5 Ways to Talk to Your Teen About What They Watch Online

Teenagers are consuming digital media more than ever before, spending an average of nearly two hours per day on YouTube and 1.5 hours per day on TikTok alone. And that doesn’t sit right with some of their parents. About half of teens who report spending a lot of time online say that they argue with their parents about it, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted last year.

Experts say it’s time to stop lecturing and start listening. Exposure to negative video content like violence, substance use, self-harm or unhealthy body images may be harmful to teenagers, but adults can buffer the ill effects by initiating open conversations, according to the American Psychological Association’s new guidelines on healthy video viewing for adolescents, which were released Wednesday.

“It really is important that parents approach their teens with curiosity versus confrontation,” said Erlanger A. Turner, an associate professor of psychology at Pepperdine University.

Wondering how to do that? We turned to Dr. Turner and other experts — all of whom contributed to the new A.P.A. guidelines.

Here are five conversation starters to help your family have more fruitful discussions about some of the most powerful forces in video creation today: influencers and artificial intelligence.

1) Have you ever seen an A.I.-generated video? If so, how do you know?

We now live in a world peppered with digital fakery, said Mitch Prinstein, the chief science officer at the American Psychological Association.