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Office of the Surgeon General (OSG). Social Media and Youth Mental Health: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory [Internet]. Washington (DC): US Department of Health and Human Services; 2023.

Social Media and Youth Mental Health: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory [Internet].

Social media has both positive and negative impacts on children and adolescents.

The influence of social media on youth mental health is shaped by many complex factors, including, but not limited to, the amount of time children and adolescents spend on platforms, the type of content they consume or are otherwise exposed to, the activities and interactions social media affords, and the degree to which it disrupts activities that are essential for health like sleep and physical activity. 6 Importantly, different children and adolescents are affected by social media in different ways, based on their individual strengths and vulnerabilities, and based on cultural, historical, and socio-economic factors. 7 , 8 There is broad agreement among the scientific community that social media has the potential to both benefit and harm children and adolescents. 6 , 9

Brain development is a critical factor to consider when assessing the risk for harm. Adolescents, ages 10 to 19, are undergoing a highly sensitive period of brain development. 10 , 11 This is a period when risk-taking behaviors reach their peak, when well-being experiences the greatest fluctuations, and when mental health challenges such as depression typically emerge. 12 , 13 , 14 Furthermore, in early adolescence, when identities and sense of self-worth are forming, brain development is especially susceptible to social pressures, peer opinions, and peer comparison. 11 , 13 Frequent social media use may be associated with distinct changes in the developing brain in the amygdala (important for emotional learning and behavior) and the prefrontal cortex (important for impulse control, emotional regulation, and moderating social behavior), and could increase sensitivity to social rewards and punishments. 15 , 16 As such, adolescents may experience heightened emotional sensitivity to the communicative and interactive nature of social media. 16 Adolescent social media use is predictive of a subsequent decrease in life satisfaction for certain developmental stages including for girls 11–13 years old and boys 14–15 years old. 17 Because adolescence is a vulnerable period of brain development, social media exposure during this period warrants additional scrutiny.

• The Potential Benefits of Social Media Use Among Children and Adolescents

Social media can provide benefits for some youth by providing positive community and connection with others who share identities, abilities, and interests. It can provide access to important information and create a space for self-expression. 9 The ability to form and maintain friendships online and develop social connections are among the positive effects of social media use for youth. 18 , 19 These relationships can afford opportunities to have positive interactions with more diverse peer groups than are available to them offline and can provide important social support to youth. 18 The buffering effects against stress that online social support from peers may provide can be especially important for youth who are often marginalized, including racial, ethnic, and sexual and gender minorities. 20 , 21 , 22 For example, studies have shown that social media may support the mental health and well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, transgender, queer, intersex and other youths by enabling peer connection, identity development and management, and social support. 23 Seven out of ten adolescent girls of color report encountering positive or identity-affirming content related to race across social media platforms. 24 A majority of adolescents report that social media helps them feel more accepted (58%), like they have people who can support them through tough times (67%), like they have a place to show their creative side (71%), and more connected to what’s going on in their friends’ lives (80%). 25 In addition, research suggests that social media-based and other digitally-based mental health interventions may also be helpful for some children and adolescents by promoting help-seeking behaviors and serving as a gateway to initiating mental health care. 8 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29

• The Potential Harms of Social Media Use Among Children and Adolescents

Over the last decade, evidence has emerged identifying reasons for concern about the potential negative impact of social media on children and adolescents.

A longitudinal cohort study of U.S. adolescents aged 12–15 (n=6,595) that adjusted for baseline mental health status found that adolescents who spent more than 3 hours per day on social media faced double the risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes including symptoms of depression and anxiety. 30

As of 2021, 8th and 10th graders now spend an average of 3.5 hours per day on social media. 31 In a unique natural experiment that leveraged the staggered introduction of a social media platform across U.S. colleges, the roll-out of the platform was associated with an increase in depression (9% over baseline) and anxiety (12% over baseline) among college-aged youth (n = 359,827 observations). 32 The study’s co-author also noted that when applied across the entirety of the U.S. college population, the introduction of the social media platform may have contributed to more than 300,000 new cases of depression. 32 , 33 If such sizable effects occurred in college-aged youth, these findings raise serious concerns about the risk of harm from social media exposure for children and adolescents who are at a more vulnerable stage of brain development.

Limits on the use of social media have resulted in mental health benefits for young adults and adults. A small, randomized controlled trial in college-aged youth found that limiting social media use to 30 minutes daily over three weeks led to significant improvements in depression severity. 34 This effect was particularly large for those with high baseline levels of depression who saw an improvement in depression scores by more than 35%. 35 Another randomized controlled trial among young adults and adults found that deactivation of a social media platform for four weeks improved subjective well-being (i.e., self-reported happiness, life satisfaction, depression, and anxiety) by about 25–40% of the effect of psychological interventions like self-help therapy, group training, and individual therapy. 36

In addition to these recent studies, correlational research on associations between social media use and mental health has indicated reason for concern and further investigation. These studies point to a higher relative concern of harm in adolescent girls and those already experiencing poor mental health, 37 , 38 , 39 as well as for particular health outcomes like cyberbullying-related depression, 40 body image and disordered eating behaviors, 41 and poor sleep quality linked to social media use. 42 For example, a study conducted among 14-year-olds (n = 10,904) found that greater social media use predicted poor sleep, online harassment, poor body image, low self-esteem, and higher depressive symptom scores with a larger association for girls than boys. 43 A majority of parents of adolescents say they are somewhat, very, or extremely worried that their child’s use of social media could lead to problems with anxiety or depression (53%), lower self-esteem (54%), being harassed or bullied by others (54%), feeling pressured to act a certain way (59%), and exposure to explicit content (71%). 44

Unless otherwise noted in the text, all material appearing in this work is in the public domain and may be reproduced without permission. Citation of the source is appreciated.

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• Published: 06 July 2023

Pros & cons: impacts of social media on mental health

• Ágnes Zsila 1 , 2 &
• Marc Eric S. Reyes   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5280-1315 3  

BMC Psychology volume  11 , Article number:  201 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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The use of social media significantly impacts mental health. It can enhance connection, increase self-esteem, and improve a sense of belonging. But it can also lead to tremendous stress, pressure to compare oneself to others, and increased sadness and isolation. Mindful use is essential to social media consumption.

Social media has become integral to our daily routines: we interact with family members and friends, accept invitations to public events, and join online communities to meet people who share similar preferences using these platforms. Social media has opened a new avenue for social experiences since the early 2000s, extending the possibilities for communication. According to recent research [ 1 ], people spend 2.3 h daily on social media. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat have become increasingly popular among youth in 2022, and one-third think they spend too much time on these platforms [ 2 ]. The considerable time people spend on social media worldwide has directed researchers’ attention toward the potential benefits and risks. Research shows excessive use is mainly associated with lower psychological well-being [ 3 ]. However, findings also suggest that the quality rather than the quantity of social media use can determine whether the experience will enhance or deteriorate the user’s mental health [ 4 ]. In this collection, we will explore the impact of social media use on mental health by providing comprehensive research perspectives on positive and negative effects.

Social media can provide opportunities to enhance the mental health of users by facilitating social connections and peer support [ 5 ]. Indeed, online communities can provide a space for discussions regarding health conditions, adverse life events, or everyday challenges, which may decrease the sense of stigmatization and increase belongingness and perceived emotional support. Mutual friendships, rewarding social interactions, and humor on social media also reduced stress during the COVID-19 pandemic [ 4 ].

On the other hand, several studies have pointed out the potentially detrimental effects of social media use on mental health. Concerns have been raised that social media may lead to body image dissatisfaction [ 6 ], increase the risk of addiction and cyberbullying involvement [ 5 ], contribute to phubbing behaviors [ 7 ], and negatively affects mood [ 8 ]. Excessive use has increased loneliness, fear of missing out, and decreased subjective well-being and life satisfaction [ 8 ]. Users at risk of social media addiction often report depressive symptoms and lower self-esteem [ 9 ].

Overall, findings regarding the impact of social media on mental health pointed out some essential resources for psychological well-being through rewarding online social interactions. However, there is a need to raise awareness about the possible risks associated with excessive use, which can negatively affect mental health and everyday functioning [ 9 ]. There is neither a negative nor positive consensus regarding the effects of social media on people. However, by teaching people social media literacy, we can maximize their chances of having balanced, safe, and meaningful experiences on these platforms [ 10 ].

We encourage researchers to submit their research articles and contribute to a more differentiated overview of the impact of social media on mental health. BMC Psychology welcomes submissions to its new collection, which promises to present the latest findings in the emerging field of social media research. We seek research papers using qualitative and quantitative methods, focusing on social media users’ positive and negative aspects. We believe this collection will provide a more comprehensive picture of social media’s positive and negative effects on users’ mental health.

Data Availability

Not applicable.

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Acknowledgements

Ágnes Zsila was supported by the ÚNKP-22-4 New National Excellence Program of the Ministry for Culture and Innovation from the source of the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund.

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Ágnes Zsila

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Department of Psychology, College of Science, University of Santo Tomas, Manila, 1008, Philippines

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AZ conceived and drafted the Editorial. MESR wrote the abstract and revised the Editorial. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Zsila, Á., Reyes, M.E.S. Pros & cons: impacts of social media on mental health. BMC Psychol 11 , 201 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-023-01243-x

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Social media use in healthcare: A systematic review of effects on patients and on their relationship with healthcare professionals

Edin smailhodzic, wyanda hooijsma, albert boonstra, david j langley.

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Received 2015 Nov 17; Accepted 2016 Aug 18; Collection date 2016.

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Since the emergence of social media in 2004, a growing percentage of patients use this technology for health related reasons. To reflect on the alleged beneficial and potentially harmful effects of social media use by patients, the aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the extant literature on the effects of social media use for health related reasons on patients and their relationship with healthcare professionals.

We conducted a systematic literature review on empirical research regarding the effects of social media use by patients for health related reasons. The papers we included met the following selection criteria: (1) published in a peer-reviewed journal, (2) written in English, (3) full text available to the researcher, (4) contain primary empirical data, (5) the users of social media are patients, (6) the effects of patients using social media are clearly stated, (7) satisfy established quality criteria.

Initially, a total of 1,743 articles were identified from which 22 were included in the study. From these articles six categories of patients’ use of social media were identified, namely: emotional, information, esteem, network support, social comparison and emotional expression. The types of use were found to lead to seven identified types of effects on patients, namely improved self-management and control, enhanced psychological well-being, and enhanced subjective well-being, diminished subjective well-being, addiction to social media, loss of privacy, and being targeted for promotion. Social media use by patients was found to affect the healthcare professional and patient relationship, by leading to more equal communication between the patient and healthcare professional, increased switching of doctors, harmonious relationships, and suboptimal interaction between the patient and healthcare professional.

Conclusions

Our review provides insights into the emerging utilization of social media in healthcare. In particular, it identifies types of use by patients as well as the effects of such use, which may differ between patients and doctors. Accordingly, our results framework and propositions can serve to guide future research, and they also have practical implications for healthcare providers and policy makers.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12913-016-1691-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Keywords: Social media, Health, Patients, Healthcare professionals

Previous studies on social media use in healthcare identified different effects of social media use by patients for health related reasons within the healthcare system. Social media can serve as an aid to patients. For example, it fosters their autonomy by complementing the information provided by healthcare professionals [ 1 ] and by providing psychosocial support [ 2 ]. Social media use by patients can also be an aid to healthcare professionals by providing a tool to strengthen the organization’s market position [ 3 , 4 ] and stimulating conversation for brand building and improved service delivery [ 4 , 5 ]. In fact, social media may have effects on both patients, and on the wider healthcare system [ 6 ]. In particular, it allows patients to receive support [ 1 ], and to complement offline information [ 2 ], which may lead to enhancing the empowerment of patients [ 6 ]. However, social media use by patients does not only provide beneficial effects. It may also constitute a challenge within the healthcare system to both patients and healthcare professionals. Since everybody with access to social media can post “advice” on how to deal with a certain health condition, it is important to create reliable online communication channels to prevent health problems being exacerbated [ 7 ]. For example, one misguided idea on Twitter urged Nigerians to drink excessive amounts of salt water to combat Ebola. However, this may have led to two deaths and more than 12 admissions to hospital [ 7 ]. Thus, many healthcare professionals fear that social media use by patients for health related purposes often spreads misinformation among patients [ 1 ].

Use of social media by patients for health related reasons provides different effects, which can result in both benefits and challenges. It is important to identify these effects of social media for the healthcare system, as “a growing percentage of patients use social media for health-related reasons, so health professionals will have to reflect on the alleged beneficial effects and the potential harmful effects of social media use by patients in healthcare” [ 8 ]. Hence, the review of these effects will contribute to a better understanding of potential benefits and challenges for both patients and healthcare professionals, but also other healthcare actors such as policy makers.

Therefore, this paper provides a systematic literature review of empirical studies on the effects of social media use by patients for health related reasons on patients and on their relationships with healthcare professionals. To our knowledge no other systematic research on this topic has been performed to date. Such review also provides the opportunity to extract general findings from the studies. Subsequently, healthcare professionals can learn from these findings about the effects of social media use by patients and share this knowledge with other patients and use it to their own advantage. We aim to answer the following question:

According to recent empirical research, what are the effects of social media use by patients for health related reasons on patients and on their relationships with healthcare professionals?

To answer this question, the paper will address the following: (1) the types of social media use by patients (2) the identified effects of social media use by patient on patients (3) the identified effects on the relationship between patients and their healthcare professionals and (4) the relationship between the effects on patients and healthcare professionals. By addressing the issue (4), we attempt to bring together our findings from the issues (2) and (3) and explore linking mechanisms between the effects patients experience and their subsequent link to the effects they experience in relationship with the healthcare professionals.

Study aim and terminology

The aim of this paper is to gain insights in the benefits and challenges of the effects of social media use by patients within the healthcare system and especially the effects on patients and on their relationships with healthcare professionals. The effects we focus on in this paper can be both causal and reciprocal, but always start with the use of social media by patients.

Despite the popularity of social media, there is a confusion about what is exactly meant by the term social media. Therefore, in this paper we use the definition provided in the highly cited paper by Kaplan and Haenlein [ 9 ]. They describe social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content”. The internet-based applications refer to the different categories of social media, which are blogs, content communities, social networking sites, collaborative projects, virtual game worlds and virtual social worlds. These types of social media are accessible to users to utilize for, among other things, health related reasons.

The term “users of social media in healthcare” in this paper refer to the patients and their family members. Patients are treated as any person who self-proclaims to be suffering from a certain condition, whether officially diagnosed by a healthcare professional or not. We define healthcare professionals as those who study, advise on or provide preventive, curative, rehabilitative and promotional health services based on an extensive body of theoretical and factual knowledge in diagnosis and treatment of conditions and other health problems [ 10 ].

In order to provide an overview of the different effects of social media use by patients for health related reasons on patients and on their relationships with healthcare professionals, we conducted systematic literature review.

To identify the articles, we employed a search strategy consisting of three terms as follows

a) “social media” or blog* or “content communit*” or “social networking site*” or “online social network*” or “virtual world*” or “online communit*” or “online forum*” or Facebook or Twitter or Wikipedia or IMVU or “second life” or YouTube b) “Patient*” and c) “health* provider*” or “health* professional*” or “physician*” or “doctor*” or “hospital*”. The full search string is also included in the Appendix A (see Additional file 1 ). Additionally, as suggested by the referees of this paper, we also used the term “client*” instead of “patient*”, together with the other two original categories of terms.

To perform this literature review, we followed the guidelines on conducting a systematic literature review as prescribed by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Literature Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) [ 11 ].

To conduct the search, we chose relevant databases of Web of Science and EBSCOhost COMPLETE. By focusing on EBSCOhostCOMPLETE, we made sure that the healthcare databases are included such as “PsycINFO”, “CINAHL” and “MEDLINE”. We also included the databases such “Business source premier” to include findings with a business perspective. Search options were slightly different for each database. For EBSCO the irrelevant databases were excluded first and no specific search field was selected for one of the three terms. The list of databases is presented in the Appendix B (See Additional file 2 ). Additionally, the option to search only in scholarly (peer reviewed) journals was used and the publication dates were selected to be after 2004. In the year 2004 the term Web 2.0 was used for the first time, which marks the start of the social media era [ 9 ]. On the other hand, we selected topic for all three terms in the Web of Science, which included the titles, abstracts, author keywords, and keywords plus fields of the articles.

Selection criteria

For an article to be included in the study it had to meet several selection criteria as follows: (1) published in a peer-reviewed journal, (2) written in English, (3) full text available to the researcher, (4) contain primary empirical data, (5) the users of social media are patients, (6) the effects of patients using social media are clearly stated, (7) satisfy established quality criteria. The articles were assessed on their quality by using the standard quality assessment criteria as identified by [ 12 ].

Prior to final screening and selection of the papers, first and second author agreed to independently read 100 abstracts and select the articles that would be included in the study based on the selection criteria. Afterwards, the selected articles by the two authors were compared and there was complete concurrence on the category “yes, this one will be included”. For some of the articles that were marked as “maybe”, first and second author had a brief discussion to reach a consensus. This helped to reach higher reliability for the inclusion of the articles. Further in the process, the second author consulted the first author whenever there was a doubt whether to include or exclude the article. In addition, regular meetings with the third author also contributed to the overall process of the selection.

Data analysis

The resulting papers were characterized by the research aim and the type of research, which is reflected in the Table  1 . The papers were further categorized according to the focus of the research question and data. Each paper’s empirical findings were categorized by looking at data and making first notes inductively. Following this, we looked at our notes on topics that emerged from analysed articles and compared them to earlier literature. In this way, concepts from prior literature helped us to make the sense of data from different articles and categorize them. A good example for that is the concept of social support, which we used to classify types of use. After analysing the articles in this way, we formulated propositions in the discussion section.

Overview of included studies in the literature review

Search results

The searches were carried out in the period ending on March 17th, 2015. The application of the search strategy to the two search engines resulted initially in a total of 1,743 articles. Within the 1,743 articles many duplicates were found as well within the search engines as between the search engines. By removing duplicates the first found article was kept. In this way, we identified and removed 468 duplicates leaving us with 1,275 articles.

The remaining 1,275 articles were screened on title and abstract with regards to the selection criteria. Whenever we had doubts if an article is relevant or when title and abstract were not clear, we inspected the paper in more details by accessing full article. An article was removed when, for example, it became clear that the user of social media was not a patient but another user, like the hospital, a regular “healthy” person or healthcare professional. Additionally, several articles referred to internet use by patients for health related reasons and their effects, but did not specify the effects of social media. Therefore, such articles were removed. Moreover, articles that were written in a language other than English as well as articles that did not comprise primary data or did not elaborate on an effect of patients using social media. This left us with 22 articles that met our criteria. In addition, as a result of the referees’ suggestion to include term “client”, we identified one additional article, making the entire list of 23 articles for the quality assessment.

Quality of the articles was assessed by using the Standard Quality Assessment Criteria for Evaluating Primary Research Papers by [ 12 ] as presented in the Appendix C (See Additional file 3 ). This assessment tool distinguishes between qualitative and quantitative research and provides different quality assessment criteria for each type of research. The criteria are rated on their presence in the respective article and are either completely addressed in the article (resulting in 2 points), partly addressed (resulting in 1 point), or not addressed (resulting in 0 points). In case an article scored below the threshold of a 50 % score of the total amount of points possible, the article is assumed to be of low quality and removed from this paper. This cut-off point for inclusion is relatively liberal according to the authors of the assessment tool [ 12 ]. One article had a quality score below the 50 % cut-point and was excluded, which left us with the total of 22 articles for analysis.

The article selection process is shown in Fig.  1 .

Flowchart of study selection process

Overview of the articles

The Table  1 provides an overview of 22 articles included in the study. All studies except for three were published in or after 2010. Moreover, 19 articles were published in journals that are related to the medical field, whereas only three articles are published in journal that do not have a specific connection to medicine: Journal of Sociology, New Review of Hypermedia & Multimedia, and Information Research. Only two out of the 22 articles use a theory or a model to build their research on, namely the concept of masculinity [ 13 ] and the actant model [ 14 ]. The group of articles consists of nine quantitative, seven qualitative and six mixed methods studies.

The analysis of articles with regard to the type of social media and conditions is presented in the Appendix D (See Additional file 4 ), which shows that the 12 articles studied online support communities and most focused on chronic conditions. Other types of social media platforms and conditions were spread among the remaining articles.

Analysis of results

This section presents findings from 22 articles we included in our study. First of all, an overview of the extracted findings is presented regarding the types of social media use by patients. Following this, we present the effects of social media use on patients. Subsequently, an overview of the extracted findings regarding effects of social media use by patients on the relationship between patients and healthcare professionals are presented, discussed, and categorized.

Types of social media use by patients for health related reasons

Our analysis starts with the type of use and motivation for their use of social media. When analysing all articles it becomes clear that patients do not use social media to circumvent healthcare professionals, but rather use it as a complement to healthcare professional services to fulfil the patients’ needs that cannot be met by the healthcare professional. The relationship between patients and healthcare professionals is viewed by the patients as a more clinical one, where healthcare professionals provide expert knowledge about the condition and recommend treatment based on their medical knowledge, but not on their first-hand experience [ 15 ].

Additionally, doctors often have difficulty expressing empathy and that they filter information for the patient, where the patient would rather be informed about all options. Patients also believe that doctors might not be aware of the latest breakthroughs [ 15 ]. Moreover, one of the the main reasons for patients to join online health communities is their dissatisfaction with their healthcare professional’s inability to meet the patients’ emotional and informational needs [ 1 ]. Another reason for patients to use social media was to bridge the gap between traditional health information about their condition and everyday life [ 16 ]. In particular, Facebook is seen as an important addition to traditional in-office counselling in improving patient knowledge [ 17 ].

Therefore, the types of social media use by patients as identified in this paper refer to the way in which patients use social media intended to meet an unfulfilled need. These are identified in the articles are categorized as shown in Table  2 and explained below. Categories represent social support, consisting of emotional, esteem, informational, and network support [ 18 ], and other types of use, which are emotional expression and social comparison.

Types of use of social media by patients for health related purposes by article

Social support

The most common type of social media use by patients for health related reasons that we found is social support. Social support is defined as “the process of interaction in relationships which is intended to improve coping, esteem, belonging, and competence through actual or perceived exchanges of psychosocial resources” [ 19 ]. Social support is represented through five different categories and four of these categories were found to be common types of social media use by patients for health related purposes [ 18 ]. These four types, namely emotional support, esteem support, information support, and network support are explained below.

Emotional support . Emotional support is defined as “communication that meets an individual’s emotional or affective needs” [ 20 ]. It refers to support gained through expressions of care and concern, which serve to improve an individual’s mood. Emotional support helps patients to meet their emotional or affective needs. The use of social media by patients for emotional support was identified in 13 articles. Examples of emotional support are “sharing of emotional difficulties” [ 21 ], “encountering support that feels like a warm blanket wrapped around you” [ 22 ], and “share emotions with other people who are coping with similar problems” [ 23 ].

Esteem support . Esteem support refers to “communication that bolsters an individual’s self-esteem or beliefs in their ability to handle a problem or perform a needed task” [ 20 ]. The aim of this type of support is to encourage individuals to take the actions needed to successfully live with their condition. The use of social media by patients for esteem support was identified in seven articles. Examples of esteem support include “getting support from other patient’s encouragement” [ 24 ], “share experiences about a new treatment to find encouragement before starting it” [ 25 ], and “rituals of confirming each other’s endeavours to follow health instructions” [ 14 ].

Information support . Information support is “communication that provides useful or needed information” [ 20 ]. In particular, newly diagnosed patients are in a need for a lot of information about their condition and treatment options, which can be provided by patients who have already dealt with the condition for a longer period [ 20 ]. The use of social media by patients for information support was identified in all articles. Examples of information support are “receiving advice about treatments” [ 26 ], “help fellow sufferers by sharing experiences and relevant information about the disease” [ 24 ], and “ask questions about the condition” [ 25 ].

Network support . Network support is defined as “communication that affirms an individual’s belonging to a network or reminds him/her of support available from the network” [ 20 ]. Hence, network support is support that reminds people that no matter what situation they are facing, they are not alone. The use of social media by patients for network support was identified in 13 articles. Examples of network support include “meeting other patients who had gone through similar experiences” [ 27 ], “a means to connect with others in similar situations” [ 15 ], and “fostering relationships based on shared attributes” [ 28 ].

Other types of use

In addition to the social support, we also identified two other types of use, which could not be directly placed under one of the subcategories of social support. These are emotional expression and social comparison.

Emotional expression . Emotional expression refers to the unique opportunity provided by social media for patients (and other users) to express their emotions freely without having to be concerned about the immediate feelings or reactions of those who stand close to them. As noted in one of the articles, “online communities provide the potential to allow patients to open up and reduce the inhibitions felt in sharing experiences in face to face situations”, e.g. hurting other people’s feelings [ 13 ]. Therefore, patients can use social media as a place to express their emotions freely, like, releasing negative emotions [ 24 ]. In contrast to emotional support, which is defined as patients interacting in and receiving communication to meet their affective needs, emotional expression refers to patients expressing their emotions regardless of whether someone will respond. The use of social media by patients for emotional expression was identified in 8 articles. Examples include “a place to vent about the illness” [ 25 ] and “an outlet for expressing your emotions freely” [ 15 ].

Social comparison . Patients use social media to compare themselves with other patients to see how “bad” their condition is or to find out how the treatments work. This social comparison can seem to overlap with social support, for instance, when patients compare themselves to peers to recognize that they are not the only person in this situation (network support) or when patients compare themselves to peers to find out how other people suffer from or cope with the condition (esteem support, emotional support, or information support). However, social comparison was categorized separately as within the articles the authors presented it as a different type of use without specifying the details. The use of social media by patients for social comparison was identified in four articles. Examples include “upward social comparison” [ 25 ] and “comparison with other members [ 23 ].

Effects of the different types of social media use by patients on patients

In this section the effects of the use of social media by patients for health related reasons are analysed and presented. The most common effect of patients using social media for health related reasons is patient empowerment, which is represented through three categories: enhanced subjective well-being, enhanced psychological well-being, and improved self-management and control. We also identified four other types of effects, which are less common in our literature review. These are: diminished subjective well-being, loss of privacy, addiction to social media, and being targeted for promotion. Identified categories are presented in Table  3 and explained below.

Effects of social media use by patients for health related reasons by article

Patient empowerment

In current literature, the concept of empowerment is defined as “an individual trait, characterized by an emphasis on increased individual control over the aspects of one’s life” [ 29 ]. We argue that the patient empowerment refers to “the discovery and development of one’s inherent capacity to be responsible for one’s own life. Hence, patients are empowered when they are in possession of the knowledge, skills, and self-awareness necessary to identify and attain their own goals” [ 14 ]. Information support, esteem support, and emotional support were significant predictors of a patient’s sense of empowerment [ 30 ]. Informational support was the strongest predictor of increased sense of empowerment followed by esteem support and emotional support. The three subcategories of empowerment, namely enhanced subjective well-being, enhanced psychological well-being, and improved self-management and control, are discussed below.

Enhanced subjective well-being . Subjective well-being refers to “what people think and how they feel about their lives in positive ways” [ 31 ]. In this paper, enhanced subjective well-being mainly refers to the pleasant emotions patients experience due to their social media use for health related reasons. “People experience enhanced subjective well-being when they feel many pleasant and few unpleasant emotions” [ 31 ]. Consequently, enhanced subjective well-being refers to an increase in the experience of pleasant emotions, which in turn heightens people’s feeling of empowerment. The effect enhanced subjective well-being was identified in 12 articles. Examples from the articles concerning enhanced subjective well-being are “increased optimism” [ 22 ], “increased acceptance of the illness” [ 23 ], “decrease anxiety” [ 26 ] and “increased sense of normalcy” [ 27 ].

Enhanced psychological well-being . Psychological well-being is defined in the literature as “focusing on eudemonic well-being, which is the fulfilment of human potential and a meaningful life” [ 32 ]. One of the components affecting psychological well-being is the experience of positive relations with others. It is argued that a central component of mental health is to be in warm, trusting, interpersonal relations [ 33 ]. Moreover, “self-actualizers are described as having strong feelings of empathy and affection for all human beings and as being capable of greater love, deeper friendship, and more complete identification with others” [ 33 ]. Therefore, enhanced psychological well-being refers to an increase in the patient’s experience of positive relations with others through the use social media. The effect enhanced psychological well-being was identified in 14 articles. Examples from the articles include “feeling of being connected to other people” [ 34 ], “increased social network online as well as offline” [ 27 ], and “promotion of deep relationships” [ 15 ].

Improved self-management and control . Improved self-management and sense of control refers to the improvement in the capability of patients to better handle their condition. As patients feel better informed, their ability to make decisions on their own improves, which fosters self-management and perceived control over the condition. Ability to deal with the day-to-day life with the condition also increases, for example due to learning about coping strategies, which also fosters improved self-management and perceived control. The effect of improved self-management and sense of control was identified in 14 articles. Examples from the articles include “increase patient’s self-management” [ 34 ], “improvement in the ability to manage the disease” [ 16 ], and “fostering insight and universality” [ 26 ].

Other types of effects

In addition to the patient empowerment, several other types of effects of social media use by patients on patients were identified. These are diminished subjective well-being, loss of privacy, being targeted for promotion, and addiction to social media.

Diminished subjective well-being . Diminished subjective well-being is opposite of enhanced subjective well-being and indicates an increase in the experience of negative emotions due to the use of social media, such as an increase in feelings of worry and anxiety. It was identified in six articles. Diminished subjective well-being was the most common found effect of patients using social media for health related reasons. Examples include “demoralization” [ 25 ], “hurt feelings due to negative feedback” [ 16 ], and “increased feelings of anxiety” [ 35 ].

Loss of privacy . Loss of privacy was mentioned in only one article [ 16 ]. It refers to the finding that the patients lose their privacy when they post personal videos on YouTube.

Being targeted for promotion . Being targeted for promotion was also mentioned in only one article by [ 16 ]. It refers to the finding that patients who post videos on YouTube can be targets product promotions.

Addiction to social media . Addiction was an effect identified in one article by [ 35 ]. It refers to the finding that sometimes patients experience their social media use for health related reasons to be addictive. As such, it often took the time that they usually spent doing other tasks.

Effects of social media use by patients on the relationship between patients and healthcare professionals

The use of social media by patients for health related reasons does not only affect the patients themselves or other patients, but also the relationship between patients and healthcare professionals. In total, nine articles discussed the effects of social media use by patients on the relationship between patients and healthcare professionals, although six out of these nine articles only touch very briefly upon this subject. The effects of social media use by patients for health related reasons on the relationship between patients and healthcare professionals that have been extracted from the articles are presented in Table  4 and discussed below.

Effects of social media use by patients on the healthcare professional – patient relationship

The findings presented in Table  4 are divided into categories representing the effects on the relationship between patients and healthcare professionals. These categories are more equal communication between the patient and healthcare professional, increased switching of doctors, harmonious relationships, and suboptimal interaction between the patient and healthcare professional. The categories are discussed below.

More equal communication between the patient and healthcare professional

Social media use by patients for health related reasons can lead to more equal communication between the patient and healthcare professional. This effect refers to patients feeling more confident in their relationship with the healthcare professional. In total, five articles referred to this effect. With the information from the social media platforms, patients can increase their knowledge about treatment options. Consequently, they are better able to communicate with the healthcare professional as they can better understand their condition [ 36 ]. Hence, patients may feel more confident in their relationship with their physician [ 22 , 23 ]. Patients feel that they are better prepared for consultations as they are more informed about their condition and know better what questions to ask [ 23 ]. Social support received through the use of social media eventually increases the likeliness to form an intention to actively communicate with the doctor during a medical consultation [ 30 ]. Moreover, the use of social media provides the opportunity to learn and increase health communication, which may lead to an increase in the patients’ willingness to seek medical attention [ 37 ]. Hence, these findings suggest that the use of social media for health related purposes can increase a patient’s confidence and active communication in their relationship with healthcare.

Increased switching of doctors

Social media use by patients for health related reasons can lead to shorter relationships between healthcare professionals and patients. Patients may change doctor due to online discussions about physicians or due to negative reactions from doctors about the patients’ treatments supervised by their regular physicians. Two articles found that patients changed physician because of those patients’ use of social media. For example, negative reactions from physicians to the mentions of social media use by patients made the patients to look for second opinion and even change their doctor [ 1 ]. On the other hand, some patients changed their doctor as a result of online discussion with other patients [ 36 ].

Harmonious relationships

Harmonious relationships between healthcare professionals and patients can be established as social media provide a place for patients to release negative emotions. However, the effect of harmonious relationships also comprises the fact that social media might empower individuals to follow doctor’s recommendations, which reduces discussions during clinical interaction. The effect of harmonious relationships was identified in two articles. Social media provide a place for patients to express their emotions and maintain harmony in the relationship between healthcare professional and patient in offline consultations, which focuses on non-emotional aspects of the disease [ 24 ]. On the other hand, social media were empowering individual users to comply with doctors’ recommendations as a group, which affects the healthcare professional patient relationship by potentially reducing discussions during clinical interactions as patients stick to the recommended treatment [ 14 ]. However, it can also be viewed as a missed opportunity, as patients do not empower each other to find alternative treatments [ 14 ].

Suboptimal interaction between the patient and healthcare professional

As patients use social media for health related reasons, this can affect the patient and healthcare professional relationship by leading to suboptimal interaction between the patient and healthcare professional. When patients bring social media content to the consultation, this can lead to increased processes of sorting information, transforming the potential risk to the healthcare professional, and challenging the healthcare professional’s expertise [ 13 ]. Additionally, if the healthcare professional reacts negatively to what patient learned from social media, this might decrease the patient’s subjective well-being [ 1 ]. The effect of suboptimal interaction between the patient and healthcare professional was identified in two articles. Discussion of the information from social media during the consultation was experienced as a threat by the physician [ 13 ]. Furthermore, healthcare professionals reacted negatively to online health community content raised during clinical interactions, which made patients feel disempowered, but it did not change their online behaviour [ 1 ].

Relationship between effects on patients and effects on the patient healthcare professional relationship

In the section about the effect of “more equal communication between the patient and healthcare professional”, we already mentioned that increased communication during a consultation on behalf of the patient can be caused by patient empowerment. Patient empowerment refers to “the inherent capacity to be responsible for one’s own life” [ 14 ]. In regards to the relationship between patients and healthcare professionals, the patients took more responsibility for their own condition. Five articles find that the patient empowerment indeed affects the patients’ confidence, ability and willingness to actively participate in clinical interactions. Patients increased their sense of empowerment through their intention to actively communicate with the doctor [ 30 ]. Additionally, the patient empowerment was associated with an increased confidence in dealing with the physician [ 23 ]. Moreover, the convenience of social media use by patients is that it reduces the information gap between healthcare professionals and patients and patients have a better understanding of the healthcare professional during consultations [ 37 ]. Social media can empower patients by giving them access to information and opportunities for discussions, which increases the patient’s involvement in clinical interactions [ 15 ]. Finally, the patient empowerment increases the ability of patients to communicate with the healthcare professionals [ 22 ]. Hence, we argue that the patient empowerment contributes to more equal communication between the patient and the healthcare professional.

This review provides an insight into the current body of knowledge on the effects of social media use by patients for health related reasons and the effects on patients and on their relationship with healthcare professionals. All of the studies were published in the past 10 years, with only three articles published before 2010. This can be explained by a recent increase in the use of social media by patients for health related reasons.

We categorized articles into different types of use and effects. We identified that the most common type of use was social support, namely emotional support, esteem support, information support, and network support. The types of social media use were most often found to affect patients by empowering them through enhanced subjective well-being, enhanced psychological well-being, and improved self-management and control. However, the types of social media use by patients were also found to affect patients through addiction to social media, diminished subjective well-being, being targeted for promotion, and loss of privacy. Moreover, the identified types of social media use by patients for health related reasons was also found to affect the relationship between patients and healthcare professionals as it can result in more equal communication between the patient and healthcare professional, shorter relationships, harmonious relationships, and suboptimal interaction between the patient and healthcare professional. Based on these findings, we made three propositions.

Relationship between use and effect: Network support and enhanced psychological well-being

When patients are diagnosed with a certain condition that nobody in their close (offline) network has experienced before, patients can feel very lonely [ 27 ]. As a diabetic patient states “I literally felt like the only diabetic on the planet” [ 16 ]. However, social media provide an opportunity to easily connect with others and reduce this feeling of loneliness. Consequently, patients using social media for network support enhanced their psychological well-being. For example, social media provide means to connect with others in similar situations and this can break a patient’s loneliness [ 15 ]. This is in line with earlier studies that have shown how the existence of network support contributes to a better well-being of the patients [ 41 , 42 ]. Interestingly, [ 41 ] suggest that the network support may not only benefit the patients themselves, but also their families who care for them. Yet, the relationship between the network support and psychological well-being may depend on the level of self-esteem. For example, college students with low self-esteem profited more from online social networking sites for bridging social capital and starting relationships than college students with high self-esteem [ 43 ]. In line with that, social networking sites provides the unique opportunity for patients to be able to talk about the sensitive aspects of the condition, as online communities provide the potential to reduce inhibitions felt in sharing experiences face to face [ 13 ]. Such an inhibition could reflect low self-esteem in terms of a reluctance to talk about the condition in face to face conversations.

Proposition 1: Social media use by patients for network support leads to enhanced psychological well-being. This effect is stronger for people with low self-esteem than for the people with high self-esteem.

Relationship between content and effect: Reading other people’s stories, improved self-management and control and enhanced subjective well-being

Not all patients that make use of social media use it actively. Sometimes patients only use social media to read about other people’s stories, without actively contributing themselves. These people are called lurkers. The lurking behaviour may be related to the level of privacy concerns and computer anxiety [ 44 ]. In particular, anxiety leads to increase in lurking. Two articles in our sample were focused on the effects of patients using social media merely by reading other people’s stories. From the two articles, it becomes clear that the effects experienced by reading other people’s stories are being better informed [ 22 , 26 ]. Additionally, by reading other people’s stories anxiety was found to significantly decrease [ 26 ]. Consequently, these findings suggest that reading other people’s stories on social media can lead to enhanced subjective well-being and improved self-management and control. However, [ 22 ] and [ 26 ] do not elaborate on the content of the stories read. Contrasting findings were found in other articles regarding how content affects the effects of reading other people’s stories. For example, cancer patients who read other people’s stories enhanced their subjective well-being [ 24 ]. Reading about success stories was found to enhance confidence to fight the condition, whereas reading about bad experiences prepared the patient mentally for difficult times ahead. On the other hand, the patients suffering from an inflammatory bowel disease who read other people’s stories about a bad experience suffered from diminished subjective well-being [ 25 ]. This is in line with earlier findings showing that the lack of sharing and feedback on this sharing may threaten the need for belonging [ 45 ]. Finally, patients suffering from infertility experienced diminished subjective well-being as the result of reading other people’s stories [ 35 ]. Reading stories about successful pregnancies led to increased feelings of jealousy, pain and a sense of alienation, whereas reading about bad experiences led to increased feelings of worry, anxiety and decreased optimism. Thus, this may lead to diminished subjective well-being. On the other hand, one study in our sample shows that this actually may enhance subjective-well-being [ 24 ]. In particular, this paper focused on blogs whereas other studies focused on online support groups [ 24 ]. Among other uses, blogs can be used as personals diaries to express thoughts, feelings, and stories [ 9 ]. Level of distress actually decreases when people blog about their emotional difficulties [ 46 ].

Proposition 2: Reading other people’s stories about a negative experience leads to diminished subjective well-being. This effect is weaker for patients who blog about their experiences than for those who do not.

Relationship between patients and healthcare professionals: shift in power balance and increased quality of decision making

The effects of social media use by patients for health related reasons show that social media use by patients can lead to patient empowerment. Patient empowerment is an established concept in the medical research and has been promoted to foster patient autonomy [ 47 ]. As a result of the patient empowerment, patients may increasingly interact with their healthcare professional and get more involved in the decision making process [ 15 ]. In this case, social media can be seen as a “new” technology adopted by patients, which may shift the power balance between the healthcare professional and the patient. The use of new technologies in healthcare has been suggested as a way to empower end-consumers by enabling speed and convenience in accessing health related information [ 48 ]. In this line, the patients are able to actively participate in the interactions with healthcare professionals. On the other hand, the healthcare professionals may experience a decrease in power in the decision making process. According to the political variant of the interaction theory [ 49 ], “a product of the interaction of system features with the intra-organizational distribution of power, defined either objectively, in terms of horizontal or vertical power dimensions, or subjectively, in terms of symbolism can be resistance to the system”. Hence, redistribution of power between patients and healthcare professionals may cause the resistance from healthcare professionals. Yet, the role of health professionals has to change because embracing patient empowerment in healthcare means making a change, which sometimes seem difficult due to traditional approach, which is embedded in their current training [ 50 ].

However, increased patient involvement in the clinical interaction could potentially increase the risk placed on the healthcare professionals [ 13 ]. Healthcare professional may not be in complete control of the information used during decision making as the patient also has a voice, but the healthcare professional bears full responsibility for the decision taken. When patients bring in the information from social media to the consultation, this could lead to unnecessary processes of sorting relevant information from irrelevant information and can be experienced as challenging the healthcare professional’s expertise [ 1 , 13 ]. Hence, based on these findings it is possible for healthcare professionals to resist this shift in the balance of power. However, increased equalization of the healthcare professional and patient communication can be a positive and desired effect. In particular, healthcare professionals may become more patient-centred, thus complementing the patient empowerment [ 51 ]. As a consequence of patient empowerment, we propose that the quality of clinical decision making may be enhanced.

According to the concept of bounded rationality [ 52 ], not all information can be gained on all available treatment options by healthcare professionals, as the human mind has a limited capacity to process the available information and often time is limited as well. Hence, healthcare professionals are unable to know all the information regarding treatment options and the newest developments, which affects their decision making. Thus, patients can extend this information base of the healthcare professional by specializing themselves in their own condition. This could provide an opportunity to increase the quality of the treatment decisions.

Proposition 3: As a result of patient empowerment due to patients using social media for health related reasons, the power balance between healthcare professionals and patients becomes more equalized, leading to increased quality of clinical decisions making.

Notwithstanding the interesting results described above, this research has some limitations which, along with the three propositions, suggest opportunities for further research. It is possible that we missed some articles that could have used different terminology. Consequently, the results of this paper might not be generalizable for all social media platforms. For practical reasons, we excluded non-English papers. Finally, a limitation of every literature review is that the authors of the included articles will have had different objectives and used different methods and means of interpretation in reaching their conclusions. In this paper, we highlighted the most important findings on our topic of study and we categorized the key effects of social media use on patients and on their relationships with healthcare professionals.

The use of social media by patients for health related reasons is growing. This systematic literature review reflects on beneficial and potentially harmful effects of social media use by patients for health related. The findings show that patients use social media mainly for social support, which is represented through information support, emotional support, esteem support, and network support. Other identified types of social media use by patients have found to be emotional expression and social comparison. These types of social media use by patients were found to most commonly lead to patient empowerment. Other effects of social media use by patients we identified were diminished subjective well-being, addiction to social media, being targeted for promotion, and loss of privacy. The types of social media use by patients were also found to affect the healthcare professional and patient relationship by stimulating more equal communication between the patient and healthcare professional, shorter relationships, harmonious relationships, suboptimal interaction between the patient and healthcare professional. Whereas some of the articles discussed the effects of patients’ use of social media on relationship between patients and healthcare professionals briefly, we encourage future research to tackle this issue. We developed three propositions, which may also stimulate further research in this respect.

Acknowledgments

We thank Eveline Hage for providing insightful feedback in the course of manuscript preparation.

We have not received any funding for conducting this study.

Availability of data and materials

Materials and data used in this literature review may be obtained from the first author.

Authors’ contributions

ES was responsible for the research design, significantly contributed to the selection and analysis of included papers and reworked an earlier draft of the manuscript. WH contributed with the paper selection and analysis and wrote a preliminary draft of the manuscript. AB made significant contributions to the framework for analysis, interpretation of selected papers and writing the manuscript. DJL made significant contribution to interpretation of the studies and participated in writing the final version of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Additional files.

Appendix A-Search string. (DOCX 14 kb)

Appendix B-List of databases. (DOCX 14 kb)

Appendix C-Quality assessment [ 53 ]. (DOCX 21 kb)

Appendix D-Summary of articles per social media category. (DOCX 14 kb)

Contributor Information

Edin Smailhodzic, Email: [email protected].

Wyanda Hooijsma, Email: [email protected].

Albert Boonstra, Email: [email protected].

David J. Langley, Email: [email protected]

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Exploring the relationship between social media usage and the prevalence of mental health problems amongst adolescents-a systematic literature review

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• Love, Susan
• Lipscomb, Allen
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• California State University, Northridge
• protective factors
• social media
• consequences
• Dissertations, Academic -- CSUN -- Social Work.
• mental health
• adolescents
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How Social Media Affect College Students: Examining the Past, Envisioning The Future

• Ana M. Martínez-Alemán , Adam M. McCready , Heather T. Rowan-Kenyon
• Johns Hopkins University Press
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To mark ACPA's 100th anniversary, this paper will review what we currently know about the impact of one of the most consequential technologies for this generation of college students: social media. Social media have had significant effects on the lives of college students today and will continue to shape college student life going forward.

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Science News

Social media harms teens’ mental health, mounting evidence shows. what now.

Understanding what is going on in teens’ minds is necessary for targeted policy suggestions

Most teens use social media, often for hours on end. Some social scientists are confident that such use is harming their mental health. Now they want to pinpoint what explains the link.

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By Sujata Gupta

February 20, 2024 at 7:30 am

In January, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook’s parent company Meta, appeared at a congressional hearing to answer questions about how social media potentially harms children. Zuckerberg opened by saying: “The existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal link between using social media and young people having worse mental health.”

But many social scientists would disagree with that statement. In recent years, studies have started to show a causal link between teen social media use and reduced well-being or mood disorders, chiefly depression and anxiety.

Ironically, one of the most cited studies into this link focused on Facebook.

Researchers delved into whether the platform’s introduction across college campuses in the mid 2000s increased symptoms associated with depression and anxiety. The answer was a clear yes , says MIT economist Alexey Makarin, a coauthor of the study, which appeared in the November 2022 American Economic Review . “There is still a lot to be explored,” Makarin says, but “[to say] there is no causal evidence that social media causes mental health issues, to that I definitely object.”

The concern, and the studies, come from statistics showing that social media use in teens ages 13 to 17 is now almost ubiquitous. Two-thirds of teens report using TikTok, and some 60 percent of teens report using Instagram or Snapchat, a 2022 survey found. (Only 30 percent said they used Facebook.) Another survey showed that girls, on average, allot roughly 3.4 hours per day to TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, compared with roughly 2.1 hours among boys. At the same time, more teens are showing signs of depression than ever, especially girls ( SN: 6/30/23 ).

As more studies show a strong link between these phenomena, some researchers are starting to shift their attention to possible mechanisms. Why does social media use seem to trigger mental health problems? Why are those effects unevenly distributed among different groups, such as girls or young adults? And can the positives of social media be teased out from the negatives to provide more targeted guidance to teens, their caregivers and policymakers?

“You can’t design good public policy if you don’t know why things are happening,” says Scott Cunningham, an economist at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

Increasing rigor

Concerns over the effects of social media use in children have been circulating for years, resulting in a massive body of scientific literature. But those mostly correlational studies could not show if teen social media use was harming mental health or if teens with mental health problems were using more social media.

Moreover, the findings from such studies were often inconclusive, or the effects on mental health so small as to be inconsequential. In one study that received considerable media attention, psychologists Amy Orben and Andrew Przybylski combined data from three surveys to see if they could find a link between technology use, including social media, and reduced well-being. The duo gauged the well-being of over 355,000 teenagers by focusing on questions around depression, suicidal thinking and self-esteem.

Digital technology use was associated with a slight decrease in adolescent well-being , Orben, now of the University of Cambridge, and Przybylski, of the University of Oxford, reported in 2019 in Nature Human Behaviour . But the duo downplayed that finding, noting that researchers have observed similar drops in adolescent well-being associated with drinking milk, going to the movies or eating potatoes.

Holes have begun to appear in that narrative thanks to newer, more rigorous studies.

In one longitudinal study, researchers — including Orben and Przybylski — used survey data on social media use and well-being from over 17,400 teens and young adults to look at how individuals’ responses to a question gauging life satisfaction changed between 2011 and 2018. And they dug into how the responses varied by gender, age and time spent on social media.

Social media use was associated with a drop in well-being among teens during certain developmental periods, chiefly puberty and young adulthood, the team reported in 2022 in Nature Communications . That translated to lower well-being scores around ages 11 to 13 for girls and ages 14 to 15 for boys. Both groups also reported a drop in well-being around age 19. Moreover, among the older teens, the team found evidence for the Goldilocks Hypothesis: the idea that both too much and too little time spent on social media can harm mental health.

“There’s hardly any effect if you look over everybody. But if you look at specific age groups, at particularly what [Orben] calls ‘windows of sensitivity’ … you see these clear effects,” says L.J. Shrum, a consumer psychologist at HEC Paris who was not involved with this research. His review of studies related to teen social media use and mental health is forthcoming in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research.

Cause and effect

That longitudinal study hints at causation, researchers say. But one of the clearest ways to pin down cause and effect is through natural or quasi-experiments. For these in-the-wild experiments, researchers must identify situations where the rollout of a societal “treatment” is staggered across space and time. They can then compare outcomes among members of the group who received the treatment to those still in the queue — the control group.

That was the approach Makarin and his team used in their study of Facebook. The researchers homed in on the staggered rollout of Facebook across 775 college campuses from 2004 to 2006. They combined that rollout data with student responses to the National College Health Assessment, a widely used survey of college students’ mental and physical health.

The team then sought to understand if those survey questions captured diagnosable mental health problems. Specifically, they had roughly 500 undergraduate students respond to questions both in the National College Health Assessment and in validated screening tools for depression and anxiety. They found that mental health scores on the assessment predicted scores on the screenings. That suggested that a drop in well-being on the college survey was a good proxy for a corresponding increase in diagnosable mental health disorders. 

Compared with campuses that had not yet gained access to Facebook, college campuses with Facebook experienced a 2 percentage point increase in the number of students who met the diagnostic criteria for anxiety or depression, the team found.

When it comes to showing a causal link between social media use in teens and worse mental health, “that study really is the crown jewel right now,” says Cunningham, who was not involved in that research.

A need for nuance

The social media landscape today is vastly different than the landscape of 20 years ago. Facebook is now optimized for maximum addiction, Shrum says, and other newer platforms, such as Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok, have since copied and built on those features. Paired with the ubiquity of social media in general, the negative effects on mental health may well be larger now.

Moreover, social media research tends to focus on young adults — an easier cohort to study than minors. That needs to change, Cunningham says. “Most of us are worried about our high school kids and younger.” 

And so, researchers must pivot accordingly. Crucially, simple comparisons of social media users and nonusers no longer make sense. As Orben and Przybylski’s 2022 work suggested, a teen not on social media might well feel worse than one who briefly logs on. 

Researchers must also dig into why, and under what circumstances, social media use can harm mental health, Cunningham says. Explanations for this link abound. For instance, social media is thought to crowd out other activities or increase people’s likelihood of comparing themselves unfavorably with others. But big data studies, with their reliance on existing surveys and statistical analyses, cannot address those deeper questions. “These kinds of papers, there’s nothing you can really ask … to find these plausible mechanisms,” Cunningham says.

One ongoing effort to understand social media use from this more nuanced vantage point is the SMART Schools project out of the University of Birmingham in England. Pedagogical expert Victoria Goodyear and her team are comparing mental and physical health outcomes among children who attend schools that have restricted cell phone use to those attending schools without such a policy. The researchers described the protocol of that study of 30 schools and over 1,000 students in the July BMJ Open.

Goodyear and colleagues are also combining that natural experiment with qualitative research. They met with 36 five-person focus groups each consisting of all students, all parents or all educators at six of those schools. The team hopes to learn how students use their phones during the day, how usage practices make students feel, and what the various parties think of restrictions on cell phone use during the school day.

Talking to teens and those in their orbit is the best way to get at the mechanisms by which social media influences well-being — for better or worse, Goodyear says. Moving beyond big data to this more personal approach, however, takes considerable time and effort. “Social media has increased in pace and momentum very, very quickly,” she says. “And research takes a long time to catch up with that process.”

Until that catch-up occurs, though, researchers cannot dole out much advice. “What guidance could we provide to young people, parents and schools to help maintain the positives of social media use?” Goodyear asks. “There’s not concrete evidence yet.”

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How Social Media Affects the Teenage Brain

Scholars at Columbia peer into the plugged-in adolescent mind and assess the impacts of a digital upbringing. 

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably survived adolescence, and looking back on those years you might wonder: How? At a recent Stavros Niarchos Foundation Brain Insight Lecture, sponsored by the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, two scholars — BJ Casey , a cognitive neuroscientist at Barnard, and Ioana Literat , an Internet researcher at Teachers College — helped answer that question by casting light on the fevered minds of today’s teenagers.

Casey, who has a son in his twenties, did a little myth-busting, reminding her listeners that adolescence isn’t all angst and anger. “It is just a remarkable, wonderful time of learning and discovery,” she said. “It’s a time in which we begin to gain a sense of who we are and who we aspire to be.”

Sure, teens are known for impulsiveness, risk-taking, and poor decision-making, but Casey rejected the notion, held in some child-psychology quarters, that these things constitute a “deficit.” “I think the adolescent brain has really gotten a bad rap,” she said, adding that we don’t refer to a newborn’s inability to talk as a  deficit ; rather, we speak of the  development  of the infant’s brain — which is precisely what is happening to the brains of teenagers. 

To illustrate this, Casey shared functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans of adolescent brains. In children, she said, the visual and motor cortices, which enable us to see and move, are the most developed, while the prefrontal cortex, which governs decision-making, takes more time to mature. Meanwhile, the brain’s emotional centers — the hypothalamus (desire), the amygdala (fear and rage), and nucleus accumbens (the reward center, also associated with addiction and risk-taking) — kick into high gear during adolescence. This developmental lag between emotions and control can leave teens vulnerable to anxiety and depression.

In her lab studies, Casey monitors the brain activity of teenagers as they press buttons in response to cues. She’s found that teens display not only a heightened sensitivity to the opinions and attitudes of their peers but also — good news for worried parents — an inflated awareness of potential threats. And unlike adults, they remain hyperalert for those threats even after they pass.

Why, Casey asked, might the adolescent brain be programmed this way? “Peer acceptance can facilitate independent exploration and learning from the social environment,” she said. And the sensitivity to threats makes sense too: “If you’re out there exploring new environments without the protection of the caregiver, that is going to require you to be very vigilant.”

But what if that environment is contained on the screen of a laptop or a phone? 

Ioana Literat, an Internet researcher at Teachers College, studies the online political behavior of young people. She is particularly interested in what she calls the “political sandbox” of social media — Instagram, TikTok, et al. — and how adolescents express themselves there. 

Though Literat’s subjects are too young to vote, they are hardly disconnected from the political process: “They are finding their own way towards politics in the [online] spaces where they hang out, in the spaces where they feel comfortable,” she said. It’s the form of expression that’s striking. “The dominant ideal of political expression is serious, focused on fact and rationality, and detached and objective,” said Literat. But youth political expression is often the antithesis of those things: “It’s humorous. It’s emotional. It’s not rational.” Nor is it objective: “It’s all filtered through young people’s identities, through the personal implications that politics might have on themselves, on their loved ones, on their social groups,” Literat said. “And we shouldn’t think of this as narcissistic. Politics is personal, and they should be encouraged and supported in thinking of politics as personal — that’s the way to really reach them.”

Literat advised adults to “listen to the political voices of young people in their preferred modes of expression” and also to consider social media “as a really important, potentially even productive, part of young people’s political socialization, which is the process by which they become citizens.” Accepting the reality that social media isn’t going anywhere, Literat called for more education in media literacy, so that parents and teachers have a better idea of what the kids are up to.

Which is not to say that the grown-ups should exert more control over teenagers’ lives. As Casey argued, teens must be allowed to screw up. “It is important that they learn from their experiences, and too often in the interest of trying to protect young people, we don’t let them fail,” she said. “We don’t let them explore, because we’re concerned for them, but by doing that, we’re actually delaying their development.”

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Social Media Thesis Statement: the Impact of Social Media on Mental Health

This essay will present a thesis statement on the impact of social media on mental health. It will explore how social media use correlates with issues like anxiety, depression, and self-esteem, drawing on current research and psychological theories. The piece will discuss both the negative and positive aspects of social media, considering factors such as online connectivity, cyberbullying, and the pressure of social comparison. It will also suggest directions for future research and potential solutions. PapersOwl offers a variety of free essay examples on the topic of Adolescence.

How it works

Most individuals know someone with a mental health problem or addictive behavior, but have they ever thought about where it could have risen from? The rise of anxiety and depression have been believed to drive a child’s life. Feeling driven by a motor and needing to check your phone constantly can result in negative effects. Mental health issues and addictive behaviors stem from a conglomerate of sources, but more directly, have been exasperated by social media in modern society.

• 1 Social Media, Anxiety, and the ‘Like’ Syndrome
• 2 Social Media and the Onset of Depression Symptoms
• 3 The Correlation Between Social Media Usage and Addiction
• 4 The Social Media Thesis Statement: Balancing the Scale of Positive and Negative Effects
• 5 References:

Social Media, Anxiety, and the ‘Like’ Syndrome

Mental health disorders can be one of the several negative effects given to a child by their phone.

It has been shown that anxiety is a huge factor coming from social media, “Other studies have shown that people with social anxiety prefer communicating with people via the internet rather than in person, so it would be an ideal way to initiate relationships” (Maldonado). Even some social networking environments, such as Facebook, can cause anxiety. “Recent research has shown that using social networking sites, namely Facebook, can increase people’s stress levels, produce anxiety, and negatively affect a person’s sense of self” (Maldonado). Even if people were to not look at the platforms and just focus on the ‘likes,’ problems would be found throughout. “The need to gain “likes” on social media can cause teens to make choices they would otherwise not make, including altering appearance, engaging in negative behaviors, and accepting risky social media challenges” (Hurley). As Hurley also claimed, “It’s difficult to build empathy and compassion (our best weapons in the war on bullying) when teens spend more time “engaging” online than they do in person.”

Social Media and the Onset of Depression Symptoms

Symptoms of depression are also prevalent in social media. As Hurley once said, “Though many teens know that their peers share only their highlight reels on social media, it’s very difficult to avoid making comparisons. Everything from physical appearance to life circumstances to perceived successes and failures is under a microscope on social media.” Most teenagers have gullible minds, so when they see someone more physically fit or even happier than they are, they automatically get down on themselves. Seeing somebody live a better life hurts most people, but some make the most of it by turning that into an encouraging way to get that body or make more money. Even though to some observers, it seems to be obvious that depression can also be linked to social media. According to Gordon, “Researchers are just beginning to establish a link between depression and social media.” Most say that you could have been raised with depression, which could be true, but that depression would not have flared up as much as it did once they started using these social media platforms. Even stated by a credited author, “From a mental health perspective, concerns have been raised about the negative impact of excessive use of social networking sites on the health and well-being of users, especially that of young people, who are enthusiastic users of this technology” (Griffiths). This quote proves the meaning behind the gullible minds of young ones; it can easily affect them – even causing an addiction.

The Correlation Between Social Media Usage and Addiction

As well as producing anxiety and depression, social media also has a strong link to addiction. “In a study by researchers at the UCLA brain mapping center, they found that certain regions of teen brains became activated by ‘likes’ on social media, sometimes causing them to want to use social media more” (Gordon). This statement shows just how easy it is to become addicted to posting about yourself on social media. Sometimes, this leads to teens posting pictures or captions they should not be. Obsessing over likes can lead to other impulses, such as losing sleep. “Sometimes teens spend so many hours on social media that they begin to lose valuable sleep. Consequently, thus sleep loss can lead to moodiness, a drop-in grades, and overeating, as well exacerbated existing problems like depression, anxiety, and ADD” (Gordon). This obsessive behavior also leads to problems with your brain and body since you are losing sleep time, which also means losing energy. Losing energy can cause a variety of problems, some of which include anxiety and depression. Addictive behaviors do not only just stop at losing sleep but stem all the way to using your phone while driving. “Many people’s social media use is habitual, and it can start to spill over into other areas of their lives and be problematic and dangerous, such as checking social media while driving” (Griffiths). This part of the addictive behaviors could easily be named the most atrocious. This type of behavior could easily kill or seriously harm an individual. Losing a loved one over a Facebook status shows a lot about the state that the human brain is in.

The Social Media Thesis Statement: Balancing the Scale of Positive and Negative Effects

Besides all the negative effects of social media, it also has a few positive effects on the human brain. “Although they can cause problems, these sites also have been shown to have positive effects on people. It can help psychologists monitor the mental health of patients, spread awareness about issues (including mental health disorders), connect people with one another, and make the world a little smaller” (Maldonado). Rewarding your brain with positive upbringings can really determine night or day. If someone reaches a certain level on a game or gets the reaction, they wanted on a certain post, that could easily encourage you to keep positive vibes and continue doing what they love. As Maldonado stated, “The best way for anyone to take advantage of the benefits of these sites while minimizing the downsides is to moderate his or her use and maintain a level of detachment.” Taking time away from social media would help minimize the chances of becoming depressed over a post, which could really help a teenager’s mental health.

By this time, people have probably concluded that several humans on this earth are way too attached to their phones. If people were to see someone prioritize their phone over their communication with the outside world, help them experience life as it is. If social media becomes an addiction, it could eventually lead to anxiety and depression. Even though social media has negative effects, it can also have effects that can help the human brain grow and experience positive thoughts. With that being said, most people would say social media has more negative effects than positive. The addictive behaviors and mental health issues that arise from the internet can cause several problems and become a burden in this society.

References:

• Gordon, Sherri. ‘5 Ways Social Media Affects Teen Mental Health.’ very well family, About, Inc (Dotdash), 30 July 2018, www.verywellfamily.com/ways-social-media-affects-teen-mental-health-4144769. Accessed 17 September 2018.
• Griffiths, Mark D.’ Addicted to Social Media?’ Psychology Today. Sussex Publishers, LLC, 7 May 2018, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-excess/201805/addicted-social-media. Accessed 17 September 2018.
• Hurley, Katie. ‘Social Media and Teens: How Does Social Media Affect Teenagers Mental Health.’ Psycom. Vertical Health LLC, 13 February 2018, www.psycom.net/social-media-teen-mental-health. Accessed 17 September 2018.
• Maldonado, Marissa. ‘The Anxiety of Facebook.’ Psychcentral. 16 July 2016, www.psychcentral.com/lib/the-anxiety-of-facebook/. Accessed 18 September 2018.

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Social Media Thesis Statement: The Impact of Social Media on Mental Health. (2023, Aug 01). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/social-media-thesis-statement-the-impact-of-social-media-on-mental-health/

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PapersOwl.com. (2023). Social Media Thesis Statement: The Impact of Social Media on Mental Health . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/social-media-thesis-statement-the-impact-of-social-media-on-mental-health/ [Accessed: 8-Nov-2024]

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Just How Harmful Is Social Media? Our Experts Weigh-In.

A recent investigation by the Wall Street Journal revealed that Facebook was aware of mental health risks linked to the use of its Instagram app but kept those findings secret. Internal research by the social media giant found that Instagram worsened body image issues for one in three teenage girls, and all teenage users of the app linked it to experiences of anxiety and depression. It isn’t the first evidence of social media’s harms. Watchdog groups have identified Facebook and Instagram as avenues for cyberbullying , and reports have linked TikTok to dangerous and antisocial behavior, including a recent spate of school vandalism .

As social media has proliferated worldwide—Facebook has 2.85 billion users—so too have concerns over how the platforms are affecting individual and collective wellbeing. Social media is criticized for being addictive by design and for its role in the spread of misinformation on critical issues from vaccine safety to election integrity, as well as the rise of right-wing extremism. Social media companies, and many users, defend the platforms as avenues for promoting creativity and community-building. And some research has pushed back against the idea that social media raises the risk for depression in teens . So just how healthy or unhealthy is social media?

Two experts from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia Psychiatry share their insights into one crucial aspect of social media’s influence—its effect on the mental health of young people and adults. Deborah Glasofer , associate professor of psychology in psychiatry, conducts psychotherapy development research for adults with eating disorders and teaches about cognitive behavioral therapy. She is the co-author of the book Eating Disorders: What Everyone Needs to Know. Claude Mellins , Professor of medical psychology in the Departments of Psychiatry and Sociomedical Sciences, studies wellbeing among college and graduate students, among other topics, and serves as program director of CopeColumbia, a peer support program for Columbia faculty and staff whose mental health has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. She co-led the SHIFT research study to reduce sexual violence among undergraduates. Both use social media.

What do we know about the mental health risks of social media use?

Mellins : Facebook and Instagram and other social media platforms are important sources of socialization and relationship-building for many young people. Although there are important benefits, social media can also provide platforms for bullying and exclusion, unrealistic expectations about body image and sources of popularity, normalization of risk-taking behaviors, and can be detrimental to mental health. Girls and young people who identify as sexual and gender minorities can be especially vulnerable as targets. Young people’s brains are still developing, and as individuals, young people are developing their own identities. What they see on social media can define what is expected in ways that is not accurate and that can be destructive to identity development and self-image. Adolescence is a time of risk-taking, which is both a strength and a vulnerability. Social media can exacerbate risks, as we have seen played out in the news. 

Although there are important benefits, social media can also provide platforms for bullying and exclusion, unrealistic expectations about body image and sources of popularity, normalization of risk-taking behaviors, and can be detrimental to mental health. – Claude Mellins

Glasofer : For those vulnerable to developing an eating disorder, social media may be especially unhelpful because it allows people to easily compare their appearance to their friends, to celebrities, even older images of themselves. Research tells us that how much someone engages with photo-related activities like posting and sharing photos on Facebook or Instagram is associated with less body acceptance and more obsessing about appearance. For adolescent girls in particular, the more time they spend on social media directly relates to how much they absorb the idea that being thin is ideal, are driven to try to become thin, and/or overly scrutinize their own bodies. Also, if someone is vulnerable to an eating disorder, they may be especially attracted to seeking out unhelpful information—which is all too easy to find on social media.

Are there any upsides to social media?

Mellins : For young people, social media provides a platform to help them figure out who they are. For very shy or introverted young people, it can be a way to meet others with similar interests. During the pandemic, social media made it possible for people to connect in ways when in-person socialization was not possible.  Social support and socializing are critical influences on coping and resilience. Friends we couldn’t see in person were available online and allowed us important points of connection. On the other hand, fewer opportunities for in-person interactions with friends and family meant less of a real-world check on some of the negative influences of social media.

Whether it’s social media or in person, a good peer group makes the difference. A group of friends that connects over shared interests like art or music, and is balanced in their outlook on eating and appearance, is a positive. – Deborah Glasofer

Glasofer : Whether it’s social media or in person, a good peer group makes the difference. A group of friends that connects over shared interests like art or music, and is balanced in their outlook on eating and appearance, is a positive. In fact, a good peer group online may be protective against negative in-person influences. For those with a history of eating disorders, there are body-positive and recovery groups on social media. Some people find these groups to be supportive; for others, it’s more beneficial to move on and pursue other interests.

Is there a healthy way to be on social media?

Mellins : If you feel social media is a negative experience, you might need a break. Disengaging with social media permanently is more difficult­—especially for young people. These platforms are powerful tools for connecting and staying up-to-date with friends and family. Social events, too. If you’re not on social media then you’re reliant on your friends to reach out to you personally, which doesn’t always happen. It’s complicated.

Glasofer : When you find yourself feeling badly about yourself in relation to what other people are posting about themselves, then social media is not doing you any favors. If there is anything on social media that is negatively affecting your actions or your choices­—for example, if you’re starting to eat restrictively or exercise excessively—then it’s time to reassess. Parents should check-in with their kids about their lives on social media. In general, I recommend limiting social media— creating boundaries that are reasonable and work for you—so you can be present with people in your life. I also recommend social media vacations. It’s good to take the time to notice the difference between the virtual world and the real world.

How Social Media Affects Your Teen’s Mental Health: A Parent’s Guide

BY KATHY KATELLA June 17, 2024

[Originally published: Jan. 8, 2024. Updated: June 17, 2024.]

Mental health issues among teens have been rising for more than a decade, and some experts wonder how much social media use is to blame. If you’re a parent questioning if—and how—you should monitor the way your teenager uses social media, you’re not alone.

In the spring of 2023, United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, MBA, released an advisory called Social Media and Youth Mental Health , in which he says there is growing evidence that social media is causing harm to young people’s mental health. Soon after, the American Psychological Association (APA) issued its own health advisory . A year later, in June 2024, Dr. Murthy called for a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms, which would require an act of Congress to implement.

The issue is complicated, however. While there are indicators that it can have a profound risk of harm to teens (more on that below), social media use aimed at making healthy connections with others may actually be beneficial to some people. Dr. Murthy’s report indicates that more research is needed to fully understand the impact of social media. For parents, this means there are no easy answers.

“The issues we face now with social media are similar to those we faced when television came out,” says Linda Mayes, MD , chair of the Yale Child Study Center (YCSC). She explains that, as with TV watching, there are pros and cons to social media for young people. “So, how do we help parents filter out the parts that may be detrimental?”

Below, Dr. Mayes and YCSC’s Yann Poncin, MD , a child psychiatrist, offer advice for parents trying to help their teenagers use social media in a positive way. But first, some background.

Social media use and teens: Background, benefits, and harms

As a parent, you might ask yourself, “What, specifically, about social media use can have a negative impact on my teen?”

Dr. Murthy’s advisory was based on what it describes as a “substantial review of the available evidence.” It raises a variety of concerns, including the amount of time adolescents spend on platforms, the type of content they consume (or are exposed to), and the "degree to which it [their online interactions] disrupts activities essential for health, such as sleep and physical activity." It points out that social media can also affect young users in "different ways, depending on their individual strengths and vulnerabilities, and based on cultural, historical, and socio-economic factors."

The report stresses that the brain is going through a highly sensitive period between the ages of 10 and 19 , when identities and feelings of self-worth are forming. According to the report, "frequent social media use may be associated with distinct changes in the developing brain," potentially affecting such functions as emotional learning and behavior, impulse control, and emotional regulation.

What are the potential benefits of social media use by teens?

According to Dr. Murthy’s advisory, some teenagers experience a benefit when they use social media to foster positive connections with others who share common interests or identities (if they are seeking a connection with others who are, say, members of a particular racial identity), creating a space for self-expression. Relationships formed in communities like these can create opportunities for "positive interactions with more diverse peer groups than are available to them offline," the report states.

The advisory points to a 2022 survey of American teenagers and their parents by the Pew Research Center, which showed that a majority of respondents felt that social media helps teenagers feel more accepted (58%), like they have people who can support them through tough times (67%), that they have a place to show their creative side (71%), and that they are more connected to what’s going on in their friends’ lives (80%).

“Posting to let your friends know how you’ve been spending your time can be a positive or healthy way to connect and hear about each other’s day,” says Dr. Poncin. “It’s no different than 30 years ago when adolescents would be on the phone for three hours connecting with their friends—only now you're online with your friends, saying, ‘Meet you after school,’ or ‘Did you hear about this?’”

What are the potential harms of social media use by teens?

Over the last decade, increasing evidence has identified the potential negative impact of social media on adolescents. According to a research study of American teens ages 12-15, those who used social media over three hours each day faced twice the risk of having negative mental health outcomes, including depression and anxiety symptoms.

The advisory states that other studies "point to a higher relative concern of harm in adolescent girls and those already experiencing poor mental health, as well as for particular health outcomes, such as cyberbullying-related depression, body image and disordered eating behaviors, and poor sleep quality linked to social media use."

“What’s more, the social media algorithms are built to promote whatever you seem interested in,” says Dr. Mayes. “If a teen searches for any kind of mental health condition, such as depression or suicide, it's going to feed them information about those things, so soon they may begin to think that everyone around them is depressed or thinking about suicide, which is not necessarily good for mental health.”

When does the kind of content teens see become an issue?

Teens can easily access extreme, inappropriate, and harmful content. In certain cases, deaths have been linked to suicide- and self-harm-related content, such as “cutting,” partial asphyxiation, and risk-taking challenges on social media platforms, according to Dr. Murthy’s report. Studies also found that discussing or showing this content can normalize these behaviors.

Eating disorders are yet another concern. A review of 50 studies across 17 countries between 2016 and 2021 published in PLOS Global Public Health suggested that relentless online exposure to largely unattainable physical ideals may trigger a distorted sense of self and eating disorders. This is considered to be a particular problem among girls.

In addition, people who target adolescents—for instance, "adults seeking to sexually exploit children, to financially extort them through the threat or actual distribution of intimate images"—may use social media platforms for these types of predatory behaviors, according to the Surgeon General's advisory.

Why is excessive use of social media a problem?

According to Dr. Murthy's advisory, the excessive use of social media can harm teens by disrupting important healthy behaviors. Some researchers think that exposure to social media can overstimulate the brain's reward center and, when the stimulation becomes excessive, can trigger pathways comparable to addiction.

Excessive use has also been linked to sleep problems, attention problems, and feelings of exclusion in adolescents—and sleep is essential for the healthy development of teens, according to the advisory.

Social media use in teens: A guide for parents

After reading the background, as a parent, you might ask yourself, “Sure, but do kids really use social media that much?”

Social media use among young people is nearly universal now, based on surveys from the Pew Research Center. In 2022, up to 95% of teenagers surveyed (ages 13 to 17) reported using social media, and more than a third of them use it “almost constantly.”

Pew has also tracked which social media platforms (or “apps”) teenagers are using. In 2023, it found the majority of teens—9 out of 10 for those ages 13 to 17—use YouTube, followed by TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram. (Their use of Facebook dropped dramatically; there was also a decrease in the use of Twitter, now called X, although that was not as steep.) With that in mind, YCSC experts provide a guide for parents concerned about their teens’ social media use.

1. Determine the age your child will have access to social media.

Experts are still exploring whether there is a “right age” for a child to access social media. The APA explains that adolescents mature at different rates, which makes establishing a universal age recommendation difficult.

Although the minimum age most commonly required by social media platforms in the U.S. is 13, "nearly 40% of children ages 8–12 use social media," according to Dr. Murthy’s report. That signals how difficult it can be to enforce these rules without parental supervision.

One strategy is to make a social media plan for your family long before the teenage years, Dr. Poncin says. “In my opinion, elementary school-age children should not have full-on internet access using a device with all the social media apps.”

In terms of phones, they can start with a “dumbphone,” a cell phone that doesn’t have email, an internet browser, and other features found on smartphones, he adds.

For middle-schoolers who show maturity and responsibility—who can get themselves to sleep and do their homework, for example—additional access may be fine, notes Dr. Poncin. But he suggests delaying full access to smartphones for as long as possible, opting for a device allowing you to add more apps as your child matures.

Establishing a family social media plan might also be useful—the American Academy of Pediatrics offers a tool that can help. In addition to setting the age at which you plan to start giving your kids phones or internet access, this plan can be used to establish rules and educate children and teens about being careful about privacy settings, avoiding strangers online, not giving out personal information, and knowing how to report cyberbullying, Dr. Mayes says.

2. Keep devices out of the bedroom.

Research shows a relationship between social media use and poor sleep quality, reduced sleep duration, and sleep difficulties in young people, according to Dr. Murthy’s advisory. For teens, poor sleep is linked to emotional health issues and a higher risk for suicide .

According to Dr. Murthy’s report, on a typical weekday, nearly one-third of adolescents report using screen media until midnight or later. (While screen media use includes various digital activities, social media apps are the most commonly used applications by teens.)

“Knowing that, try to create a culture at home where all phones are turned off by a certain time, and make sure it's at least one hour before going to bed,” Dr. Poncin says.

However, you may find that bedtime rules don’t work as well as your kids get older. It may be necessary to ask your teen to put their phone outside the bedroom before going to bed. “But, if the response is, ‘I do my homework late and have a group chat about math, so I'm going to need the phone to group chat,’ and you suspect your teen isn’t being honest, that will be a different conversation,” Dr. Poncin says. “But having these open conversations is critical.”

3. Keep the lines of communication open, and let your teen make mistakes.

It will be easier to talk to your teens about social media if you have comfortable conversations with them about other issues, the doctors say.

“I don’t believe you should monitor the content of your teen’s phone, because a teenager should have privacy,” Dr. Poncin says. “An important part of the teenage years is figuring out who you are in the world. So, it's important for them to explore and even make mistakes without you hovering around them.” The goal is to keep lines of communication open and establish some trust with your child, so they'll come to you if there are issues, he adds.

This, too, is similar to the advice given when parents were concerned about the impact of television on children, adds Dr. Mayes. “Research showed that watching TV in and of itself wasn’t bad, but it began to have potentially negative effects on kids’ behavior when it was used as a babysitter,” she says. “The message to parents was to sit beside their kids and watch TV with them, and then talk about what they’re watching.”

Neither you nor your teen will be happy if you sit beside them and scroll down your social media feeds together, but you can take the time to ask how social media is working for them, Dr. Mayes suggests. “So, you're not saying, ‘Oh no! You're on social media!’ Rather, you’re normalizing it and making it clear that you're willing to talk about what they're experiencing or learning. This sets it up for them to talk to you if they run into a problem, instead of going to their peers or looking for solutions online,” she says.

4. Be mindful of your approach when talking to your teen.

Although keeping the line of communication open matters, how you have those conversations is equally important. If you are concerned about your teen’s social media use and feel the need to intervene, you might say something like, "It seems like you're on the phone so much that I don't see you just doing homework like you used to do, so I'm just worried how healthy this is for you in terms of getting your stuff done. What do you think about that?" Dr. Poncin says.

You might even need to be more assertive, for instance, saying, "I've noticed that you're on your phone until 1 a.m. When I go to the bathroom, your light is on, and you're on your phone. That’s not healthy. So, can we come up with a plan that you're most comfortable with?"

5. Follow the rules yourself.

As a parent, you are a role model and that means following all the same rules you are setting for your children—if you ask your teenager to limit their screen time, you should do so as well, says Dr. Mayes, noting that it’s not uncommon to see parents looking at their phones when they are out with their kids.

You might have a hard time resisting your social media feeds, texts, and emails. Sometimes, it helps to admit to your teenagers that you find it difficult to put down your devices, too. “This a global issue, where parents want their kids to do things differently and better than they do,” Dr. Poncin says. “So, once again, having an honest conversation is important.”

Note: Cyberbullying and online abuse or exploitation can be reported to the school or the police, or on websites such as Take It Down and CyberTipline , according to the Surgeon General report.

More news from Yale Medicine

The Data Behind Your Doom Scroll: How Negative News Takes Over Your Feed

Analyzing nearly 30 million posts, Stanford scholars reveal how emotional, negative content fuels the viral spread of news on social media. Now, what to do about it?

iStock/ PeopleImages

Mired in a pandemic lockdown and left doom-scrolling through social media, one neuroscientist at Stanford University looked at his Twitter feed and wondered what makes a story go viral. Intrigued, he then did what scientists do; he got together with his colleagues and designed a study . Gathering nearly 30 million posts from X (formerly Twitter) tweeted by over 180 news organizations across the political spectrum between 2011 and 2020, they coded the messages with a computational tool called “sentiment analysis.”

“Sentiment analysis uses simple algorithms and coded dictionaries to evaluate the emotional tone of a post. Is the message positive in nature or negative? Is it dispassionate or intended to stoke emotions like anger, fear, anxiety?” said lead author Brian Knutson , a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences and an expert in the psychology of decision-making. “We then mapped sentiment against virality to learn what was driving America’s social media tendencies.”

The study , published in the journal PLoS ONE and supported by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), provides a stark understanding of the sorts of posts that spread more widely and rapidly and why. “Typically, it’s the negative, highly arousing stories that get the most traffic, and these stories tend to come from the most biased sources, on both the left and the right,” Knutson said. 

Sentiment Matters

His analysis revealed that news sources posted almost twice as much negative content as positive content overall. This pattern contrasts with individual users, who tend to post more positive than negative content. The team also found that the most biased news sources, left or right, had roughly 12% more high-arousal negative content than balanced news sources and that these highly arousing negative posts were most likely to go viral. Most troubling of all, however, the researchers found that this increasing spread of high-arousal negative content also grew among the balanced news sources over time, a trend Knutson attributes to their following biased news sources in chasing engagement metrics. 

Read the full study, News Source Bias and Sentiment on Social Media

While the study establishes a valuable baseline understanding, Knutson’s eventual goal is to explore ways to reverse the trend or lessen the damaging effects of negative content and misinformation in modern American life. Future studies will examine tools and techniques, both computational and on the policy front, that could change the dynamic.

The stakes are high. Over half of all U.S. adults consume news online, the study points out, and most of it is shared via social media platforms like X, TikTok, and Facebook. Social media also provide near instantaneous access and dissemination powers, with few-to-no checks on false and misleading information.

Complicating matters is the fact that in a world where news is paid for by advertising and advertising is driven by engagement metrics (like hits, likes, time on page, and reposts), even balanced news sources might be incentivized to amplify negative emotional content in order to chase eyeballs, Knutson said. 

“All news sources want their content to go viral, but biased news sources seem more willing to engage users with emotionally charged content, especially as political polarization increases,” he said.

This can drive further polarization and harm users' ability to make well-informed decisions, and it might also decrease users’ well-being while increasing political division. “It’s a sort of ‘affective pollution’ that exacerbates social strife,” Knutson added.

Possible Interventions

The research highlights the need for interventions to limit the spread of harmful emotional content and suggests that social media algorithms could be redesigned to reduce the amplification of emotionally charged and potentially biased news. 

Knutson said the same sort of sentiment analysis tools could be implemented by users to filter out strongly negative and misleading content from their own feeds, but that puts the onus on the user and cannot prevent willful consumption of bad information. Policy approaches and regulation are also possible options, but many platforms seem unwilling or unable to moderate their content.

“Our study shows that this negative sentiment dynamic is real and can be harmful, but exactly what to do about it remains an open challenge,” Knutson concluded. “Perhaps by filtering content sentiment, along with the semantics and source, we can provide users with a new and useful set of tools.”

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Social Media is Harmful to Society

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Race to pass social media ban after National Cabinet meeting and call for lower age limit

Legislation banning social media for children under 16 will be introduced in the next sitting week. here are the key elements and concerns..

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says social media is harming young people. Source: AAP / Mick Tsikas

'Kiddy pool policy': Is Australia setting itself up to fail with teen social media ban?

What are the key elements of the social media ban?

• Setting a minimum age of 16.
• Establishing an obligation on social media services — not parents or young people — to take reasonable steps to prevent age-restricted users from having the account.
• Commencement in 12 months after the bill's passage.
• A provision of exemptions to ensure young Australians retain access to services they need.
• Robust protections for personal information and significant penalties if platforms breach these provisions.

Mixed reactions to social media ban

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