If you’re a parent, you’ve probably heard it social networks harms children’s mental health. Teenagers float around with air-brushed bodies, perfect vacations, and select groups of friends, and end up feeling like they don’t fit in. This argument focuses on only one type of social comparison.
Social comparison is an innate, automatic process that helps us understand how our world works. It’s “Do I look that good?” or “Do I have enough followers?” Also, “How do people act here? What does it take attention and confirmation? What does victory look like? How do I succeed? ” The potential harm of social media promoting unrealistic beauty standards pales in comparison to the larger life lesson of “how to be.” Observing others teaches children how to solve problems, resolve disagreements, and respond to conflict (Bandura, 1977).
Currently, the most prominent models of how conflict works are politicians, influencers, and public figures reacting to personal attacks. rejectiondeterrence and revenge as winning strategies and symbols of power.
These are the life lessons our children are learning. And unlike beauty standards, these are not superficial.
Conflict curriculum
Children do not ignore it politicseven young people. They get information from the media, overheard conversations, and the emotional tone of adults around them. Children under the age of five often reflect their parents’ political attitudes (Patterson et al., 2019).
They draw conclusions about behavior, not policy. Children process social behavior, not tax rates or external relations. They watch who wins and how, who has power, how they treat others, how they handle adversity, and who is held accountable. Decades of research show that observing behaviors and outcomes influences which behaviors are acceptable and effective.
The lessons that children are taking now are not good. Our political environment teaches children that conflict is about anger, abuse, and dominance, not disagreement, negotiation, and correction. Public figures and political elites across the spectrum model specific communication patterns that predict relationship failure—criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling (Gottman & Silver, 1999).
This is not about politics. It is about the main ways people relate to each other, how they deal with differences of opinion, talk and listen to each other, as well as their willingness to solve problems, compromise and find solutions. Conflict resolution strategies children learn early in friendships, workplaces and romantic relationships. Adolescencein particular, when social habits are reinforced, the brain’s social circuitry is highly responsive to them. the environmentand peer relationships become the primary training ground for relationship skills.
When destructive habits go viral
As I wrote before psychologist John Gottman has shown that four communication habits—criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling—are destructive to powerful relationships. Today, these patterns also dominate children’s media environments, modeled by high-status adults, reinforced by algorithms, and rewarded with attention. These behaviors don’t stay online; they show up on school playgrounds.
What will our children see?
- Criticisms These are personal attacks on who a person is, not what they have done. Children watch adults make global judgments about those with whom they disagree. Lesson: If someone crosses your path, follow who you are, not what they did.
- Hatred it turns humiliation becomes a performance. Public to embarrass became a central tactic of establishing dominance. Lesson: Making someone small is a big picture.
- Defense ability this reframes disagreement as persecution. It’s called fact checking biasand denial and deflection are normalized. The lesson: admitting guilt seems weak; double down looks strong.
- Getting stoned and emotional withdrawal that denies responsibility. In the teen world, it’s like blocking instead of talking, “read” but unanswered texts, public outings, or sudden deletions. Lesson: When something threatens you self imagedon’t pay attention.
Does it impair children’s ability to form relationships?
Many teens recognize the performance nature of online spaces, but it’s not conducive to repeatedly tracking success through unchecked power and constant disrespect.
As Bandura (1977) has shown, we model what we see and internalize reward. When disruptive patterns dominate high visibility domains and are associated with power and status, they become part of children’s interpersonal relationships. Children don’t need to admire what they see to shape how they react under pressure.
We are already seeing the downstream effects. Heavy exposure to conflict-rich media is associated with stronger offline relationships, decreased empathy, and weaker family ties. There is a trickle-down effect from a polarized political environment to societal behavior. Bullying Rates increase in areas of high political conflict (Huang & Cornell, 2019).
Children read between the lines. When adults treat with contempt and aggressionthey indicate that these are acceptable answers. Regularly criticizing, hating, defensiveness, and stonewalling are associated with greater power. worrydeclining trust and difficulty regulating feeling. When these patterns are modeled by high-status public figures and reinforced by recommendation algorithms, we teach our children to do the same.
This is not a partisan issue. Revenge, hatred, and denial are behaviors in relationships that have long-term consequences. If the adolescent’s primary pattern of self-defense is public humiliation, if feedback triggers defensiveness, and if the act of acting out when the going gets tough is ghosting or denial, intimacy and long-term trust are compromised.
What adults can model instead
Mechanisms that transmit disruptive patterns can propagate constructs. Adults who handle conflicts well, handle disagreements without dehumanizing them, admit missteps without being defensive, and have tough conversations without exploding or checking provide strong protective role models for children. They provide the foundation for personal and professional success and the life skills necessary for rewarding, meaningful relationships.
What can we do? Act as a translator and guide.
- Say what the children see. Identifying and defining malicious communications. Focus on communication style, not ideology.
- Connect online behavior to real life. Ask children to imagine how they feel in their own relationship to develop empathy to gain perspective.
- Model healthy conflict in your own life. Conflict is an inevitable fact of life. Show how you recognize and fix disagreements in your relationship.
- Be clear about what you value. Highlight examples where people disagree vehemently. Separate your beliefs from your delivery.
- Help children think before they answer. Compare the impulse review with the long-term one goals. Slow things down enough to choose an effective response.
Preparing children for success
Social media and its algorithms will not disappear, nor will our instinct to evaluate and compare ourselves to others. Rather than protecting children, teach them skills to recognize destructive patterns, deal with negative emotions, and cope. unconscious convince.
Setting children up for success means equipping them with the skills, habits, and mindset to overcome challenges, build relationships, and achieve goals. If children’s conflict patterns stem from destructive communication patterns, these consequences carry into adulthood, damaging relationships and opportunities. It’s not about political allegiance. It’s about preparing children for a meaningful future.
Politicians come and go, but the effect of normalized animosity, if it continues unchallenged, will damage the relationship. Cruelty is not strength.
