Does social media make teens unhappy? The study says this may depend on their age

The New York Times – Life / Style – In recent years, like a cold glow smart phone More and more teenagers follow from the bedroom to school and vice versa, parents are starting to worry about Technology effect. No wonder, with researchers from Facebook Secretly studying how their apps erode girls’ body image, doctors prescribe drug-induced tic disorders tik tok Prosecutors and lawmakers pledged to hold social media companies accountable for harming children.

But in the background, a quieter scientific debate questioned whether social media was doing any harm. While some researchers claim that digital technology is a strong causal factor in rising rates Psychological healthOthers believe the risk of harm for most teens is small — the effect on well-being is equivalent to wearing glasses or eating potatoes regularly, according to one group.

Now, the authors of the article on eyeglass use have published a large, multi-year study that offers what independent experts have said is an exceptionally detailed and rigorous look at the relationship between social media and teens’ feelings about life.

By analyzing survey responses from more than 84,000 people of all ages in Britain, researchers have identified two distinct periods of adolescence when heavy use of social media led to lower rates of “life satisfaction”: the first worldwide. puberty – 11 to 13 years for girls and 14 to 15 years for boys – then again for both sexes at 19 years old.

“We’ve already considered that the links between social media and well-being may be different at different ages – and we’ve found that this is indeed the case,” said Amy Urban, an experimental psychologist at the University of Cambridge, who led the study.

For most teens in the United States, screens are a huge part of life. Nine out of 10 American teens have a smart phone And you spend many hours a day looking at it — watching videos, playing games, and communicating on social media, recent research shows.

With the prevalence of social media use among teens over the past two decades, so has it increase rates depressionanxiety and suicideprompting scientists to question whether these striking trends might be related.

Some suggested it Social networks can have an indirect effect on happiness, to replace other activities, such as personal interactions, exercise or sleep, that are critical to mental and physical health. Extensive use of social media appears to disrupt adolescent sleep patterns, for example.

However, research looking for a direct link between social media and well-being hasn’t found much.

“There have been hundreds of these studies, and nearly all of them showed very small effects,” said Jeff Hancock, a behavioral psychologist at Stanford University who performed a meta-analysis of 226 of these studies.

Hancock, who was not involved in the work, said the amazing thing about the new study is its scope. It included two surveys in Great Britain, totaling 84,000 people. One of these surveys followed more than 17,000 teens between the ages of 10 and 21 over time, showing how their social media consumption and life satisfaction scores have changed from year to year.

“In terms of size, it’s great,” Hancock said. He added that the age-based enrichment analysis is a significant improvement over previous studies, which tended to group all adolescents together. “The teenage years are not a continuous period of life development – they bring about rapid change,” he said.

The study found that during early adolescence, heavy social media use predicted lower life satisfaction scores a year later. For girls, this sensitive period ranged from 11 to 13 years, while for boys the ages ranged from 14 to 15 years. Urban said this difference in gender could simply be because girls tend to reach puberty earlier than boys.

“We know that teenage girls go through a lot of development earlier than boys,” Orben said. “There are a lot of things it can drive, whether it’s social, cognitive, or biological.”

Both boys and girls in the study reached a second period of social media sensitivity around the age of 19. “This was very surprising because it was very consistent across genders,” Urban said. At that age, she said, many people experience major social upheavals — such as starting college, getting a new job, or living independently for the first time — that can change the way they interact with social media.

Experts said that although the new report relied on richer data sets than previous studies, it still lacked some information that might be useful in interpreting the findings. Waiting an entire year between responses isn’t ideal, for example. And while the surveys questioned the amount of time respondents spent communicating on social media, they did not ask how it was used; Talking to strangers while playing a video game can have different effects than texting a group of school friends.

Together with previous work, the results indicate that, Although most teens are not much influenced by social media, a small subgroup can be significantly affected by its effects. But it is impossible to predict the risks for an individual child.

“What does that mean for your 12-year-old? It’s hard to tell,” said Michaeline Jensen, a clinical psychologist at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro. Given the small effect seen in the study, she said, “very few of those Children will go from normal functioning to clinical levels of depression.” But, “that does not mean that none of them will pass.”

Jensen noted that the study also found a link in the opposite direction: For all ages, participants who felt bad about their lives ended up spending more time on social media a year later. This suggests that for some people, technology may be a coping mechanism rather than a reason for their grief.

All of these experts said they were often frustrated with public debates about social media and children, which often exaggerate the platforms’ harms and ignore the benefits.

“There are risks — peer influence, infection, substance abuse,” Jensen said. “But there are also a lot of positive things,” he added, “like support, communication, creativity, and mastery of skills.” “I think it gets overlooked a lot of times because we’re so focused on risk.” / LÍVIA BUELONI GONAALVES . translation

The New York Times Licensing Group – All rights reserved. Reproduction of any kind without written permission of the New York Times is prohibited.