How Do Teens Use Facebook and Twitter? A Critique of the Public Health Impact of Screen Time Measures and Discriminating Between Behavioral and Social Media Effects
Many scientists are worried that parents and children are listening to the message from Haidt rather than learning about the more nuanced one suggested by other scientists. Some authorities, meanwhile, are moving to prohibit phones in schools and restrict access to social media. Megan is an adolescent medicine physician at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and she says parents and kids are aware of the narrative. That leaves parents confused about what to do and sparks family battles over screens.
A representative from Meta defended the policies of their platform, while another admitted that the site wasn’t safe when Russell used it. Both firms pointed to ways that they were improving their sites after hearing the inquest findings. Last year, Instagram launched ‘teen accounts’, which restrict the content young users can view.
For some, social-media use can ruin their lives. In September 2022, a London inquest found that 14-year-old Molly Russell died from an act of self-harm, whilst suffering from depression and the negative effects of on-line content. The inquest heard that before she took her own life, Russell looked at content about suicide on the platforms.
The differing conclusions may be because many studies are methodologically weak. They often rely on measures of people’s self-reported screen time, but such data are notoriously unreliable3. They also fail to distinguish between the variety of things adolescents do on screens, from viewing TikTok to doing schoolwork.
There are researchers who see potential benefits for certain groups. Under-represented populations are using their phones to find belonging and community in ways that are really effective, and she says that they are doing this a lot.
Such results might help to explain why some other studies, which look at averages, find little impact, says Ine Beyens, a communications researcher at the University of Amsterdam, who led the study. “When you put all these effects together, of course, in the end, you have a very small effect,” she says.
Haidt takes a different view. He says that the type of small effects that scientists have found is not unusual in public-health studies based on crude measures, such as self-reported screen time. He argues that the effects are often masked when researchers combine and analyse different results — such as data on boys and girls, or measures of overall well-being with those on depression. The links are clearer, he says, in analyses centred on depression and anxiety. “So this is getting very frustrating, because the evidence of harm is there.”
There is some evidence that people swear off phones and social media for a spell. Ruth Plackett, a health researcher at University College London, led the review which found some evidence of the benefits of staying away from social media. There were no studies that found an effect.
It’s also unclear in some studies, say Odgers and some other researchers, which comes first: whether social media causes depression, for instance, or whether young people who are depressed are more likely to spend time on social media. Odgers says we might have the arrow pointing in the wrong direction.
Researchers have done dozens of reviews to try and comprehend the conflicting literature, with varying results. Many have found relatively weak associations and small effects of these technologies on mental health. One 2020 analysis3 of more than 80 reviews concluded that there was, on average, a “negative but very small” association between adolescents’ use of digital technology, and social media in particular, and psychological well-being. The literature review did not support the idea that social media causes changes in adolescent health at the population level.
There is a book near the top of The New York Times bestsellers list. The Anxious Generation (2024), by psychologist Jonathan Haidt, argues that increasing time spent on smartphones and social media, at the expense of play, is rewiring the brains of children and adolescents and driving soaring rates of mental illness. It leapt to the top of the bestseller list when it was released a year ago and has sat there ever since.
No one denies that adolescent mental health is a huge concern. The rates of mental illness have been increasing in adolescents in many countries over the past two decades. In the US, the rates of depression and suicide have gone up in the last five years, largely due to increases in girls, according to surveys of adolescents. Researchers suspect that some of these trends could be down to increased awareness and reporting of mental-health concerns — but they have also searched for other causes.
The goal is to make sure that young people are encouraged to use technology in a healthy and safe way, while being aware of the effects of screen time on sleep and other bodily functions. Adults can be taught how to find that balance as well.
Finding ways to help young people navigate technology does not have to wait until its consequences are nailed down. Schools that ban phones — as many are now doing — provide a natural experiment to study whether this restriction boosts grades and well-being. The study that did not find evidence of a connection between phone policies and reduced phone use or improved mental health was published in February.
The researchers should focus on well designed studies. They could engage in an approach used in other fields called adversarial collaboration, in which researchers with clashing views work together on shared studies that could resolve their dispute. The public reception and validity of the research would improve if students, teachers, parents and caregivers were involved. Too often, a study that finds little evidence of negative impacts is poorly received, because it seems contradictory to what people are experiencing on the ground.
There are ways to tease apart at least some of this tangle, but it needs the technology companies to play ball. Scientists agree they need better, fine-grained data on what young people are doing and seeing on their phones. Researchers are frustrated that firms who have these data are often reluctant to share them. This is admittedly a legally and ethically fraught area: young people can’t give research consent if they are underage, and their privacy and security must be protected. Appropriate safeguards should be in place for companies and researchers to access and analyse such data.
A common experience suggests that phones can be distractive and thatapps can feel addicting if you encourage people to scroll through social media content. Technology companies, often with business models that depend on eyeballs on screens, have an incentive to keep people hooked.