Social Media and Youth Mental Health: What Teens Ask, What Research Says

Impact of Social Media Use on Mental Health

Question: How do social media platforms specifically influence mental health, both positively and negatively?

Answer: The connection between social media and mental health is complicated and personal. Everyone responds to social media differently. Here are a few ways to think about how social media impacts kids and teens:

Positive impacts:

• Authentic self-expression, self-affirmation.
• Discovery of safe online communities, sense of belonging.
• Exploration of interests and passions.
• Civic engagement and empowerment.
• Social connections across geographical barriers.

Negative impacts:

• Cyberbullying.
• Poor body image, body dissatisfaction.
• Social comparison.
• Harmful content exposure.
• Unwanted contact from strangers, marketers, trolls, groomers, etc.
• Impaired sleep.
• Digital stress (i.e., stress resulting from constant access to a lot of social content, fear of missing out, anxiety about approval).
• Problematic media/internet use.

Interventions

Question: What strategies do you recommend for adolescents to use social media more healthily? What evidence-based interventions are most effective for students to self-regulate social media usage? 

Answer: Here are some strategies to help adolescents use social media in a healthier way:

• Pay attention to when and how you are using social media, how it makes you feel, and what it might be crowding out 
• Curate your feed on platforms so that it gives you more positive experiences (e.g., change who you follow, mute users who are stressing you out, block users who are toxic, fake, or rude, etc.) 
• Create boundaries with your friend group about when you’ll be using social media or on your phone and when you won’t (like overnight) 
  • Use “Do-not-disturb” or “Focus” modes so you’re in control of when devices grab your attention 
  • Explore the variety of controls and settings that social media platforms offer 
• Talk to others you trust (e.g., close friends, parent/caregiver, teacher) about your online experiences. Therefore, you can share the good stuff you’re seeing online and problem-solve when it feels more negative. 
  • Consider chatting with your family about making a Family Media Plan to provide some ideas for rules and guidelines for media use in your home 
• Plan a regular sleep routine that helps you relax and enjoy restful sleep  
  • Leave phone outside the room, use a different alarm clock, or have a family member wake you up 
• Join movements that advocate for healthy social media designs aiming to maximize the positives and minimize the negatives. Try to have a voice in developing school phone policies with school staff or form a digital wellness student group at your school community! 

Knowing When Social Media Is A Problem

Question: How would you define social media addiction as it relates to adolescents?

Answer: Despite many studies using “addiction” language, we usually use the term “problematic” to describe addiction-like behaviors and functionally impairing media usage. “Problematic” media use is accepted terminology among the medical and research communities, and some youth state that “addiction” language is stigmatizing or doesn’t encompass their lived experience. Problematic media use is commonly defined as a situation in which media use begins to displace sleep and other healthy behaviors, distracts from homework, or becomes excessive and compulsive for periods of time.  

Question: What are some signs of problematic social media use?

Answer: There may be a problem if someone shows the following signs:

• When media use displaces sleep and other health behaviors (e.g., exercise), distracts from homework, or becomes excessive or compulsive for periods of time.
• Departure from a teen’s usual personality or communication style.
• Showing less empathy based on the characters/ influencers a teen is watching, or based on a lack of face-to-face interactions. 
• Withdrawing socially, not listening.
• Red and watering eyes, fatigue on face.

Question: What are some psychological factors that make adolescents particularly vulnerable to problematic social media use?

Answer: The connection between social media and mental health is complicated. The relationship is bidirectional, which means that it can go both ways: some symptoms of poor mental health (e.g., sadness and social isolation) may drive a child to use social media more. On the other hand, children with existing mental health conditions like depression or anxiety may be more at risk of the negative effects of social media use. Also, every teen is different – some report that their daily social media use correlates with worse well-being, but others don’t share the same takeaway.

If a youth is lacking support in school or at home, social media may be an outlet and source of solace – the environment and context of matters. Lastly, clinical aspects of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), as well as other neurodivergent differences (e.g., Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)), may possibly contribute to problematic media use. Some of these aspects of ASD specifically include communication deficits, restricted interests, and a tendency toward solitary play.

Question: What are some signs of Problematic Internet Use (PIU)?

Answer: PIU is defined as “Internet use that is risky, excessive, or impulsive in nature leading to adverse life consequences, specifically physical, emotional, social, or functional impairment.” This framework encapsulates a range of challenges teens may face related not only to their social media use, but also to their Internet use in general.

Signs of PIU include:

• • Avoiding offline social connections to be online.
  • Lower grades due to overuse of technology.
  • Being emotionally withdrawn due to negative experiences with technology.

Online Content

Question: How can screen time with no educational or enriching content affect young children? 

Answer: Research shows that educational media designed by experts who understand children’s unique minds (e.g., PBS Kids, Sesame Street, Blue’s Clues) is associated with better child language development and school readiness. Unfortunately, a lot of child media content will say that it’s “educational,” but in reality, it isn’t. App store research reveals that most kids’ apps offer only repetitive and simplistic learning experiences and usually have distractions like targeted ads. Content creators on YouTube make money by posting videos with things kids will click on – candy, cake, toys, fast food, luxury items – which are recommended by YouTube’s algorithm. 

Question: How can this type of screen time impact early child development in the short- and long-term?

Answer:

Short-term: 

• Crowding out (i.e., detracting from) other healthy activities like playing with toys, in-person friend and family interactions, nature exploration, sleeping, school tasks/homework, etc. 

Long-term: 

• Language delays 
• Lower-quality interactions and relationships with parents/caregivers (fewer in-person interactions with adults and learning social skills) 
• Behavioral issues if screen time is used as an emotion regulation technique (e.g., using a tablet to calm a child during a tantrum) 

Relational Health & Social Experiences

Question: How can social media positively impact the quality of family relationships and friendships? 

Answer: Some of the ways social media may affect various relationships in a young person's life are as follows:

• Strengthens social connections and allows youth to conveniently stay in touch with friends and family, even those who live far away. 
• Helpful for safety reasons – Parents can identify a child’s location for pickup purposes after school extracurricular activities, including sports. 
• Staying informed on news and trends – Participating in the latest TikTok dance with friends, keeping up online may aid teens in feeling included in day-to-day social interactions centered on online activities. 

Question: What can parents and educators do to support youth with healthy social media use? 

Answer: Parents and caregivers can support youth with healthy media use by talking with them early and often about technology. Parents can use the Conversation Starters for Teens to guide these conversations. The Family Media Plan is a tool that families can use to co-create media guidelines, which can be helpful in setting boundaries and expectations for all family members to follow. Parents can also model healthy tech behaviors themselves by using “signpost language” to point out how they are making decisions about whether and when to check their phones. For example, a parent could model that they are setting their phone to the side before they start driving so they are not tempted to check it.  

Educators can support youth with healthy media use by incorporating digital citizenship lessons into the classroom. Common Sense Education has a free online digital citizenship curriculum that has lesson plans and resources that may be helpful. 

Research Gaps

Question: What do you hope to see in future research related to problematic social media use in youth? 

Answer: Future research should explore:

• Longitudinal studies: These types of studies can show effects over time, which helps us understanding outcomes and the direction of influence. 
• Larger sample sizes: Larger studies allow researchers to do advanced statistics, and to examine effects within certain groups, such as by gender or geography. 
• Identification of risk factors for what makes youth more vulnerable to harms from social media use: This evidence could help us understand who is more at risk, so we can tailor guidance or education to youth who are more at risk. 
• How youth from various demographic groups use social media differently: This evidence could help us understand how to provide tailored or targeted education or guidance that is useful to particular groups. 
• Impact of social media on marginalized and underserved or underresourced populations: This evidence could help us understand unique effects of social media on groups who may already have risks, so that we can better tailor prevention or interventions towards those groups. 
• Studying specific social media platforms vs. clumping all platforms together to study social media use as a whole: This evidence could help us understand whether particular platforms, or functions within platforms, increase or decrease risks. With this evidence, we can share with platforms to see if design solutions are possible to reduce risks. 

School Policies & Academic Achievement

Question: Can you provide an overview of your research on the impact of high school students using social media during the school day on academic performance?  

Answer: When phone use or social media use is unregulated in schools, we’ve found that: 

• Students say that texting is distracting to nearby students in class. Just experiencing a neighbor being off task while on social media can be detrimental to a student’s own comprehension of academic material. 
• Students in the vicinity of another student who is multitasking on a laptop (e.g., texting or using social media while doing schoolwork) scored worse on a test than those who weren’t multitasking. 
• There are big cognitive demands from task-switching, which is easily accessible on devices. 

Research tracking tweens’ and teens’ phones found that social media apps, YouTube, and video games are the most used apps over the course of the school day. Students say they use media as a “mental break” or “reset” when feeling overwhelmed at school, so it’s important that students are provided other ways to self-regulate when stressed out at school.  

To learn more about the ways in which social media may affect academic performance and get tips for balancing screen time with academics, check out this response in our Question and Answer portal.

Question: Are there any positive aspects of social media that you believe can enhance academic engagement or performance? 

Answer: Social media can support classmate-to-classmate or student-to-teacher communication, which is convenient and helpful in supporting online collaboration in homework, studying, and school projects. However, some advocates would prefer that schools and teachers not use social media to communicate with students, since it forces some students to create social media accounts they otherwise didn’t plan to. Alternate communication apps or email could be a good replacement.   

Technology Design Affordances

Question: How do features like notifications, likes, and algorithms amplify mental health concerns for young users? 

Answer: Social comparison can easily occur through likes, which can be linked to feelings that one’s popularity or how they’re faring socially are measurable things. Visibility, anonymity, algorithmic recommendations, and echo chambers on social media platforms are some technology design affordances or features that support the circulation of potentially harmful, polarizing, or controversial content. The more attention-grabbing and sensationalized a video or post is, the more likely it is to be liked and reposted, creating a feedback loop that perpetuates specific perspectives (i.e., extreme perspectives with mis/disinformation). Also, algorithms operate to show the content teens want to see the most, getting users hooked and staying on the platform for longer, which in turn makes more money for the social media companies and their advertisers. 

Question: What restrictions do you think would be beneficial to make social media use healthier?  

Answer: When social media platforms add design features that allow users to curate their experience, youth can use those features to optimize their time, content, and interactions with others. Examples of design features that platforms can allow users to adjust include nudges to take a break, time limits, content preferences, privacy settings, and notification settings.  

Social media platforms can also use default settings for users in different age brackets so that younger users might have stricter privacy controls, night mode automatically turned on and have more restrictive content filters. To take advantage of these guardrails, users should be sure to input their actual age so that the default app settings align with their age.  The Glossary of Digital Media Platforms outlines how users can adjust settings on different apps.