Tech and Teens

When school principal Christina Mehaffey first saw the Discover page of Snapchat, she could not believe what she was seeing. The algorithm of an app that was ubiquitous on the phones of her students at Faustina Academy was promoting content that was unambiguously pornographic. She decided to conduct an experiment. The incoming ninth grade class, with buy-in from their parents, would be barred from all forms of social media. The experiment was repeated the following year so that half the students (grade 9 and 10) were on social media and half (grades 11 and 12) were off.