Understanding the Data: Is There a Connection Between Teens’ Social Media Use and Their Mental Health?
As concerns about a youth mental health crisis grow, so does the debate about the causes of high rates of anxiety, depression, and even suicidality in adolescents. The academic community has responded to this widespread concern, in part, with research. In the last ten years, researchers have turned their attention to studies investigating teens’ emotional health, habits, and worldviews.
Inevitably, as academics and parents alike piece together the complexity of the adolescent experience, they must grapple with the influence of social media — and its potential role in harming or supporting young people’s mental health.
However, within the field, experts disagree on how to interpret the research about mental health and social media use. What should we conclude from the numbers and correlations? How can we assess if social media is a threat to teens’ emotional wellbeing?
In hopes of addressing the conflict among experts and developing solutions to better support adolescent mental health, the University of Virginia’s Thriving Youth in a Digital Environment (TYDE) initiative hosted a panel discussion with Dr. Jonathan Haidt and Dr. Candice Odgers, two leading figures in the field who have drawn different conclusions from the data. Haidt has publicly voiced his belief that social media use and mental illness are connected, while Odgers has expressed more optimism about the role social media can play in teens’ lives.
The lively and, at times, tense, debate brought into focus the complexity of the academic work and the strength of our desire to create a better world for youth and young adults.
Teens’ Mental Health is a Problem — But Is Social Media to Blame?
Haidt and Odgers seemed to agree that the numbers and trends are worth our concern and attention, at the surface. We are witnessing a spike in youth mental illness, according to data from self-reports, Emergency Room visits, and suicide rates over the last decade. Specifically, there has been a notable increase in diagnoses of internalizing disorders, like anxiety and depression. This uptick correlates with the rapid expansion of social media platforms and teens’ technology use in the same time period.
But what does this correlation really mean?
Odgers stressed that increasing social media use isn’t necessarily the culprit behind teen mental illness. When evaluating the data, she said, we must consider the broader cultural context of these trends: shifting attitudes about mental health and stigma (and thus, willingness to report illness and seek help), changes in diagnostic practices, and increases in access to mental health care in the United States, to name a few. She also noted that youth mental health does not exist in a vacuum; it must be evaluated alongside the state of adult mental health, which appears to be in crisis. 2023 suicide data, she said, revealed a historic high, and suicide rates have been rising in every age group, not just among teens. Rather than witnessing the impact of social media use, she posited, we could be seeing teens’ responses to a challenging environment beyond the confines of social media platforms. Moreover, she argued, youth mental health issues are nothing new: 20% of teenagers have always reported struggling with mental illness.
Haidt argued that social media may play a more direct role in a mental health crisis. He noted that we’re witnessing increasing rates of mental health concerns across many western countries, so we can’t simply attribute the high numbers to United States-specific changes, like access to healthcare. He also noted that teens embedded in “tightly bound” cultures — meaning more religious or community-oriented structures — are somewhat shielded from the technological changes and social media use of freer societies, and they don’t see the same high rates of suicide. This, he claimed is consistent with the famed sociologist Emile Durkheim’s conclusions on suicide: the loosening of social bonds (like we’re seeing with western teens and their technology use) contributes to mental health challenges.
As moderator Dr. Bethany Teachman noted, the majority of researchers in the field have come to similar conclusions as Odgers: these trends may be the result of more accurate reporting and changing cultural mores, and they can be attributed to factors unrelated to social media. Moreover, social media has proven to be a powerful resource for teens seeking community, and we need to consider data showing the positive impact of social media in teens’ lives.
Why Are We Getting Conflicting Interpretations of Research?
The debate between Haidt and Odgers highlighted the complexity – and the limitations of – existing studies on teen technology use and mental health.
Haidt argued that the existing research asks respondents about their technology use more broadly, failing to isolate social media use, specifically. These “blender studies,” as Haidt called them, group together a number of behaviors when determining a relationship between people’s emotional well-being and their technology use: social media use, surfing the web, and even watching TV. The latter two behaviors, he suggests, often benefit emotional well-being. Thus, when data paints a picture of a positive relationship between respondents and technology use, some researchers make the leap that social media alone can be considered positive. He added that these studies often group men and women together, obscuring gender-specific trends; specifically, women may have a more complicated relationship with social media in a way that affects their mental health. Ultimately, Haidt called for more studies isolating gender social media use in survey questions.
Odgers argued that there are a number of studies with a more specific focus on social media and challenged Haidt’s suggestion that some technology use (internet, TV) is inherently “good” and some (social media) is inherently “bad.” She went on to question Haidt’s confidence that new studies will show a causal relationship between increased social media use and mental health challenges. In fact, she said, evidence suggests that, if anything, the relationship may go the other direction: several studies have found that teens already struggling with mental health issues may spend more time on social media.
Claiming a causal relationship in one specific direction, without proper evidence, she said, is harmful and inconsistent with the scientific method.
How Can Social Media Platforms Better Support Teens?
Ultimately, Odgers and Haidt were faced with the ultimate question: what is the solution?
Unsurprisingly, the two researchers had different ideas. Haidt stressed the need for more age restrictions on social media platforms, limited smartphone use among teens, increased parental oversight, and a cultural return to a community-oriented childhood.
Odgers expressed less interest in setting strict age limits and changing youth culture. She contended that teens will see the most benefit from social media platforms being redesigned with youth safety and emotional support in mind, including better privacy protections, with particular focus on the wellbeing of minority groups.
Ultimately, Odgers and Haidt did find common ground in acknowledging that social media platforms have work to do in order to create a safer and more fulfilling environment for teens.
Margot Harris is a freelance writer, editor and consultant for the Center for Scholars & Storytellers (CSS) at UCLA. She’s previously worked at organizations like NAMI and Business Insider, where she frequently wrote about topics related to mental health and emerging technology. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Nonfiction Writing from Columbia University.