WISCONSIN — A new study from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health showed that many pitfalls of social media use for teens could potentially be avoided thanks to a conversation with one's doctor.
"One of the motivations for doing this study is we'd heard from pediatricians was that this was an area where they needed additional training," said Dr. Megan Moreno, an adolescent health expert with UW Health Kids. "They needed some additional information to know how to do this counseling and how to fit it into a really busy clinical visit."
Moreno, who also serves as head of the Social Media and Adolescent Health Research Team, said that one lone conversation can make a big difference in a teen's social media use, and it can lead to additional conversations about it with one's parents or other adults.
"We did find that teens who were in that intervention group, who received the counseling from their pediatrician remembered that counseling six to nine months later," Moreno said. "And that they were more likely to put safety and privacy settings on their profile, and that they were more likely to have follow-up conversations with their parents."
Watch the full interview above.