Adolescents and the Internet: What Mental Health Clinicians Need to Know

Abstract

The Internet's permeation into daily life has profoundly changed the practice of psychiatry with adolescents, who mobilize online social media and related technologies in their efforts to develop identity and "hang out" with peers. Technology offers both challenges and opportunities to mental health professionals working with teens. Practitioners will need a new skill-set, including keeping abreast of technological developments; professionally incorporating technology into clinical assessment and practice; identifying the negative impacts of technology on teens' physical and mental health and the particular vulnerabilities of at-risk patients in a digital world; and guiding patients and parents about interventions. Particular patient factors related to race/ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation, mental health and trauma history, family culture, parenting style, and personality traits will need to be considered. This article provides an overview of the literature on adolescents and the Internet focusing on recent research on Internet and digital technologies used for social communication among youth.

The Use of Technology by Youth: Implications for Psychiatric Educators

“…In addition, adolescents often engage in media multitasking, with more than 50% engaging in multiple media activities at a given time, such as being online and watching TV [45]. As is often true with human behavior, there is a spectrum that spans Internet use from normal to problematic [46][47][48][49][50][51][52]. Overuse of the Internet in children has been associated with sleep problems, depression and anxiety, poor academic performance and poor social adjustment, and even increased suicide risk [19,[53][54][55][56].…”

Sexual Orientation and Depressive Symptoms in Adolescents

“…Pediatricians and health care providers may be particularly well positioned to address both the psychosocial and medical needs experienced by sexual minority adolescents. 49,50 The identified mediators warrant further evaluation as intervention targets in future clinical research.…”

Ethical Issues of Social Media Usage in Healthcare

“…There is a group of people who have grown up with the Internet: the youth, or the digital natives, regularly engage with new social-media [13], base their personal identities online [14], and social media is their natural environment. Youth is defined as a transition period from the dependence of childhood to adulthood's independence [15].…”

“…Youth is defined as a transition period from the dependence of childhood to adulthood's independence [15]. It is also the period when one's personal identity is formed, based on both individualities and the social environment [14]. For this digital native generation, the online social-media represents a space for connection, identity exploration, a space to express ideas, sexual identities, feelings, problems, and also a space where we receive feedback from others [16].…”