch Kids. She offers Necco Wafers, Mambas, SweetTarts and Tootsie Rolls instead. Nevertheless, many kids grab a handful on their way out, chomping on the candies on their way back to school.
If the fake story of this irresponsible dentist strikes you as odd — and it should — then I ask you to consider the gentle hypocrisy of what our schools are doing: limiting cellphone use during school hours but simultaneously moving school announcements, student contests and even classroom projects to social media.
At a moment when students are confused enough about how to interact with their cellphones, it’s a bewildering double standard. Ignore your phones and be skeptical about social media, except for social media that we, the schools, provide for you, which you are almost certainly viewing on your phone.
Kansas schools, like schools nationwide, are reconsidering and increasingly restricting phones in classrooms. The Olathe School District announced a policy in August that eliminates phones from the classroom for high school students, so that “such devices are not visible during the school day.” In Lawrence, teachers have petitioned the school district for a similar policy. Enter the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Student Screen Time , a statewide effort to provide “recommendations regarding the use of personal devices in school, screen time and mental health, and parental oversight of district-owned devices.” Teachers, parents and students know that cellphones have rotted out the classroom experience, and 2024 is the start of widespread restrictions.
Yet, at the same time, school districts are creating social media content aimed at students on social media, especially Instagram, a platform that has implicitly acknowledged that it has harms for teenagers. If the dentist is the school district, then Instagram is the candy that she is providing: more of the same harmful product, but this time it’s coming from the person who should know better.
Let’s agree that school districts need to communicate with their constituents and parents. Social media might be effective — and even fun — as compared to the printed newsletter that never emerged from my backpack when a teacher sent it home with me decades ago. We should keep weekly principal emails and Facebook announcements flowing toward parents.
But do schools need to provide students with more reasons to tap on Instagram?
If a Garden City student wants to see photos of themselves from the homecoming parade, the school sends them to Instagram . If a Pittsburg High School student wants to see photos of college signing day for athletes, the district sends them to Instagram . The same is true across the state and the country.
Some of these posts created by schools directly address the imagined student staring at the cellphone screen.
A post from Manhattan High School asks, “Do you know your grade level counselors? Our wonderful group of @manhattanhighcounselors are here to support you in many ways.”
Connecting students with their counselor is a noble cause (perhaps to talk about how a student’s attention has been shredded by social media). Is Instagram the right place for that connection?
Also consider the social media created by student publications at our high schools. As many schools have abandoned print issues of their student newspapers (a change accelerated by the pandemic), they have redirected toward social media, and most frequently Instagram. The work is gleamingly professional and even award winning.
Check out the social media for the Harbinger , the student newspaper of Shawnee Mission East High School in Prairie Village. The account has more than 2,500 posts and more than 3,500 followers. The graphic design and photography elegantly invite students to return to the app frequently to learn more. Students at many other Kansas schools are, no surprise, skilled at social media.
The same is true for many other organizations at Kansas high schools who pour their content and announcements onto Instagram. During the school day, students endlessly hear “Come visit us on Instagram” from the student council , the pride club , the choir, the football team , the sousaphone section of the marching band, the video production class and more. The student commons is no longer a physical space. It’s Instagram.
I’m an unlikely scold on this topic. I spent years defending the free expression of high school students, and I still broadly support it. When students ask my journalism advice, I encourage them to innovate: find the best platform to reach their audience. They reflexively think of Instagram and TikTok.
Sure, Kansas students should learn how to create social media messages that appeal to others, but at what age should they learn? Should those people be fellow teenagers, who we know are vulnerable to sinking into the morass of their cellphones?
And more importantly, should we be selecting Instagram?
As the school year was starting, Instagram issued new restrictions on teenage use of its app. Owned by social media giant Meta, Instagram created a new classification — Teen Accounts — for people between 13-17 years old. Along with limiting the contacts and content that young people can access, teen accounts also provide “reminders to leave the app after 60 minutes each day.”
Even with this change, Instagram has not been acting fast enough or with the best intentions. For years, researchers — even within the company — found that using the app had negative emotional effects on young users. Young women experienced the most harm as the app often steered them to content glamorizing eating disorders if they searched for healthy recipes.
Is it cynical or logical to see these new Instagram restrictions as the company protecting itself from a 2023 federal lawsuit filed by states claiming that the app hooks young people to boost profits while understanding harms? Are executives hoping to avoid another round of Congressional hearings exploring how they are complicit in creating a zombie generation of young people who seem the unwitting victims of a multibillion dollar corporation slurping up their attention?
What a moment, when we have high schools implicitly asking for students to visit their Instagram pages, while Instagram is acknowledging potential harms. What a moment, when state governments are suing a company for preying on young people and state-funded high schools are using the platform to reach young people.
As a dad of two teenagers, I confirm that teenagers don’t need any help in learning to roll their eyes at our adult advice, littered with double standards. So, as adults, let’s avoid the most glaring hypocrisies like this one.
When Kansas schools ask kids to use Instagram more frequently and for classroom projects, it’s as silly as a reckless dentist, the supposed guardian who knows better, handing out candy to kids. Our educational experts are making things worse.
The only difference? Gummy bears taste much better than Instagram.
Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here .
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