Does Social Media Really Harm Teens’ Mental Health?
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
Is social media bad for teens’ mental health? If you were to answer this question solely based on what’s been in the news lately, you’d be justified in thinking so. Last year, a multistate lawsuit was filed against social media giants including Meta, X, and TikTok alleging that the companies had violated consumer protection laws by designing psychologically manipulative features intended to incite “compulsive and extended use.” Hundreds of school districts have since followed suit. “Social media harms teens’ mental health, mounting evidence shows. What now?” asks one recently published article.
As it turns out, “what now?” is a difficult question to answer. Despite the clear-cut headline, the author of the article, which was published in Science News in February, concludes that policy makers and parents alike must tread carefully here. Although there is evidence to suggest that a causal link exists between social media use and poorer mental health outcomes, little is known about how that link actually works. Why does this matter?
One reason is that the effects of social media are not homogenous. In a recently published consensus report, a working committee found that social media provides important benefits for adolescents who may be more socially isolated, such as those with marginalized identities living in rural areas. On the other hand, research also shows that social media has a disproportionately negative effect on teen girls, specifically when it comes to their self-esteem and body image. How do we uplift and preserve the aspects of social media that have positive effects while mitigating those that cause harm, especially when they affect different teens in different ways?
Another challenge arises when we consider that the evidence does not support a 1:1 relationship between social media use and increasingly poor mental health outcomes. A study published in 2022 evaluating social media’s impacts across the lifespan found a ‘Goldilocks effect’ within the ages of 10 to 21, whereby adolescents with the highest social media use and those with the lowest use reported lower well-being. Does this mean there’s a ‘right’ amount of social media use for today’s teens? As in this study, social media use is often measured in terms of time spent online, but how teens are using social media and what platforms they’re using can also vary greatly. Do we see the same negative causal relationship in the teen that Snapchats all day versus the teen that spends most of their time scrolling through TikTok?
While recent headlines may prompt the instinct to shield adolescents altogether from social media, it’s important to resist throwing out the proverbial baby with the bathwater. Experience with the growing landscape we call social media is far from uniform, and to treat it as such risks obscuring both harmful and healthful mechanisms at play.
Of greater concern is that in operating blindly, we risk treating symptoms rather than causes, at best doing nothing to remedy the youth mental health crisis and at worst exacerbating it. Much more research is needed into the underlying and nuanced links between social media and teens’ mental health in order to inform truly effective policy and guidance for concerned parents, educators, and teens themselves.
References
Galea, S., & Buckley, G. J. (2024). Social Media and Adolescent Mental Health: A Consensus Report of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and medicine. PNAS Nexus, 3(2). https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae037
Gupta, S. (2024, February 20). Social Media Harms Teens’ mental health, mounting evidence shows. what now? Science News. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/social-media-teens-mental-health
Kang, C., & Singer, N. (2023, October 24). Meta accused by states of using features to lure children to Instagram and facebook. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/24/technology/states-lawsuit-children-instagram-facebook.html
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Social Media and Adolescent Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/27396.
Orben, A., Przybylski, A. K., Blakemore, S.-J., & Kievit, R. A. (2022). Windows of developmental sensitivity to social media. Nature Communications, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-29296-3
Prothero, A. (2024, February 1). School District lawsuits against social media companies are piling up. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/school-district-lawsuits-against-social-media-companies-are-piling-up/2024/01