Even for kids who never post anything, spending time on social media sites can still be harmful because of the chronic social comparison, the unachievable beauty standards, and the enormous amount of time taken away from everything else in life. Surveys show that unstructured time with friends plummeted in the exact years that adolescents moved from basic phones to smartphones—the early 2010s. Figure 2.1 shows the percentage of U.S. students (combining 8th, 10th, and 12th graders) who said that they meet up with their friends “almost every day.”
