THERE is a scene in the 2020 documentary The Social Dilemma that has stayed with me. A tear rolls down a girl’s face as she appraises herself in the mirror, her sadness a result of harmful body image comparisons rife on social media. The dramatic recreation depicts just one of the potential harms highlighted in a recent on social media use and youth mental health.
The advisory, a report “reserved for significant public health challenges that require the nation’s immediate awareness and action”, summarises some of the “ample indicators” that social media can pose a “profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents”. It cites a of more than 6000 US adolescents published in JAMA Psychiatry. The study found that those who spent more than 3 hours per day on social media platforms were at heightened risk of mental health problems, including symptoms of depression and anxiety.
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That amount of use isn’t unusual, research has shown. In , 13 to 14-year-olds and 15 to 16-year-olds in the US spent an average of 3.5 hours on social media per day, according to the University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future survey.
As I last month in JAMA, doctors are certainly concerned about social media’s effects on kids. Six major US medical groups the new advisory. When I spoke with Jeremy Veenstra-VanderWeele, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York, he discussed the staggering amount of time young people spend on social media and said the platforms can be all-consuming.
“From a circumstantial evidence perspective,” he said, “we are seeing a marked rise in youth anxiety and depression over the same period of time when social media has become so widely used.”
Matthew Davis, chair of the paediatrics department at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, told me that, among healthcare providers, “there is a strong sense that the harms outweigh the benefits for our patients”.
But what’s this about benefits? The potential harms seem clear, yet what we may not recognise is that social media can also have upsides for many young people, something the advisory not only acknowledges but emphasises. Yes, young people may be harmed by cyberbullying, explicit content and other serious pitfalls. But they can also find positive connections and social support that they may not have, as the young folks say, in IRL (in real life).
Veenstra-VanderWeele said patients have told him how vital their online community is, “particularly for teens who may not fit in easily with peers”.
The advisory underscores gaps in our knowledge around social media’s effects on youth well-being and calls on society to take action now. It will be important to understand the two-way nature of associations between social media use and mental health issues, for example. The ultimate goal should be to harness the potential benefits of online social connections, while decreasing the potential harms.
To achieve this, young people must be involved, says Tammy Chang at the University of Michigan, who directs the national youth poll in the US. “When youth have input and buy-in on initiatives meant to change their behaviours, those initiatives are more likely to succeed,” she told me.
My three teenage nephews say that at least some of the kids are alright. They know that whether social media is helpful or harmful depends on how it is used. Social networks are communities, after all, with both positive and negative elements – whether virtual or IRL.
Jennifer Abbasi is a journalist and news editor at JAMA
