It’s time to get serious about social media and youth mental health
Issue #67
Earlier this year the CDC released its Bi-annual Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary. Think of this as a high-level report on how kids these days are doing. Well, the findings were kind of dire. According to the CDC, the kids are not alright. Even though substance use, risky sexual behavior and bullying seem to be trending down, every other measure of wellbeing looks pretty grim. The report’s executive summary puts it starkly: “Unfortunately, almost all other indicators of health and wellbeing in this report including protective sexual behaviors (i.e., condom use, sexually transmitted disease (STD) testing, and HIV testing), experiences of violence, mental health, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors worsened significantly.” Yikes.
Some lowlights of the report include the startling statistic that 57% of teen girls feel persistent sadness or hopelessness, and 30% have seriously considered suicide. Although teen boys are also in distress, it seems girls are faring worse. This is really upsetting stuff, and a lot of people immediately started pointing fingers at the old villain: technology—and specifically social media.
Obviously, the causes of this precipitous decline in mental health among youth are complex. Many researchers and experts are still hesitant to say that social media is the cause. They’d rather say that it’s a correlating factor that needs to be studied further. But given the alarming trends we’re seeing, it might be time to rethink the way we’re looking at (and talking about) social media and how it affects our wellbeing.
At this point, there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence that social media can have negative effects on our self-esteem and cause us to compare ourselves to others. It’s simply not designed to make us feel good about ourselves. Instead, it’s optimized to keep us scrolling at all costs. We know these things to be true. So it’s not a huge leap to say that social media is detrimental to kids’ mental health. Facebook’s own internal research suggests as much.
That said, some experts are getting a bit bolder—and going so far as to say that the link between social media and mental health is beyond circumstantial. Jon Haidt recently argued in no uncertain terms that social media is a major cause of the mental illness epidemic in teen girls. While I don’t always agree with his arguments (a story for another day), I think he might have a point here.
When you look at all the available research on digital media and mental health, the picture is admittedly murky. But, as Haidt argues, when we dig into the data, it’s possible to draw some harder conclusions. For example, studies that argue there is little correlation between screen time and mental health often include all digital activities, like watching TV or gaming. But when we zoom in on social media specifically, a different and more definitive trend starts to emerge.
This is such an important issue that we really can’t afford to wait for that one definitive study to come along and “prove” that social media is the culprit behind teen mental health decline. I personally believe that where there’s smoke there’s fire. The problem is the negative aspects of social media that have been amplified by manipulative design. Comparison, unrealistic beauty filters, likes, follower counts, divisive content: all this stuff is problematic for teens whose brains are still developing.
And, it’s important to bring nuance to this conversation because many teens get lots of positives out of technology in general—and even social media in particular. The aspects of technology that connect kids, spur their creativity and encourage them to cultivate skills and passions—those are a force for good.
Teens want to use social media to connect with each other and explore their emerging identities, but these platforms skew reality and present unattainable standards. Young people desperately need online spaces that are designed to optimize their wellbeing. The ones we have now are designed to optimize engagement, keep them scrolling in order to collect their data, show them ads and maximize company profit.
The conversation around social media and youth mental health has not been very productive so far. Some experts have said it’s worse than heroin, while others have concluded it’s harmless as a potato. It’s time to get real. We need real answers, real policies and real solutions because our kids’ wellbeing is hanging in the balance. As a parent, I know this stuff is scary, but we also don’t have to give in to panic. You can sit down with your kids and talk to them about social media. Try and understand how they’re using it and ask them how it makes them feel. These platforms aren’t going anywhere any time soon, so the best we can do is try and guide our children towards healthier relationships with social media.
A deeper dive
Here are a few helpful resources in case you want to really dig into today's topic:
In his recent article, Jon Haidt points out one of the issues with research on the effects of social media. He says that most studies approach social media the same way as studies on sugar consumption. The difference though is that social media isn’t a purely individual phenomenon. Whereas one person’s sugar consumption won’t impact another person, social media is social by its very nature. As he argues, “social media is very different because it transforms social life for everyone, even for those who don’t use social media, whereas sugar consumption just harms the consumer.” So if a teen girl quits social media today, her mental health might not necessarily improve. That’s because “social media creates a cohort effect: something that happened to a whole cohort of young people, including those who don’t use social media. It also creates a trap—a collective action problem—for girls and for parents. Each girl might be worse off quitting Instagram even though all girls would be better off if everyone quit.”
The old “screens are as harmless as a potato” argument represents one extreme side of the screen time debate—but it’s important to understand the limits of this kind of study. There are a lot of different things that kids can do with technology; some are positive, some are neutral, some are negative and others are downright dangerous. The trick is finding out what’s truly detrimental, so we can help protect children and prepare them for responsible tech use.
TL;DR
Too long; didn't read. It shouldn't be a full-time job to keep up on industry news, so here is a mercifully quick summary of some other notable developments:
TikTok is one of the most popular social media apps for younger users, and recently the company announced that it’s imposing a 60-minute limit for teenage users. Before you rejoice, know that there are lots of workarounds for savvy teen users. In fact, when they hit the 60-minute limit, they can bypass it by entering a passcode. Or, they can side-step this feature entirely if they’ve lied about their age initially when setting up an account.
Ethan Mollick is an author and professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Unlike many educators out there, he has embraced AI and even mandates that his students use chatbots to complete assignments. And, he’s concluded that, without proper training, almost everyone uses AI wrong and gets poor outcomes as a result. Like any new technology or tool, people need to learn how to work with it.
And lastly
Here are a few more pieces of original writing from me and my team—just in case you're keen for more:
With all this talk about mental health crises and technology, it’s easy to feel a little helpless. But, remember that you have the ability to help guide your kids toward healthy relationships with technology. Here’s some advice from parenting coach Anita Cleare on how to approach screen time with younger kids.
And, if your kids are a little older and venturing into the online world on their own now, here are some helpful tips from internet safety expert Fareedah Shaheed.