Most of us remember middle school as a charcuterie board of things we would rather forget: The awkward bangs, the cafeteria lunch table hierarchy, the constant feeling that people were staring at our leopard print backpack (even though everyone was worrying about themselves). But there was a whole other school happening at the same time inside our phones.
There was no syllabus, no final exam and definitely no guidance counselor to explain why a seventh grader was watching a 45-minute podcast about relationships from someone who cheated on all of their partners. But we were still learning.
Social media was teaching us what beauty looked like, what success required, what relationships were supposed to look like and what it meant to be a man or a woman the “right” way.
Period One: Beauty Standards 101
The first class begins before most middle schoolers have even finished puberty. Open TikTok and search for a makeup tutorial, “glow-up” video, or a skincare routine. Congratulations — you’ve just enrolled in Beauty Standards 101. The thing is, fashion can be creative, social, and reflective of someone’s personality. The problem is what happens when a developing brain is constantly exposed to extremely specific images of what a person is “supposed” to look like.
A 2025 systematic review in BMC Pediatrics examined 23 studies published between 2009 and November 2024, and found that social media’s effects on cognitive development were mixed and depended on factors including the platform, intensity of use, and emotional state. The researchers associated excessive use with impaired attention, reduced working memory, and diminished executive functioning in adolescents.
Adolescence is a period of enormous brain development. New York-Presbyterian Health Matters, discussing research published in JAMA Pediatrics, explains that adolescents who habitually checked social media showed different developmental trajectories in brain regions involved in processing social rewards and punishments. On the other hand, the article also emphasizes that researchers cannot yet say social media itself caused those changes.
So when a 12-year-old spends hours seeing the same messages about bodies, popularity, and appearance, it’s worth asking what exactly is being repeated and what is being rewarded in their brain because the algorithm does not understand that you are having an identity crisis over a fifteen-second clip. Rather, it’s programmed to show you similar beauty-centered content after you engage with just one video.
Period Two: Faulty Fitness
Now imagine a middle schooler opening YouTube after school. They watch a gaming video, then a fitness video, then a motivational clip. This is where our imaginary middle school adds a new elective: Faulty Fitness. There are no textbooks. The “reading list” is mostly podcasts from people who may not be experts in the topics they share.
Jordan Peterson, for example, has promoted values such as self-discipline and order while also making statements about feminism and gender. Meanwhile, Andrew Tate became one of the most recognizable figures in the online “manosphere,” with his content being far more aggressive than advice about money or fitness. A fitness video can make extreme habits look like discipline, and a video about success can make constant productivity look like the only way to recognize worth. Even advice that sounds harmless on the surface can teach young people what, if anything, they are supposed to value about themselves.
Period Three: Advanced Gender Studies
One of today’s prominent Gen-Z online personalities is 28-year-old streamer Sneako. The Guardian describes Sneako as an “Andrew Tate imitator” who shifted from gaming and motivational content toward misogynistic and hateful material. His content has included claims about “female privilege,” criticism of feminism, and statements reducing women’s worth to physical appearance.
Again, the point isn’t that a middle schooler watches one video and immediately adopts an entire worldview. But what happens when the same idea appears 20 times? When one creator says something, it doesn’t die the moment they stop speaking. Their words can be turned into a meme, which someone at school might quote. Then, after all that, the algorithm notices that you watched it and it gives you another video saying the same thing.
School teaches through repetition, and so does the internet. The difference is that a school has teachers who are supposed to know what they’re teaching, while your For You Page has an engagement metric and motivation to keep you watching.
Period Four: Dating Economics
Welcome to the class where apparently relationships are a financial market. Fresh & Fit, a podcast hosted by Walter Weekes and Myron Gaines, has become a prominent example of toxic dating content. According to The Guardian, the show features discussions centered on “females, fitness and finances” and includes episodes in which women are invited onto the show and subjected to confrontational or belittling discussions.
The Guardian reports that researcher Debbie Ging found Fresh & Fit featured heavily among content recommended to male teenagers’ accounts. A middle school boy might not even know what a mortgage is, but their algorithm might already have an opinion about whether or not women should have one.
Lunch Period: The Algorithm
And then there’s the teacher who doesn’t appear on the class roster… The algorithm.
It follows students to lunch, goes home with them, and waits beside their beds. Essentially, this describes a school that measures success only on attendance and no other factors. The 2025 BMC Pediatrics review found that social media’s effects vary depending on how it’s used. Some forms of engagement can potentially support language or memory, particularly in educational contexts. Other patterns of excessive use were associated with difficulties involving attention.
Final Exam: What Did We Actually Learn?
Most of us have spent the last few years becoming adults while also trying to remember what we’re supposed to do with an I-9 form. We’re taking college classes now; we have syllabi, office hours, required readings, and professors who will — unfortunately — notice if we submit an assignment three weeks late.
But before all of this, we learned what “pretty” looked like from photoshopped strangers on our screens. We learned what “successful” meant from 20-year-olds filming themselves in rented cars from their mom’s basement. We learned what a dream man looked like from someone who screams at their girlfriend as soon as they stop filming couple’s content for their YouTube channel.
Researchers are still figuring out exactly what all of this means for developing brains. The existing evidence doesn’t support a simple story that social media is universally harmful, nor does it establish that one influencer can directly cause a particular effect on an adolescent’s mental health. What we do know is that middle schoolers are learning from the internet. But unlike our actual middle school, this one never had a closing bell.
We thought we were just scrolling. But really, we were learning who we were supposed to become.
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