Teens, Social Media, and Mental Health: It’s Not As Clear Cut As You Think
There’s a GIF – a short video loop – that features Julia Louis-Dreyfus as “Veep” dropping her head on her desk in exasperation. For a time, it was a perfect articulation of how we felt as researchers who study teens and screens. It seemed there was little our field could agree about, though plenty of reason for concern about teen mental health.
Pre-pandemic public health data captured rising rates of hopelessness, sadness, and suicide risk among U.S. teens. As of 2019, more than 1 in 3 high schoolers said they experienced persistent sadness or hopelessness. Then, the world shut down, which hit an already struggling demographic hard. Forty-four percent of U.S. high schoolers said they experienced persistent sadness or hopelessness during 2021. For adolescent girls, emergency department visits for suspected suicide attempts were 51% higher as compared to the same winter period just two years prior. And a meta-analysis of data collected globally during the pandemic – from more than 80,000 children and teens – found that depression and anxiety symptoms appeared to double compared to pre-pandemic estimates.
Data like these typically lead to finger pointing at social media and smartphones.
Many people believe, on a gut level, that social media has made it harder to be a teen. With some notable exceptions, last year’s leak of Instagram’s internal research was widely treated like a smoking gun: evidence that the company was knowingly causing harm, particularly to adolescent girls. Two widely circulated slides from the leaked documents carried these conclusions: “Teens who struggle with mental health say Instagram makes it worse” and “1 in 3 girls blame Instagram for making their body image issues and problematic social media use worse.”
The reports revealed internal awareness that the product can amplify issues for adolescents – even though the company hadn’t been saying so publicly. Yet among researchers who study teens and technology, the leaked findings were hardly a revelation. The data show that some teens who are struggling say that social media is making things worse. This echoes prior research, including our own.
The question is: what should we do about it?
We need to start by acknowledging how developmental changes in adolescence amplify risks. Compelling evidence from a recent study suggests that adolescence is an important window of vulnerability to social media. Adolescence is a critical period of identity formation among other major changes. It is little surprise that it seems to be a period of heightened sensitivity to social media, too.
But when in adolescence matters as well. In the same study, the researchers were able to identify specific periods when higher social media use predicted a decline in life satisfaction one year later and – conversely – lower social media use predicted an increase in life satisfaction one year later. Girls appear to have an elevated risk that comes with social media use around ages 11-13. This risk window is slightly later for boys, at 14-15. The sex-related difference may have to do with the onset of puberty, which begins earlier for girls.
Boys and girls also appear to share another window of heightened sensitivity, at age 19. This suggests that circumstantial changes, like those that come with the life transition out of secondary school, can also contribute to increased sensitivity.
Should we just try to keep everyone away from social media during these periods? Practicalities aside, there are good reasons to avoid one-size-fits all “solutions.” We now know that the impacts of social media actually vary considerably from one adolescent to another. For example: one study looked in-depth at how adolescents’ happiness changed in real time as a function of social media use. For some adolescents, it didn’t. Another group of adolescents was impacted only positively, and another group only negatively. In short: there seem to be different types of susceptibility and patterns of impact.
Over the last few years, with the help of a teen advisory board, we’ve studied how thousands of U.S.-based youth feel about growing up in a world with unprecedented social media and connectivity. Our clearest insight was that what’s hard about growing up with social media is different for different kids.
Some teens are adamant that social media impacts them negatively. They experience social media as toxic, pressure-filled, time-wasting, and insecurity-inducing. It’s a “depressant” and a place where they constantly see “perfect bodies” and “everyone else looking happier.” They may want to pull away from their devices but feel, as one 11th grader told us, that social media “runs my life.” The social pressures to stay connected are in tension with a parallel desire to be less plugged in. These aren’t hidden struggles. Again and again, we’ve found that many teens can readily articulate what’s hard for them about social media and why – if only adults will ask and really listen.
But there are also teens who are adamant that digital connectivity is a path to crucial sources of support, connection, validation, and inspiration. They curate their Instagram feeds to see content that is all about body positivity. Or they engage with “BookTok” – where they discover new reads and review novels for fellow book lovers. They stay connected with people who make them feel understood and supported. This is not to say these teens are immune to downsides as they pursue activism or hobbies or relationships online. But the positives for them are meaningful and real. (And even for the same kid, it can be a mixed bag: there can be positives and negatives that are more or less relevant at different times.)
As we focus on troubling trends in adolescent mental health, we’re right to wonder about how social media can be contributing to teens’ struggles. We’re right to push for policy changes so that tech companies are accountable to prioritize youth well-being. But teens need us to stop painting their social media experiences in broad strokes. Screen time limits are not a panacea, and one-and-done school lessons about digital detoxes won’t save us.
Social media is an amplifier – but what is it amplifying for different kids at different moments? Teens who are losing sleep may need help getting screens out of their hands at night; those who are stressing over body image to change what they see (or how they interpret what they see) in their feeds; those who feel they need to be available to their friends 24/7 may need help setting boundaries for their own well-being. We must tune into the particular at every turn. The research supports it, and effective interventions require it. This means bracketing our assumptions (“my kid is addicted to their phone!”). Instead, ask the teens in your life what’s happening for them behind the screen, and strive for empathy over eye-rolling as you listen.
About the Authors:
Drs. Emily Weinstein (top) and Carrie James (bottom) are researchers at Harvard Project Zero, where for over a decade they’ve researched youth and technology. Their projects focus on the ways social media shapes adolescents’ everyday lives, including well-being, civic participation, ethics, and family life. Drs. James and Weinstein are passionate about developing resources to support schools and families in rethinking digital citizenship, including through their longtime partnership with Common Sense Education. Their new book, Behind Their Screens: What Teens Are Facing (And Adults Are Missing), reveals the latest insights from their research with thousands of teens. It was published by The MIT Press this month.