Scientists can find answers to questions about screens harming teens

The rise in teenage mental illness, cyberbullying, and social media use: a population analysis of Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Odgers

Population studies are a good way to study technology and teenage mental health. Most of the 25 reviews published between the year of 2019) and the year of 2021, found a weak or inconsistent link between social-media use and mental health.

A representative of Meta, which owns Instagram, insisted the platform’s policies and an official from Pinterest admitted the site was not safe when Russell used it. In response to the inquest findings, both firms pointed to ways they were improving their sites. Teens can not view certain content on photo-sharing website,Instagram last year.

And for some, social-media use can lead to devastating consequences. In September 2022, for instance, a London coroner’s inquest found that 14-year-old Molly Russell “died from an act of self-harm whilst suffering from depression and the negative effects of on-line content”. The inquest heard that Russell had viewed content about self-harm and suicide on the platforms Instagram and Pinterest before she took her own life in November 2017.

The rise in mental illness is tied to the rise in the number of adolescents who use a mobile phone and argue that this surpasses real-world socializing, playing and sleep. The tidal wave of adolescent mental illness began in the early 2010s due to this great rewiring of childhood, which is the largest reason. Haidt points in particular to evidence that heavy social-media use by pre-teen girls is linked to depression and anxiety. “Whenever you look at anxiety, depression, you almost always find the effects are larger,” he told Nature.

Some researchers have found ways to benefit certain groups. She says that the under-represented populations are using their phones to find community a lot of the time.

Such results might help to explain why some other studies, which look at averages, find little impact, says Ine Beyens, a communications researcher at the University of Amsterdam, who led the study. “When you put all these effects together, of course, in the end, you have a very small effect,” she says.

But other researchers have criticized some of his views. Odgers published one of the most biting critiques in a review of Haidt’s book (see Nature 628, 29–30; 2024). His argument that digital technologies are driving an epidemic of mental illness “is not supported by science”, she wrote, suggesting that Haidt might be mistaking correlation between technology use and mental illness for causation.

There has been some equivocation in the evidence from the experiments where people have said they will not use their phones or social media. A health researcher at University College London, Ruth Plackett, says that a systematic review of randomized trials found some evidence that abstention from social media improved measures for depression. But other studies found no effect.

It’s also unclear in some studies, say Odgers and some other researchers, which comes first: whether social media causes depression, for instance, or whether young people who are depressed are more likely to spend time on social media. “We might have the arrow pointing in the wrong direction,” Odgers says.

Researchers have looked at many studies together and different results to try and understand the conflicting literature. Many have found relatively weak associations and small effects of these technologies on mental health. There was an average of a negative but small association between adolescents’ use of digital technology, and social media in particular, and psychological well-being, found one 2020 analysis. The literature review by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine didn’t agree with the notion that social media causes changes in adolescent health.

The New York Times has a book called “What’s Wrong with Kids Today” near the top of their bestsellers list. The Anxious Generation (2024), by psychologist Jonathan Haidt, argues that increasing time spent on smartphones and social media, at the expense of play, is rewiring the brains of children and adolescents and driving soaring rates of mental illness. It jumped to the top spot on the list when it was released a year ago.

No one denies that adolescent mental health is a huge concern. Research shows that, over the past two decades, rates of mental illness have been increasing in adolescents in many countries1 (see ‘Sadness epidemic’). The percentage of adolescents who reported symptoms of depression has gone up due to the increase in girls, and the suicide rate among adolescents has gone up due to the increase in girls. Some of these trends may be due to increased awareness and reporting of mental health concerns, but they have also been looking for other causes.

The goal should be to nurture young people who are flourishing and resilient, capable of making informed decisions about the healthy use of technology and able to balance screen time with sleep and other real-world delights. They can then teach adults how to find that balance.

Finding ways to help young people navigate technology does not have to wait until its consequences are nailed down. Schools that ban phones — as many are now doing — provide a natural experiment to study whether this restriction boosts grades and well-being. A study of 30 secondary schools in England did not find evidence that phone policies are linked with reduced phone use or better mental health.

For their part, researchers should focus on well-designed, rigorous studies. They could engage in an approach used in other fields called adversarial collaboration, in which researchers with clashing views work together on shared studies that could resolve their dispute. Involving young people, teachers, parents and carers in designing the research would improve its validity and public reception. Too often, a study that finds little evidence of negative impacts is poorly received, because it seems contradictory to what people are experiencing on the ground.

There are ways to tease apart this tangle, but it needs technology companies to play ball. Scientists agree they need better, fine-grained data on what young people are doing and seeing on their phones. Researchers are frustrated that firms who have these data are often reluctant to share them. This is admittedly a legally and ethically fraught area: young people can’t give research consent if they are underage, and their privacy and security must be protected. It should nevertheless be possible for companies and researchers to work out ways to access and analyse such data, with appropriate safeguards in place.

Research suggests that phones can distract and that apps can be addicting, as they encourage people to scroll through social-media content. Technology companies that depend on eyeballs on screens have an incentive to keep people hooked.