On Wednesday 4th September, Mayor Lester Friedman held a special 90-minute event as part of his ‘Les is More: An Hour with the Mayor’ talk series. Chaired by Emmy-nominated journalist Jacki Karsh, the event coincided with the City’s ‘Social Media Safety Day,’ and saw three panelists discuss the impact of social media on young people in relation to anxiety, illegal activity, self-harm and cyberbullying, amongst other issues. City-wide measures and preventions to help mitigate these impacts were also discussed.
Dr. Jane Tavyev Asher, a board-certified child neurologist and Director of Child Neurology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, kicked things off by explaining the science behind why social media use is such an important issue for children and teenagers. “As adolescents, their frontal lobes haven’t finished developing yet which means whatever they are faced with [on social media] is changing the actual formation of the brain,” she said.
