Stop Panicking Over Teens and Social Media

Modern life is digital. Adults need to help young people navigate the costs and benefits, not launch bans and hope for the best

By Lucy Foulkes. She is a research psychologist at the University of Oxford. She is the author of “Losing Our Minds: The Challenge of Defining Mental Illness” and “Coming of Age: How Adolescence Shapes Us.” Excerpts:

"many other academics argue that the studies and results that Haidt presents are not strong enough to support his conclusions, that there are other possible explanations for the rise in depression and anxiety among teens. In fact, most researchers in this area have reached a counterintuitive consensus: the relationship between social-media use and young people’s mental health is weak, on average, and sometimes nonexistent."

"the psychological impact of social media is hardly clear-cut."

"How social media affects a young person depends on a range of factors, including their personality, their friends, their mood, their real-world experiences and the technology itself"

"one 2021 study of 387 Dutch adolescents in the journal Communication Research found that 45% reported no change in well-being immediately after using social media, 28% noted a decline and 26% expressed a rise. Some young users observed that social media makes them feel anxious or left out, or that they see inappropriate and distressing content. But participants also said social media helps them feel more connected with their friends and themselves, that it offers outlets for creativity and an antidote to loneliness. 

A review of 36 studies examining how young people engage with friends online, published in the journal Adolescent Research Review in 2017, found that all the core qualities of face-to-face friendships, such as validating feelings, offering emotional support and having fun, play out virtually, too. “Rather than reducing intimacy in friendships,” the authors wrote, “technology-mediated communication may provide the same benefits to teens as interactions that occur face-to-face.”

"In a 2024 study in the journal Social Media + Society, teenagers in focus groups explained that they look to social media for connection, entertainment, inspiration and information. The effect of these experiences proved mixed. Some said they felt more connected with friends, others felt lonelier"

"Some said they sometimes had positive and negative feelings at the same time."

"These motley effects mean that sledgehammer solutions, such as total bans, won’t reliably improve young people’s mental health."

"beyond regulatory guardrails and technical tools, rules for social media use, and at what age they are gradually eased, should be left to families and schools."

"Young people are experts in getting around the rules. When China imposed strict controls on online gaming in 2019, young people signed in with the names of older relatives or friends, used photos of other people to trick facial-recognition software and bought accounts through the black market"

"banning this technology for everyone under 16 isn’t the solution, not least because these sites are so well embedded in popular culture."