Impact of Social Media on Youth

Question: What are the impacts of using social media? 

Answer: First, when we are talking about “social media,” remember that it is not one-size-fits-all! Social media platforms differ in their design; whether you’re looking to share pictures from your daily life, chat in groups, or participate in trending videos, each platform offers a unique experience. Everyone responds to social media differently, so the pros and cons we describe below are going to vary from teen to teen. The most important thing is reflecting on what types of positive or negative influences social media has on you.  

Positive experiences on social media include access to communities, social support, and learning new information:  

• Social Connection: Teens frequently say that social media helps keep them connected to friends and family.  Many report that they use social media to establish new friendships or romantic relationships. 
• Self-Expression and Self-Affirmation: Social media platforms can allow you to share your interests and activities through text, videos, and images. This type of personal sharing on social media, especially as an authentic form of self-expression, can help teens better understand who they are. An experimental study showed that looking at their own social media profiles helped young adults better understand themselves, boosting their self-esteem. Teens also say sharing personal thoughts online helps them express their feelings.  
• Interest-Driven Exploration: As you develop more independence, social media can be a space to discover new ideas and knowledge. This is particularly helpful for finding health-related information you may not otherwise have access to.  
• Empowerment and Civic Engagement: In a 2018 survey, about two-thirds of teens said they used social media to learn about different points of view or show their support for causes. Social media is a way for you to engage around topics of interest to you and connect with an online community.  

Negative experiences on social media usually involve comparing oneself to others, seeing negative content, unwanted contact and harassment, or displacing other experiences:  

• Mental Health and Wellbeing: The connection between social media and mental health is complicated. The relationship can go both ways: some symptoms of poor mental health, like feelings of sadness or isolation, might drive you to use social media more, which in turn shapes how you engage with content online. Also, it may not affect you the same way it affects others using social media: some people report that their daily social media use correlates with worse well-being, while others don’t share that same takeaway. Finally, social media’s effects on well-being will depend on the balance of negative and positive interactions and content that you experience on these platforms.  
• Cyberbullying: Almost half of adolescents have experienced cyberbullying, harassment, or aggressive behavior online. Studies have reported that being a target of cyberbullying is associated with negative outcomes such as an increase in substance use, as well as worsened mental health symptoms, school performance and life satisfaction. Teens with different life experiences may be more likely to be bullied or harassed online.  
• Body Image and Disordered Eating: Social comparison, or determining your own worth based on how you believe you compare to others, is common on social media, especially on image-based platforms. Profiles that focus on disordered eating, “thinspiration,” fitness, or plastic surgery can be recommended to users and influence norms and values around beauty. Editing selfies using filters, cropping, or editing one’s appearance is associated with negative self-esteem and how teens like you might think about your appearance.  
• Harmful Content such as pornography, child sexual abuse material, self-harm depictions, violence, or accounts selling illegal substances can be found on social media, despite platforms’ best efforts to remove these posts.   
• Unwanted Contact from strangers, marketers, or trolls has been reported by teens, more commonly females than males.  
• Sleep can be negatively impacted if you postpone bedtime so that you can continue to use social media for entertainment. Phone use before bed may also lead to psychological, emotional, or physiological arousal; activities that demand a person’s full attention, whether digital or not, can increase heart rate, delay sleep, and decrease REM sleep.  
• Digital Stress is a term used to describe stress resulting from frequent use of digital information technology, which is caused by constant access to a wide array of social content, fear of missing out, and anxiety about approval. Teens report feeling pressure to always be available to another person via technology and respond quickly to messages, and therefore not getting time for solitude.   

What you can do:  

1. Pay attention to when and how you are using social media, how it makes you feel, and what it might be crowding out. Check out the 5 Cs to help you think about these things. 
2. Curate your feed so that it gives you more positive experiences. This includes changing who you follow, muting users who are stressing you out, and blocking users who are toxic, fake, or rude. Report any content that you find harmful. This past portal response and this video have some helpful tips on how to manage your social media feed.  
3. Work with your friend group to create boundaries around when you’ll be on social media, and when you won’t (such as overnight).   
4. Talk to other people you trust about your social media experiences. This allows you to share the good stuff you are seeing and problem-solve when social media is feeling more negative.
5. Join movements that advocate for healthy social media designs that try to maximize the positives and minimize the negatives.  
6. Work with your family to make a Family Media Plan to help you set priorities and make sure your social media use meets your goals. 

References 

• Bates, A., Hobman, T., & Bell, B. T.. (2020). “Let Me Do What I Please With It . . . Don’t Decide My Identity For Me”: LGBTQ+ Youth Experiences of Social Media in Narrative Identity Development. Journal of Adolescent Research, 35(1), 51–83.  
• Beyens, I., Pouwels, J. L., Van Driel, I. I., Keijsers, L., & Valkenburg, P. M.. (2020). The effect of social media on well-being differs from adolescent to adolescent. Scientific Reports, 10(1).  
• Branje S. (2022). Adolescent identity development in context. Current opinion in psychology, 45, 101286.   
• Felig, R. N., & Goldenberg, J. L. (2023). Selfie-Evaluation: A Meta-Analysis of the Relationship Between Selfie Behaviors and Self-Evaluations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.   
• Hale, L. et al (2018). Youth screen media habits and sleep. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 27(2); 229-245.    
• Hefner, D., & Vorderer, P. (2016). Digital stress: Permanent connectedness and multitasking. In L. Reinecke & M.-B. Oliver (Eds.), Handbook of media use and well-being (pp. 23–249). New York: Routledge.  
• Khoo, S. S., Yang, H., & Toh, W. X.. (2024). Leveraging Instagram to enhance self-esteem: A self-affirmative intervention study and multilevel mediation analysis. Computers in Human Behavior, 150, 107972.   
• Luo, M., & Hancock, J. T. (2020). Self-disclosure and social media: motivations, mechanisms and psychological well-being. Current opinion in psychology, 31, 110–115.  
• MacKenzie, M. D., Scott, H., Reid, K., & Gardani, M. (2022). Adolescent perspectives of bedtime social media use: A qualitative systematic review and thematic synthesis. Sleep medicine reviews, 63, 101626.  
• Marciano, L., Schulz, P. J., & Camerini, A. L. (2020). Cyberbullying perpetration and victimization in youth: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 25, 163–181. 
• McInroy, Lauren & Craig, Shelley. (2019). "It's Like a Safe Haven Fantasy World": Online Fandom Communities and the Identity Development Activities of Sexual and Gender Minority Youth. Psychology of Popular Media Culture. 9. 10.1037/ppm0000234.  
• Moreno, M. A., & Uhls, Y. T. (2019). Applying an affordances approach and a developmental lens to approach adolescent social media use. Digital health, 5, 2055207619826678.   
• Nesi, J., Mann, S. and Robb, M. B. (2023). Teens and mental health: How girls really feel about social media. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense.  
• Nixon, C. L. (2014). Current perspectives: The impact of cyberbullying on adolescent health. Adolescent Health, Medicine and Therapeutics, 5, 143–158. doi:10.2147/AHMT.S36456  
• Orben, A., & Przybylski, A. K.. (2019). The association between adolescent well-being and digital technology use. Nature Human Behaviour, 3(2), 173–182.   
• Pew Research Center, May 2018, “Teens, Social Media & Technology 2018”  
• Reid Chassiakos, Y. L., Radesky, J., Christakis, D., Moreno, M. A., Cross, C., & COUNCIL ON COMMUNICATIONS AND MEDIA (2016). Children and Adolescents and Digital Media. Pediatrics, 138(5), e20162593.   
• Robb, M.B., & Mann, S. (2023). Teens and pornography. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense.  
• Steele, R.G., Hall, J.A. & Christofferson, J.L. Conceptualizing Digital Stress in Adolescents and Young Adults: Toward the Development of an Empirically Based Model. Clin Child Fam Psychol Rev 23, 15–26 (2020).  
• Vogels, E. A. (2022). Teens and cyberbullying: 2022. Retrieved November 1, 2023

Age: 10-17 

Topics: Youth, Social Media, Positive and Negative Impacts, Benefits and Harms 

Role: Youth