cognitive behavioral therapy (cbt) as well. cbt helps victims of social anxiety to improve their ways of thinking, behaving, and reacting to stressful situations. withal, most cbt is held in a group format to help improve social skills. medications have not been shown to be effective in randomized, controlled trials for the related conditions of internet addiction disorder or gaming disorder. technology management as awareness of these issues has increased, many technology and medical communities have continued to work together to develop novel solutions. apple inc. purchased a third-party application and incorporated it as "screen time", promoting it as an integral part of ios 12. a german technology startup developed an android phone specifically designed for efficiency and minimizing screen time. news corp reported multiple strategies for minimizing screen time. facebook and instagram have announced "new tools" that they think may assist with addiction to their products. in an interview in january 2019, nick clegg, then head of global affairs at facebook, claimed that facebook committed to doing "whatever it takes to make this safer online especially for ". facebook committed to change, admitting "heavy responsibilities" to the global community, and invited regulation by governments. recent research evidence suggests that providing adaptive assistance can be effective in compensating for self-regulatory skills for some users. for instance, a study involving 157 online learners demonstrated that modifying learners' web browsing environment to support self-regulation was associated with a change in behavior, including a reduction in time spent online, particularly on websites related to entertainment activities. these findings suggest that interventions aimed at modifying the web browsing environments may be effective in reducing excessive time spent on social media and other leisure-oriented websites. however, the effectiveness of the intervention was moderated by learners' individual differences (self-reported personality traits). government response a survey conducted by pew research center from january 8 through february 7, 2019, found that 80% of americans go online every day. among young adults, 48% of 18- to 29-year-olds reported going online 'almost constantly' and 46% of them reported going online 'multiple times per day.' young adults going online 'almost constantly' increased by 9% just since 2018. on july 30, 2019, u.s. senator josh hawley introduced the social media addiction reduction technology (smart) act which is intended to crack down on "practices that exploit human psychology or brain physiology to substantially impede freedom of choice". it specifically prohibits features including infinite scrolling and auto-play. a study conducted by junling gao and associates in wuhan, china, on mental health during the covid-19 outbreak revealed that there was a high prevalence of mental health problems including generalized anxiety and depression. this had a positive correlation to 'frequent social media exposure.' based on these findings, the chinese government increased mental health resources during the covid-19 pandemic, including online courses, online consultation and hotline resources. parental responses parents play an instrumental role in protecting their children from problematic social media use. parents' methods for monitoring, regulating, and understanding their children's social media use are referred to as parental mediation. parental mediation strategies include active, restrictive, and co-using methods. active mediation involves direct parent-child conversations that are intended to educate children on social media norms and safety, as well as the variety and purposes of online content. restrictive mediation entails the implementation of rules, expectations, and limitations regarding children's social media use and interactions. co-use is when parents jointly use social media alongside their children, and is most effective when parents are actively participating (like asking questions, making inquisitive/supportive comments) versus being passive about it. active mediation is the most common strategy used by parents, though the key to success for any mediation strategy is consistency/reliability. when parents reinforce rules inconsistently, have no mediation strategy, or use highly restrictive strategies for monitoring their children's social media use, there is an observable increase in children's aggressive behaviors. when parents openly express that they are supportive of their child’s autonomy and provide clear, consistent rules for media use, problematic usage and aggression decreases. knowing that consistent, autonomy-supportive mediation has more positive outcomes than inconsistent, controlling mediation, parents can consciously foster more direct, involved, and genuine dialogue with their children. this can help prevent or reduce problematic social media use in children and teenagers. novel psychiatrist approaches some feel that modern problems require modern solutions, so we are starting to see modern approaches like that of dr. alok kanojia (a psychiatrist known online as dr. k) who runs not only a coaching program but also youtube and twitch channels called healthygamergg, where he talks about mental health, social media addiction, gaming addiction, and conducts interviews. scales and measures problematic social media use has been a concern basically since the advent of it. there have been several scales developed and validated that help to understand the issues regarding problematic social media use. one of the first scales was an eight-item scale that was used for facebook use. the facebook intensity scale (fbi) was used multiple times and showed good reliability and validity. this scale only covered three areas of social media engagement, which left the scale lacking. although the fbi was a good measure it lacked the needed component of purpose of use. the multi-dimensional facebook intensity scale (mfis) investigated different dimensions of use that include overuse and reasons for use. the mfis is composed of 13 items and has been used on several samples. the mfis also had good reliability and validity, but the scale was directed toward the use of facebook, and social media is far more than just one platform. the social networking activity intensity scale (snais) was created to look at the frequency of use of several platforms and investigated three facets of engagement with a 14-item survey. this scale looked at the purposes of use both entertainment and social function, and the scale as a whole had acceptable reliability and validity. the social media disorder scale (smd) is a nine-item scale that was created to investigate addiction to social media and get to the heart of the issue. this scale has been used in conjunction with multiple scales and does measure social media addiction. the smd has been tested and has good reliability and validity. this tool can be used by itself or in conjunction with other measures for future research and appears to be a reliable scale. there are many other scales that have been created, however there is not one single scale that is being used by all researchers. history because technological advances are considered “progress,” it becomes more challenging to admit and confront the negative effects associated with them. causality has not been established, despite associations between digital media use and mental health symptoms and diagnoses being observed. nuances and caveats published by researchers are often misunderstood by the general public and misrepresented by the media. according to a review published in 2016, internet addiction and social media addiction are not well-defined constructs. no gold standard diagnostic criteria or universally agreed upon theories on the interrelated constructs exist. the proposed disorder is generally defined if "excessive use damages personal, family and/or professional life" as proposed by griffiths. the most notable of these addictions being gambling disorder, gaming addiction, internet addiction, sex addiction, and work addiction. several studies have shown that women are more likely to overuse social media, while men are more likely to overuse video games. there have been studies linking extraversion to overuse of social media, and other addictive tendencies. along with extraversion, neuroticism has also been linked to an increased risk to developing social media addiction. it has been shown that people who are high in neuroticism are more keen to use a screen to interact with people rather than face to face contact because they find that easier. this has led multiple experts cited by hawi and colleagues to suggest that digital media overuse may not be a singular construct, with some calling to delineate proposed disorders based on the type of digital media used. a 2016 psychological review stated that "studies have also suggested a link between innate basic psychological needs and social network site addiction social network site users seek feedback, and they get it from hundreds of people—instantly. alternatively, it could be argued that the platforms are designed to get users 'hooked'." implications research shows that increase social media use and exposure to social media platforms can lead to negative results and bullying over time. while social media's main intention is to share information and communicate with friends and family, there is more evidence pertaining to negative factors rather than positive ones. not only can social media expose people to bullying, but it can also increase users' chances of depression and self harm. research assumes that those from the ages of 13-15 struggle the most with these issues, but they can be seen in college students as well. according to the center for disease control and prevention's 2019 youth risk behavior surveillance system, data showed that approximately 15% of high school students were electronically bullied in the 12 months prior to the survey that students were asked to complete. bullying over social media has sparked suicide rates immensely within the last decade. molly russell case in november 2017, a fourteen year old british girl from harrow, london named molly russell took her own life after viewing negative, graphic, and descriptive content primarily on social media platforms such as facebook and twitter. this news shocked the fourteen year old's parents who mentioned that she had never shown any previous signs of struggle and was doing very well in school. it was revealed in the court that six months prior to molly's death, she had accumulated a total of 16,300 pieces of negative content on instagram such as topics of self-harm, depression, and suicide. while breaking the numbers down on how often molly viewed these kinds of posts each day, it was revealed that twelve per day were related to either self-harm or depression. due to the fact that both instagram and pinterest have algorithms set in place where similar content will show up often if it is interacted with more than once, molly was surrounded by this content daily. it was also noted that throughout molly's experience on social media, there were never any warning signs pertaining to the information she viewed on these particular platforms. not only was this the first time that an internet company has been legally blamed for the death of a teenager, but this is also the first time that senior executives were required to give evidence in an official court of law. technology companies such as pinterest and meta (which owns instagram) were considered to be at fault for the lack of policies and regulations that were not already set into place prior to molly's death. between 2009 and 2019, there has been a 146% increase in suicide rates and can be alarming since social media plays such an active role in teenager's behavior. merry varney, the lawyer who represented molly's case explained that the findings used in court "captured all of the elements of why this material is so harmful." dr. navin venugopal was the child psychiatrist asked to speak on this case when they were determining molly's cause of death. dr. venugopal disclosed that after reviewing molly's content on both pinterest and instagram, molly was highly at risk. even more so, he called the material "disturbing and distressing" and was unable to sleep well for weeks. the coroner of this case, andrew walker also concluded that molly's death was "an act of self harm suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content". molly's case has sparked a lot of attention not only across the uk but in the u.s. as well. it raises the question on whether or not policies and regulations will either be set into place or changed to protect the safety of children on the internet. child safety campaigners hope that creating regulations will help to shift the fundamentals that are associated with social media platforms such as instagram and pinterest. laws, policies, and regulations to minimize harm molly russell's case sparked discussion both in the uk and the u.s. on how to protect individuals from harmful online content. in the uk, the online safety bill was officially introduced into parliament