The U.S. surgeon general released an advisory this past month warning that the country’s children “have become unknowing participants in a decades-long experiment” of social media use. The trouble is, the results aren’t in yet.
There is no question that the nation is experiencing a crisis in youth mental health. In 2021, 42 percent of high school students in a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness; 18 percent said they made a suicide plan. The numbers are bad for younger students, too. They are worst for teenage girls.
There is also no question that these numbers have changed dramatically in the past decade or so — the same period of time during which smartphones practically became extensions of people’s physical bodies. Today, 95 percent of teenagers use social media, and two-thirds daily. A survey of eighth- and 10th-graders revealed that the average adolescent spends 3½ hours per day on social media. One in 7 kids spends more than seven hours.
But there are questions about whether the spike in social media use is responsible for the increases in depression and suicide. There are other possible causes, such as economic anxiety or the opioid crisis. The pandemic didn’t help, though these troubles began before it. A decrease in stigma around mental health conditions could also explain some of the surge: Kids were always depressed; they just weren’t always talking about it — though a rise in mental health-related emergency room visits suggests this is not the whole story.
Statistically, some studies have found significant associations between heavy social media use and mental health challenges; others, including an analysis focused on the more general category of “digital technology,” have found that the correlation of mental health issues to spending a lot of time online is only as strong as the association between mental health problems and benign activities such as “eating potatoes.” Others, still, have discovered positive effects of social media use — especially among LGBTQ+ kids and members of other marginalized communities who can often find more diversity and acceptance on the internet than they do at home. Sometimes, different groups of scientists analyze the same set of numbers and come to opposite conclusions.
There’s also the possibility that what’s most harmful for the average kid isn’t social media use itself, but rather how it swallows up hours that would otherwise be devoted to the activities that science shows very clearly are beneficial for mental health, such as exercise or, crucially, sleep.
The vast majority of the meaningful associations researchers have found, in any case, are merely correlational. Causal relationships have been difficult to discern; technology companies, partly because of legitimate privacy concerns, are keeping to themselves the information necessary to come to those conclusions. The situation might improve with a new European Union regulatory regime, but U.S. lawmakers can also compel transparency for research purposes. Better still, they can fund this essential work.
The good news is, the contradictions and consistencies in the analyses researchers do have suggest places to probe deeper. The American Psychological Association’s declaration that “using social media is not inherently beneficial or harmful to young people” has somehow served as a talking point for both companies eager to continue business as usual and their loudest critics. But it’s also a clarion call to figure out, under what circumstances, it is harmful.
What populations are most at risk, under what circumstances? What types of social media use heighten the threat — is this just about time spent online or is it about how that time is spent, with endless scrolling on the one hand and more active engagement on the other?
What features tend to promote the worst types of use — from recommendation algorithms that send users to evermore extreme versions of what they’re already consuming to “like” counters that respond to kids’ cravings for social rewards without ever truly satisfying them?
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What types of content pose the same problems — material that relates to eating disorders, for instance, or to self-harming mechanisms?
The results of robust studies could help platforms come up with interventions that target the most dangerous aspects of their products. Or they could help Congress come up with legislation focused on, say, the way platform design promotes concerning behaviors. Perhaps restrictions on algorithmic recommendations for children are in order. Perhaps the endless scroll should actually end — or at least, users should be prompted to step away or look at something different. Perhaps they should be prompted to go to bed at bedtime. (Some apps are already experimenting with features such as these.)
Any additional insight can guide parents in setting rules for their own children, as well as in understanding what warning signs to watch for.
Whatever solution the numbers point to, it’s unlikely to be the blunt measures some states are considering and even passing into law today: See Utah’s restriction on children under 18 from using social networks without a legal guardian’s consent or Montana’s all-out ban on TikTok.
The surgeon general is right that we lack the evidence to conclude social media is “sufficiently safe” for the tens of millions of kids who while away their days on these sites. Yet so far, the country also lacks the evidence to conclude whether and how it is hurting them. For now, the best treatment plan is to get those answers and, in the meantime, for parents to use common sense, making sure their children get exercise, sleep and screenless engagement every now and then.
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