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As a seventh grader, Emma Lembke was one of the last in her friend group in Birmingham, Alabama, to get on social media. When she did, she says she soon found herself addicted, spending five hours a day on the apps, mostly Instagram.

鈥淎t an important developmental period in my life as a young female, as a young kid, in middle school, [I got] wound up in this world of likes, comments, very deeply quantifiable measures of my value, addictive algorithms, and the endless scroll,鈥� she says.

When Lembke reached what she calls a 鈥渂reaking point鈥� in ninth grade, she began looking into the effects of social media. She found research articles, , and that all suggested to her that the anxiety, body image issues, and isolation she thought she was alone in feeling were in fact linked to social media use.

During the pandemic, Lembke, who is now 19 and a freshman at Washington University, started an organization called , which provides resources for , advice for better , a on navigating social media, and a place to submit personal stories so teens can break what Lembke says is a stigma around admitting that use of social media is making them miserable. The group has since grown to a team of 60 digital youth advocates from 16 different countries.

鈥淚 was unaware of the heavy editing and toxicity of the body standards present on the apps, but what I was aware of was how I was not meeting that preset standard,鈥� starts published on the organization鈥檚 website. 鈥淚 wish someone would have told me to never get on the apps as a young, highly insecure 7th grader. It has taken years of self discipline and reflection to get to a place where I can look in the mirror and smile.鈥�

Log Off is part of a growing Generation Z movement pushing back against companies like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok, and the way they control teens鈥� social lives. Those born between 1995 and 2010 are often portrayed as 鈥渄igital natives鈥� who are . But they, like all age groups, are struggling with the mental health effects of spending hours in worlds that encourage heavy social comparison and value the quantifiable, the optimizable, and the performative over the authentic. Forty-two percent of Gen Z-ers now say they鈥檙e 鈥渁ddicted鈥� to social media and couldn鈥檛 quit if they tried, and more than half believe life was better before social media, according to the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics.

鈥淭eens face a choice: Either risk your social circle or risk your mental health,鈥� Lembke says.

The Social Media Generation

Unlike older adults, Gen Z never really had a meaningful choice about whether to use social media. To not be on Instagram or Snapchat or TikTok is, at most American schools today, to be in a distinct and socially left-out minority. Even before the pandemic, 95% of teens in the U.S. had their own smartphone or access to one, , and 75% had at least one active social media profile, .

At the same time, is increasingly showing that smartphone and social media use is connected with heightened anxiety, depression, self-harming behaviors, and sleep deprivation in teens.

In 2017, when psychologist Jean Twenge published an linking increased smartphone use with a 56% rise in suicide rates in Americans ages 10鈥�24 between 2007 and 2017, her findings were widely dismissed.

鈥淭he arrival of the smartphone has radically changed every aspect of teenagers鈥� lives, from the nature of their social interactions to their mental health,鈥� she wrote.

But our understanding of social media has changed dramatically since 2017, with recent by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen that the company鈥檚 own research found that teen girls鈥� eating disorders and body image issues got worse on Instagram. This came as there was already a growing awareness of the negative effects of heavy social media use because of the forced isolation of the pandemic. The release of on Netflix in September 2020, which features former employees of Facebook, Google, and Twitter revealing the addictive, emotionally manipulative design of these apps, furthered this cause.

In the past year, a nonprofit headed by The Social Dilemma protagonist Tristan Harris called the Center for Humane Technology鈥攑erhaps the organization that has done the most to raise awareness of and put pressure on Big Tech鈥攈as begun heavily supporting the work of young activists.

This includes , a nonprofit that funds young people to raise awareness about digital wellness and develop more ethical and inclusive tech. The organization was founded in 2019 by Susan Reynolds, a former English teacher at a private boys school in Concord, Massachusetts, who began researching the impacts of tech after noticing the addictiveness of AOL Instant Messenger in the late 1990s for her and her students. By the 2010s, she was meeting with college students to share research on associations between smartphone use and weakened cognitive capacity and sleep disruption.

鈥淲hat was clear to me was that [teens] needed data, but they didn鈥檛 need me telling them what to do,鈥� Reynolds says.

In the past year, LookUp has expanded, with chapters in the United Kingdom, India, and Africa. In October, the organization hosted that drew 1,200 registrants and featured more than 175 youth speakers, as well as a panel hosted by Deval Patrick, the former governor of Massachusetts, and remarks by Massachusetts Sen. Edward Markey, who is cosponsoring the . If passed, this legislation would ban social media鈥檚 addictive features, such as autoplay, push alerts, and follower counts, for users under 16.

Ritom Gupta, 22, director of community engagement for , believes raising awareness is especially important for his peers. 鈥淧eople in this country are still getting addicted to tech. It鈥檚 still in its infancy, not like the U.S., where everyone鈥檚 aware.鈥�

The group makes recommendations to its audience, such as not using one鈥檚 phone first thing in the morning, turning off notifications, and practicing meditation to use social media more mindfully.

鈥淭he irony on social media is that while you鈥檙e trying to capture the moment, you鈥檙e missing out on that moment to show people who are not there in that moment,鈥� says LookUp India Chair Rijul Arora, 25.

One app LookUp has funded, called , allows users to rate their moods while on social media, selecting choices like 鈥渉appy,鈥� 鈥渁ngry,鈥� or 鈥渁nxious,鈥� and then view trends as well as set goals for healthier social media use. Creator Madi McCullough, 23, a recent college graduate and freelance social media coordinator, was inspired by health apps that 鈥渦se persuasive technology for good,鈥� such as encouraging people to run more, rather than promoting addictive use.

Less and Better Tech

While the initial focus of LookUp was on funding tech projects like Mynd, Reynolds says that one of the widest-reaching initiatives centers around going tech-free. , created by 20-year-old University of Colorado, Boulder, student Maddie Freeman, is an initiative for high schools and individuals to log off or delete all social media apps for the month of November and spend their free time doing like yoga, cooking, and calling friends. The idea is to make going off social media a group experience rather than a socially isolating one. (Freeman recently for the challenge with The Social Dilemma director Jeff Orlowski).

Like other Gen Z-ers, Freeman appreciates that social media allows her to connect so easily with people in different time zones and doesn鈥檛 think it is the sole cause of mental health issues, but she believes it contributes heavily. In high school, 12 of her peers, including several friends, and all of whom were heavy social media users, committed suicide.

During the first NoSo November challenge last year, participants noticed a change right away, she says: 鈥淲ithin days of being in that challenge, everyone was like, 鈥業 do not miss these apps at all. I don鈥檛 want to re-download them.鈥� It was a weight lifted off of all of our shoulders.鈥�

While in the near-term, young activists have focused on raising awareness of social media鈥檚 impact and strategies to cut down on their use of it, they don鈥檛 talk about it as a matter of personal responsibility and self-control the way older adults often do. Instead, they frame it as a systemic issue that requires regulation, such as the KIDS Act and out of the United Kingdom that could influence how the rest of the world handles tech.

At the same time, teens and young adults don鈥檛 believe social media is going away. The focus, they say, must be on designing more authentic and less toxic ways of connecting, and teaching media literacy鈥攁nd they are ready to help lead the way.

鈥淏eing in Gen Z, social media was baked into the DNA of my childhood, and I think that鈥檚 going to be the same with every generation that comes after,鈥� Lembke says. 鈥淎s a society, we can force social media companies to prioritize their users and youth mental health, and to exist in healthier ways. I hope legislators will open up and listen to us, because there鈥檚 much to be said from our side.鈥�