How does social media impact the mental health of teenagers?

The CEO of Meta (Facebook's parent company), Mark Zuckerberg, testified before Congress in January to address questions regarding the impact of social media on the mental health of children. During the hearing, he stated: “The existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal link between using social media and young people having worse mental health.”

However, numerous social scientists disagree with Zuckerberg's assertion. Recent research has indicated a connection between usage of social media by adolescents and a decline in their well-being or mood disorders, particularly depression and anxiety, affecting their mental health.

Interestingly, one of the most referenced studies on this correlation is centered around Facebook. It evaluated whether the rise of Facebook on college campuses during the mid 2000s contributed to increased symptoms related to depression and anxiety. Alexey Makarin, an economist from MIT and coauthor of the study, states that the research, published in the American Economic Review in November 2022, clearly showed this correlation. Makarin adds that while more research is needed, the claim that social media does not cause mental health problems is incorrect.

The worries and accompanying investigations stem from statistics that show a near universal usage of social media among teenagers aged 13 to 17 years. A 2022 survey found that 66% of teenagers use TikTok, while roughly 60% use Instagram or Snapchat. Facebook usage was reported by 30% of teenagers. Girls reported using social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook for approximately 3.4 hours daily, compared to boys' 2.1 hours. Concurrently, an increasing number of teens have been shown to exhibit signs of depression, particularly girls.

With growing evidence linking these phenomena, researchers are now shifting their focus towards understanding the mechanisms responsible for this correlation. Questions are being raised about why social media triggers mental health issues, why certain groups experience these effects more than others, and how the positives of social media can be distinguished from the negatives to offer more specific advice to teenagers, caregivers and policymakers.

Scott Cunningham, an economist at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, emphasizes the importance of understanding why these issues are occurring, stating that without this knowledge, effective public policy cannot be established.

The potential effects of social media usage on children's mental health have been a matter of concern for several years, leading to a vast corpus of scientific studies. However, these predominantly correlational studies have been unable to definitively conclude whether social media harms adolescent mental health or if those with mental health problems are using more social media.

Furthermore, the results from these studies have often been ambiguous or have shown mental health impacts so minimal as to be deemed insignificant. A significant study by psychologists Amy Orben and Andrew Przybylski combined data from three surveys to investigate a potential link between technology usage, including social media, and lowered well-being. Their research involved over 355,000 teenagers and focused on aspects such as depression, suicidal ideation, and self-esteem.

Orben and Przybylski, from the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford respectively, observed a minor decline in adolescent well-being related with digital technology use in their 2019 report published in Nature Human Behaviour. However, they played down this finding, comparing the scale of the decline to those associated with activities such as drinking milk, going to the cinema, or consuming potatoes.

The prevalence of more recent, rigorous studies has begun to challenge this perspective. In a longitudinal study, including Orben and Przybylski among other researchers, survey data concerning social media use and well-being from over 17,400 teenagers and young adults was used to analyze changes in responses to a life satisfaction question between 2011 and 2018. The survey also explored how responses varied in terms of gender, age and time spent on social media.

The study, published in 2022 in Nature Communications, revealed a relationship between social media use and decreased well-being among teens during critical developmental stages, such as puberty and young adulthood. It found that the well-being scores of girls aged 11 to 13 and boys aged 14 to 15 decreased, with this trend repeating in both groups around the age of 19. Additionally, evidence was found for the Goldilocks Hypothesis among the elder teens, which suggests that both excessive and limited time on social media may have detrimental impacts on mental health.

According to L.J. Shrum, a consumer psychologist at HEC Paris, there seems to be a notable impact of social media on specific age groups, or what has been termed as 'windows of sensitivity', even though there's minimal effect when studied broadly. Shrum has conducted a review on research studies related to teenage use of social media and its effects on mental health which is soon to be published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research.

Longitudinal studies provide hints at causation, say researchers. However, the most convincing attempts at establishing cause and effect come from real-world experiments where social 'interventions' are rolled out inconsistently across time and place, allowing for observation of outcomes among members who have been exposed to the intervention compared to a control group.

This method was used by Makarin and his team in a study looking at the phased introduction of Facebook across 775 colleges between 2004 and 2006. They gathered information regarding this roll-out alongside student feedback on the National College Health Assessment, a widely used measure of university students’ mental and physical health.

They then strived to determine whether the survey included identifiable mental health conditions. To this end, they had around 500 undergraduate students answer questions from both the National College Health Assessment and recognized screening tools for depression and anxiety. The researchers found a correlation between health scores on the assessment and scores on the screenings, suggesting the survey was an accurate reflection of clinically diagnosable mental health disorders.

The team discovered that colleges with Facebook saw a 2% increase in students meeting the criteria for anxiety or depression. According to Cunningham, not associated with this research, this study is currently the best in establishing a cause-and-effect relationship between social media usage and worsened mental health in teens.

Considering the addictive nature of Facebook and other newer platforms like Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok, paired with the general ubiquity of social media, it's likely that the negative impacts on mental health could be more significant today.

The focus of most social media related research is on young adults, but there's a need to shift the attention to minors, opines Cunningham. It's time for researchers to alter their approach. Just comparing social media users and nonusers is an oversimplification. As per a 2022 study by Orben and Przybylski, teens not using social media could actually feel worse than those who use it briefly.

Cunningham insists that research should delve into the specific circumstances and reasons why social media usage can be detrimental to mental health. Although there are hypotheses such as crowding out other activities or inducing unfavorable self-comparisons, the lack of direct questions in large scale studies limits the possibilities of understanding deeper correlations.

One such comprehensive project is the SMART Schools project by the University of Birmingham. Here, Victoria Goodyear and her team are comparing mental and physical health outcomes between students in schools where cell phone use is restricted and those where it isn't. They are also conducting interviews with focus groups made up of students, parents or educators, in an attempt to understand daily phone usage habits and perceptions of phone use restrictions during school hours.

Talking to teens and those in their orbit is the best way to get at the mechanisms by which social media influences well-being — for better or worse, Goodyear says. Moving beyond big data to this more personal approach, however, takes considerable time and effort. “Social media has increased in pace and momentum very, very quickly,” she says. “And research takes a long time to catch up with that process.”

Until that catch-up occurs, though, researchers cannot dole out much advice. “What guidance could we provide to young people, parents and schools to help maintain the positives of social media use?” Goodyear asks. “There’s not concrete evidence yet.”