I’m a psychoanalyst. Social media is damaging children’s inner lives in ways we don’t fully understand | Robin Kirman
Psychoanalyst Robin Kirman argues that social media harms children by damaging their emerging desires and identities, a dimension of harm often overlooked in favor of behavioral outcomes. The article cites testimony from a landmark trial where a young plaintiff expressed a limited sense of self-worth, reflecting a broader trend of teens feeling disconnected from their authentic interests. Kirman contends that platforms exploit the brain's seeking system, stripping desire of its natural spontaneity and preventing the development of a true self.
- ▪Robin Kirman, a psychoanalyst, states that social media damages young people's inner lives by disrupting the development of genuine desires and identities.
- ▪Testimony from the Meta settlement trial highlighted a plaintiff who could only conceive of a 'miracle day' as becoming prettier, illustrating a contracted sense of self.
- ▪Kirman references the work of philosopher Harry Frankfurt and psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott to argue that desire and identity are inseparable and developed through free exploration.
- ▪Neuroscientific evidence suggests social media hijacks the brain's 'Seeking' system, fixing it on compulsive objects and stripping desire of its natural range.
- ▪The article distinguishes between documented behavioral outcomes like anxiety and the less discussed damage to a child's capacity for authentic self-discovery.
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| Original publisher | The Guardian — US |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/sep/15/social-media-children-identities-behavior |
| Publication time | Tue, 15 Sep 2026 09:00:32 GMT |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-15T09:06:52.788Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-15T09:06:52.788Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | Ali_peVt8OeQ · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
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Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
‘Kaley’s testimony echoes what I hear from many of my younger patients: teens who are often out of touch with what they want from life, not temporarily undecided but fundamentally unable to locate a sense of what matters to them.’ Photograph: Abdullah beg Mirza/AlamyView image in fullscreen‘Kaley’s testimony echoes what I hear from many of my younger patients: teens who are often out of touch with what they want from life, not temporarily undecided but fundamentally unable to locate a sense of what matters to them.’ Photograph: Abdullah beg Mirza/AlamyOpinionSocial mediaI’m a psychoanalyst. Social media is damaging children’s inner lives in ways we don’t fully understandRobin KirmanDiscussion has focused on behavioral outcomes.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at The Guardian — US.
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