Kim Mills: Lately the news has been full of headlines about how social media is supposedly causing a mental health crisis among young people. In March, Utah became the first state to prohibit anyone under age 18 from using social media without their parents’ consent. Bills in the U.S. House and Senate would do the same if signed into law. Meanwhile, since January, at least a dozen school districts around the country have sued the companies behind social media platforms, such as Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube, accusing them of knowingly harming teens’ mental health. Even the U.S. surgeon general has weighed in, saying he believes that 13 is too young for kids to start using social media.
Amid this surge of interest, psychologists and other researchers are trying to shed light on whether parents and policy makers are right to be so concerned. Is social media really causing a crisis in teen mental health or is it just one factor among many? What age, if any, is too young to use social media? How much should parents monitor their kids’ social media use? What’s the right balance between giving teens privacy and keeping them safe online? And in all the talk about the harms of social media, are we overlooking some of the ways in which it can help teens? Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I’m Kim Mills.
My guest today is Dr. Jacqueline Nesi, an assistant professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School. She’s a psychologist who studies how technology and social media affect teens’ social and emotional health, their relationships, and their risk of suicide. She also studies how parents can help by more effectively monitoring their teens’ social media use. Dr. Nesi is a member of an APA presidential advisory panel that recently developed a set of recommendations for healthy social media use in adolescence. And she writes a Substack newsletter called Techno Sapiens, which aims to share the latest research on psychology, technology, and parenting.
Dr. Nesi, thank you for joining me today.
Jacqueline Nesi, PhD: Thank you so much for having me.
Mills: Let’s start with the big question. Does research support the idea that social media is causing a mental health crisis among teens, and are parents and policymakers right to be alarmed?
Nesi: You’re right that this is definitely the big question here. I think, so what I’ll say in terms of the evidence is that I think we have some evidence that social media may be playing a role in the teen mental health crisis. I don’t think that that evidence is definitive at this point. So to give a little more context on that, I think we have a lot of correlational studies. So we have a lot of studies that do some version of take a whole bunch of teens, ask them questions about how much they’re using social media, and then ask them about symptoms of mental health concerns. And in many of those studies, what we see is a correlation between more social media use and lower mental health. But generally that correlation is pretty small, although it is statistically significant. And from those studies, we don’t know what’s causing what.
So we don’t know if it’s the social media use that’s causing the mental health concerns, vice versa, or if there’s some third factor that’s contributing to both. We do now we’re starting to have a little bit more causal evidence, so some more experimental type studies that would suggest that social media may be playing a role in contributing to mental health concerns. But again, I think that evidence is really not definitive at this point. And I think that social media, though it may be playing a role, is unlikely to be the only cause of this increase in mental health symptoms that we’re seeing among youth.
Mills: Now, there have been headlines recently about how kids are addicted to social media, that they can’t get off their smartphones even if they want to. What’s your take on that? Is it possible for teens or, for that matter, adults to be actually addicted to social media?
Nesi: Yeah, the first thing I would say on that is that I certainly think it’s the case that there are many teens and many adults that are using social media a lot more than they want to be. So they’re using it in a way where they wish they were using it less. It doesn’t feel good to them. And I think a small percentage of cases that use could be considered problematic or compulsive, where it really is rising to a degree that it’s getting in the way, interfering with daily functioning. At the same time, I’m hesitant to use the word addiction because I think that the word addiction has a really specific meaning in the psychology world, in the diagnostic sense where it’s really only refers to a few specific mental health concerns around specifically substances like alcohol or drugs. And then, at least in the U.S., to there’s one behavioral addiction that’s sort of officially classified, which would be problematic gambling.
But at this point when it comes to social media, we really don’t have the evidence that we can call this sort of compulsive or problematic use of social media a true addiction because it functions a little bit differently. And because in many cases when we talk about social media, we’re thinking about both some benefits and some risks. So there’s some good stuff happening on social media, as well as the bad stuff. And so it’s a little tough to use this word addiction when we know that some of what’s happening online can actually be really helpful and protective and social for kids and adults. So I do think that there are cases where it’s being used in problematic ways that are certainly interfering. Whether to use the term addiction, I think at this point I would say is probably not the right term to be using.
Mills: Well, let me ask you then the question around age and giving kids access to social media. Is it possible to pick a particular age and say that’s too young or that’s the right age, or is it different for different kids?
Nesi: I wish it was the case that we could just pick a certain age and say, this is the age that social media stops being problematic, or this is the age where it’s perfectly safe. But unfortunately, I just don’t think that the research would support that. And then the research probably doesn’t support that on really any issue. It’s really hard to pick a specific age for anything because teens and kids are so different in terms of the pace of their development, in terms of the challenges they’re running into, their strengths, their vulnerabilities. And so I do think we can say generally that for younger adolescents, or maybe earlier teens, late preteens, that those younger youth tend to run into more of the negative aspects of social media.
So they do tend to encounter more of the risks of social media, at least based on the evidence we have so far. Which would suggest that it can make sense to wait on the introduction of social media. At the, as things currently stand, age 13 is the sort of legal age in the U.S. where kids are allowed to start getting on social media. Of course, we know that many are getting on earlier than that. And there is some question now about whether that age should be increased. I don’t think we can say for sure whether, again, there’s a specific age that it should be increased to or whether 13 is the right age. But I will say that in general, when kids are on the younger end of the adolescent range, they do tend to run into more risks. So there’s some evidence to suggest that waiting makes sense.
Mills: You’ve worked on a survey that’s asked teens themselves what they think of social media. Do teens think that social media is harming their mental health? Do they think that there should be changes or restrictions put on it?
Nesi: Yeah, so I had the opportunity to work with Common Sense Media, which is a large nonprofit in the U.S., focused on youth media use. And we did a large national survey of about 1400 adolescent girls, so ages 11 to 15. And in that survey we asked them, as you said, what they think of social media. So we really wanted to get their voices into this conversation that so many of us are having. And what they said was, in general, that it’s a mixed bag for them. So overall, actually, teens were more likely to say that, overall, social media has had a mostly positive impact on people their age versus negative. But at the same time, there was a good, depending on the platform, about a fifth to a quarter of those girls who said that social media had had a mostly negative impact on people their age.
So they’re sort of seeing, I think, both the risks and the benefits of social media. They also did have suggestions, when we asked them about how they would change platforms to make them better for teens’ wellbeing. And for the most part, those focused on issues of the content that they were seeing. So making the content more appropriate for them, making it more positive, making sure that it was appropriate for their age. Also, they had some to say about privacy and sort of safety on the platforms, making sure that adults couldn’t contact them. They had some concerns about location sharing, so making their locations public on platforms. So generally, I think teens were in favor of some changes to social media sites and those generally focused on, I would say, safety and appropriateness of content.
Mills: So it sounds like they’re pretty aware of what some of the risks are, which is good, right? I mean, we want them to be aware of those things.
Nesi: Definitely. Yeah. I think they are. I think that, in general, teens are the ones that are using these platforms the most and they’re really at the center of this conversation that we’re having. And I think that they know, they have a good sense of where these platforms are sort of working and what they love about them and then what things are more risky and that they would like to be different.
Mills: So we know a fair amount about social media sites that might be harmful to teens’ mental health, such as those that glamorize super thinness or self-harm. But what are some of the healthy sites where kids could and should be going?
Nesi: Yeah, so I think that this really—kids see a lot, I think, of both the benefits and risks across platforms. So it’s really hard to say that maybe one site is better than another in terms of effects on mental health or in terms of the types of content even that they’re going to be coming across. But I will say that we know there are a number of benefits to social media use in spite of the risks. So some of the good things that kids might be encountering would be things like connecting with friends or meeting new friends, getting social support, in many cases sort of exploring identities, or discovering new interests, and learning about things they may have not known before, in some cases things like civic engagement and getting involved in issues they care about. I think all of those are certainly benefits that teens themselves report and that we see across platforms.
Mills: So Dr. Nesi, you were part of a specially appointed panel at the APA that looked at the effect of social media on kids in order to make some recommendations for how best to use the platforms. And one of the recommendations that stood out for me was the notion that kids need to be trained in media literacy, especially before parents and caregivers hand over smartphones, tablets, other smart technologies. How can parents make sure their kids are getting this training and what should it entail?
Nesi: That’s a great question. Yeah, so this was one of the big recommendations that we made as part of this panel. And I think that it can’t all be on parents, is the first thing I’ll say. I think that the effort to educate young people and teens in particular about social media really has to come from multiple places. So I think it has to be sort of an overall societal focus, and that’s going to include things like education in schools as well. But certainly there are things I think that parents can be doing at home to make sure that they’re kids are learning about how to use social media safely. So one thing I’ll say is that I think that having a sort of gradual introduction to social media is important. So oftentimes, kids will look at their first phones and many parents feel that they, at that same time, they have to give them access to everything that the phone can offer.
And in many cases, I think it might make sense to wait actually on introducing social media after a child has had some time to adjust to how they might communicate safely and how they might use the phone in ways that are effective and healthy. And then as they start using social media, taking again, sort of a gradual approach with at first having more sort of rules and restrictions in place, limits on what they can do, what they can access, how much time they can spend, who they can talk to. And over time gradually lessening those as they learn more responsibility online. Also, earlier on, having more monitoring. So just paying sort of closer attention to what young people are doing on social media.
For some families that might look like more direct monitoring, so sitting down with a child and actually looking at what they’re doing on social media. For some, it’s going to be maybe a little bit more around having just a lot of open conversations about what’s happening on social media. But generally sort of making sure that they’re not going through this alone, that they have somebody to talk to, they can come to when they run into things that they don’t understand online, and that they have some amount of sort of guardrails in place to make sure that they’re not running into or that they’re running into fewer of the risks that we might see.
Mills: Now, how can parents balance the need to keep on top of the things that we were just talking about and giving teens some space and privacy? And should parents know, for example, all of their child’s passwords? Should they be reading their kids’ texts? I mean, where are the parameters?
Nesi: Yeah, this is a really tricky issue and I think it’s one that so many parents run into and sort of wonder what to do about. I think there’s opposing opinions on how to handle this because, of course, we want to protect teens’ privacy and independence, and that’s a really important piece of the adolescent period. And at the same time, we do want to keep them safe and protected from some of the risks that are out there as much as we can. So the first thing I’ll say is that I think that no matter what parents decide to do around this, I think there is a question of how it is done that is maybe more important. And I think the research would support, what would be called, autonomy supportive styles of parenting, which basically means that we want to be, even if we’re putting limits in place, even if we’re having really high expectations or strict rules, we still want to be supporting teens’ feelings of autonomy and independence.
And so the ways that parents can do that are with things like making sure they always provide rationale for any rules or limits that they have in place. So why is this important? Why are they doing this? Soliciting their teen’s opinion on the types of things that teens think are important about their use of social media, listening to them, having open conversations, all of these things I think are really crucial to helping teens feel that their autonomy is being supported, even when we have these kind of rules or this kind of monitoring that we might be doing in place. Related to that, I think we always want it to be a conversation.
So I think that what we definitely don’t want is spying. So that tends to backfire in many cases. So looking at a teen’s phone when they didn’t know that was going to be happening, unless of course it’s an emergency of some kind. But I think having this be an open conversation that this is what we’re going to be doing. We’re going to be checking in on what’s happening in your life on social media, in your life online. We’re going to be doing it this frequently and here are the reasons why. I think that can really go a long way.
Mills: So is it something that parents should be doing in a more casual way? For example, you’re making dinner and kids sitting at the table and he’s over there texting and you just say, oh, so hey, bud, who are you texting right now? What are you talking about? Does that work? Is that one way of keeping a little bit of a tab on what your child is up to?
Nesi: Yeah, I think that’s one great way to go about it. So having these frequent conversations that are more casual and that are more, it doesn’t always have to be a sit down where you’re staring at each other and it’s this big thing. I think having it be more casual can be great. Honestly, I think that the decisions that families make about how to handle monitoring like this are really family specific and really child specific. So depending on a child’s age, younger kids are going to need more monitoring than older, their maturity, what they’ve shown you in terms of their history, and their responsibility, their willingness to follow the rules, how open they are with you about what they’re encountering. All those things I think are going to play a role in, ultimately, how this happens. But there’re also a lot of options for how to do this kind of monitoring.
So again, some of it is just asking lots of questions, keeping open to conversation. Some of it might be something like actually doing spot checks of the phone at certain intervals that you agree on in advance, you could do using social media together with your child can be a great way to get them to share what they’re up to, what they’re interested in. And then there’s also more sort of technical tools that some families find work as kind of one aspect of their overall monitoring plans. So there are things like, on iPhone, family sharing, and there’s a similar thing on Android, which basically allows you to pair your phones together, between the parent and the child, and then you can do things like set limits on time and the type of content they can access.
And there are also other tools that allow for some amount of monitoring, things like Bark, which is a type of software that sort of allows you to—it alerts you to potential concerning activity that is occurring on your child’s device. So those things work for some families. I don’t think those things are necessary for every family, but for some, I think that’s one piece of the plan that works for them.
Mills: Have you found that there is an optimal amount of time that young people should spend each day on social media? And how can parents and even kids themselves know when they’re spending too much time?
Nesi: I don’t think that there’s a specific number we can necessarily point to. And I think we used to, so in terms of screen time generally and how much time to spend on devices, there used to be recommendations around a specific number of hours per day for a teen. That sort of has been done away with now because I think we know that there is, that devices are just such a huge piece of our everyday lives. And for a young person that’s often, they’re using it for schoolwork, they’re using it for communication, they’re using it for entertainment, and it can be hard to actually set a specific time on that. What I will say is that I think it is really important, as you said, that teens and families are aware of when they feel like they are spending too much time on the device.
So I think things to be looking out for are if it feels like the device is really getting in the way of other healthy activities. So the main thing I’ll say there is sleep. I think sleep is, we know, absolutely crucial for mental health, for physical health, and we know that devices and social media can get in the way of that. So if social media’s getting in the way of sleep, that’s certainly a sign that there needs to be a change. Other things like exercise, getting outside, in person kind of social interactions. I think a good way to think about sort of social media use and screen time for entertainment is thinking about all the other pieces of the day that are really important to be fitting in for health. So sleep, healthy eating, exercise, seeing friends. And then when there’s time after those things, that can be used for social media use. But I think trying to make sure that all those things are happening first is a good way to go about it if possible.
Mills: Now, we at APA recently conducted some focus groups with parents and teens asking them about social media, and we found that while they shared some concerns about social media use, that parents were more worried about their kids being bullied online, while the kids were concerned about how social media use might affect their futures and other aspects of their lives. Do those findings jive with what you’ve been learning in your research?
Nesi: That’s really interesting. Yeah, I think that I certainly hear a lot of concerns from parents and teens about making mistakes online that could affect whether it’s future college acceptance or employment prospects or whatever it might be. I do think that that is certainly a concern. And in terms of bullying, yeah, I think that the data we have from the Cyberbullying Research Center would suggest that somewhere around a quarter of teens say they’ve been cyberbullied at some point in their lives. So it’s certainly somewhat common. And I do think it’s something that we need to be looking out for, and in both cases that we need to be sort of educating teens about how they can handle these issues when they arise.
Mills: Now, a lot of people are concerned with how social media is affecting girls in particular. There was a study this spring finding that the rates of mental illness had increased among teenage girls. Is there any evidence that girls and boys use social media differently or that it’s more harmful to girls than to boys?
Nesi: Yeah, so in general, in terms of the general question about mental health concerns, we know that many mental health concerns are more common among teen girls than they are among teen boys. So things like depression and anxiety. We know that actually rates of suicide, unfortunately, are higher among boys than they are among girls. But we also know that in the past 10 to 15 years, the rate of increase of each of those concerns has been more steep among girls than among boys. So on a relative basis, it’s increased more among girls in general. In terms of the issue of social media specifically, I don’t think the research is quite settled yet on actually if it is worse for boys or for girls.
I think we have some evidence that there may be things that are worse for girls. So we know obviously that in our culture, in our society, that generally girls are socialized to have more concerns about their appearance and to have more focus on what they look like and their bodies. And all of that, of course, can play out on social media in ways that are problematic. We also know that in some cases, girls may have more sort of negative reactions to negative events that happen on social media, so respond with stronger emotions. But overall, I actually don’t think we know that social media is worse for girls. I think there are many concerns that boys run into as well online, and I think that’s still really an open question.
Mills: What do you think of these new laws to ban or restrict social media for teens like the one I mentioned in Utah? Are these a good idea? Are they even feasible to enforce?
Nesi: The research on social media and teens’ mental health in some ways, at this point, could only take us so far in terms of knowing what to actually do policy-wise. And so there’s some of these questions that are really, I think, policy questions more so than research questions, at least from the research we have right now. I will say that I do think that we need to do something about social media use. As it currently stands, there really is no or very minimal kind of regulation around how social media platforms can be used by teens and the type of content they can be shown and the types of features that can be present. So I do think that some amount of change does make sense. Specifically how to do that is obviously a very tricky question. But I think that, the one thing I’ll say is that I think in general, giving teens more control and more options in terms of their social media use makes a lot of sense to me.
So having them have more control over the types of content that they see, over the types of people who are able to contact them on social media, whether they have features like autoplay, where a video automatically plays one after another, whether those types of things are turned on, whether people can send them private messages, all of these things. I think that having more control over that and more options for teens makes a lot of sense to me. The question of whether they’re feasible to enforce some of these laws, that is one, I think that is, again, probably more of a policy question than I can necessarily answer, but I do think that some of these will be pretty challenging to enforce.
Mills: What about the responsibility faced by the companies that are creating these platforms? What would you like to see from them?
Nesi: Yeah, so I think that the, as I said, I think the main thing is just providing users with more control and more options over their experience on platforms. I think that there are certain things too that are in some ways feel like low-hanging fruit. So when young people are being shown really problematic types of content, like content that’s promoting harmful behaviors like eating disorders or that’s promoting self-harm or suicide, these are things that, obviously I think we can all agree, young people should not be seeing on social media platforms. So I think there are changes like that where really protecting youth from being exposed to content that they shouldn’t be exposed to, I think is an important first step, and it’s a challenging issue to tackle, but I think it’s one that these companies really do need to get right. And I think that many of them are taking steps in that direction, but so far I think we can see that it likely has not been enough.
Mills: So what are the next big research questions that you want answered in this arena, and what are you working on right now?
Nesi: Yeah, so I, right now, am really interested in this question of the way that we talk about social media and the way that we, as a society, the way that we sort of message around social media to young people. So I think right now there is this very negative perception of social media, and I think for good reason, we know there are many risks and many challenges to it. But I think a lot of what young people are hearing sort of day in and day out from their parents and their teachers and from the news is very much along the lines of social media is bad for you and if you use it it’s going to have a negative impact on your mental health. And I think that I’m really interested right now in this question of how is that actually impacting teens? How is it impacting the way that they use social media?
Is it causing them to use it in ways where they sort of feel they don’t have any choice, they don’t have, there’s nothing they can do to make it sort of a healthier experience for them? Is it that in turn that it contributing actually to worse outcomes down the road? And I think that we need more research on that, on just how should we talk about this with young people? How can we realistically help them understand the risks and the concerns when it comes to social media while also helping them figure out how to use it in ways that are healthier and that will sort of promote their mental health, instead of being a detriment to their mental health.
Mills: Well, Dr. Nesi, I want to thank you for joining me today. This has been really interesting. I appreciate your joining me and the work that you’re doing. Thank you.
Nesi: Thank you so much for having me.
Mills: You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website at www.speakingofpsychology.org or on Apple, Stitcher, YouTube, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us at speakingofpsychology@apa.org. Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lea Winerman. Our sound editor is Chris Condayan.
Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I’m Kim Mills.
Jacqueline Nesi, PhD, is an assistant professor in the department of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University. She studies the role of social media in adolescents’ mental health and development, including how teens’ social media use impacts their social and emotional health, relationships with peers, depressive symptoms, suicide risk, sleep, and health-risk behaviors. She also studies how parents can more effectively manage their teens’ social media use. Her research has been funded by organizations such as the National Institute for Mental Health, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Science Foundation, and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.