Rabbi 360

There has been a lot of discussion recently at how social media is having a negative impact on the mental health of youth. Most recently the U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an Advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health warning about the dangers:

“Children are exposed to harmful content on social media, ranging from violent and sexual content, to bullying and harassment. And for too many children, social media use is compromising their sleep and valuable in-person time with family and friends.” Murthy said. “We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis – one that we must urgently address.”

I am sure there is truth in this report. But in my completely uninformed layperson’s opinion, to wholly lay the blame at the feet of social media is misguided. Social media is a tool and technology, and like all tools and technologies, they can be leveraged to do different jobs. We need only look in this week’s Torah portion to see that negative self-image is possible even without smartphones and Instagram accounts.

As the story goes, the Israelites have journeyed out of Egypt, to Mount Sinai, and now stand poised ready to enter into the Promised Land. Moses sends scouts–one from each of the twelve tribes–to check out the land and make a report. When they return, they all agree that the land is fertile and valuable. However, ten of the scouts report that the inhabitants of the land are huge and there is no way the Israelites could settle there. Despite the other two assuring the Israelites that it would be possible, the Israelites side with the ten, cry out against Moses, and refuse to advance. The Israelites are then punished with the 40 years of wandering in the desert.

The key passage in the argument of the ten is:

Thus they spread calumnies among the Israelites about the land they had scouted, saying, “The country that we traversed and scouted is one that devours its settlers. All the people that we saw in it are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there…and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.”

Numbers 13:32-33

In comparing themselves to the inhabitants of the land, the ten scouts believed saw themselves as “grasshoppers.” One could imagine that they saw themselves not only small physically, but emotionally as well.

Thus in the Torah–a text thousands of years old–is a story of people who compared themselves to others, and in comparing themselves to others lost hope in the future, were only able to focus on the negative things surrounding them despite their many blessings, and thus developed a negative self image. All without social media.

So while it might be easy to blame social media, we need to ask ourselves why else might the youth of today be struggling? What do they see when they scout the land surrounding them? What are their Nephilim?

• A mounting climate crisis that is reaching the point of no return
• Nationwide legislative assaults on trans youth
• The stripping away of reproductive freedoms
• Mounting debt and the increasing wealth gap
• The increased possibility of being killed in school by gun violence
• Movements to limit their voice through voting restrictions that target young voters
• Persistent racial violence and inequality
• Sanctioning of hate speech
• Political leaders who promote antidemocratic actions and delegitimize institutions

Indeed media might bring youth into greater awareness of these issues, but it is the issues themselves that have the potential to cause depression and anxiety, not the vehicle through which they hear about them.

I can think back to when I was a kid how my childhood was clouded by the existential fear of nuclear war with the USSR, something we didn’t need social media to learn about. And we saw in the pages of magazines5 and from the television screens images of perfection and achievement that we felt pressured to emulate.

And aside from these larger issues, we can think of the smaller, more subtle messages we send to our youth when setting up hierarchies of achievement rather than valuing the unique interests of each person. Or how messages of comparison and approval come not from the internet but from parents and teachers and other community leaders. [Mini-rant for the Jewish community: can we stop calling post-high school programs “gap year” programs? The term implies a particular path to college that not all our kids are on.]

If social media is a tool, then it can be used better. Indeed, in the Surgeon General’s report itself there is a recognition that there are positive benefits to social media. The press release for the report reads, “among the benefits, adolescents report that social media helps them feel more accepted (58%), like they have people who can support them through tough times (67%), like they have a place to show their creative side (71%), and more connected to what’s going on in their friends’ lives (80%).”

Ever since I started experimenting with teaching about Judaism and sharing spiritual messages and Torah insight on social media (a now three-year experiment), I’ve been surprised at how many people are spiritual seekers and respond positively. I only started doing it to have some fun during the Covid lockdown, but I continued when I realized it was a way to leverage this new technology to share some old traditions and truths in a way that proved meaningful and entertaining to folks. There are ways to use social media to affirm positive messaging.

I’m not that naïve to say that social media has other aspects that are harmful. It can be addictive like a lot of things can be addictive. Communicating over social media is only one type of communication and should be held in healthy balance. Negative and false messages can spread faster and easier.

And yet we also need to look at the message, not the media. There are a lot of societal challenges that have the potential to cause people to lose hope, and just focusing on social media should not a distraction from the deeper issues at hand.

We need to create a society where our youth do not look around and see themselves as grasshoppers, regardless of the medium they are using to view the world.