Does Using Social Media Impact Youth Mental Health? What Can Be Done?

Social media use among youth has increased dramatically in the last decade, and youth now use social media more than any other age group. This increase has occurred alongside rising mental health challenges among youth. Despite both experiencing an increase, research has found that associations between social media use and mental health challenges in youth are not strong or consistent. There are a number of variables that may play a role in this relationship, including developmental factors and the unique pressures of social media.

What Factors Make Youth Vulnerable to Negative Impacts from Social Media Use?

Youth are at a stage of development that makes them particularly vulnerable to social pressures shaping their thoughts and behaviours. Their brains are still developing, impacting their ability to think through decisions and recognize risks, making them prone to impulsive behaviour and susceptible to negative beliefs and thought patterns.

Peer acceptance is particularly important for youth, and navigating this online can be difficult. The number of likes, friends, followers, and comments can have profound effects on how youth see themselves. They can become addicted to these sources of validation and not receiving them can contribute to low self-esteem and poor mental health.

Many youth experience fear of missing out (FOMO – the anxiety experienced when excluded from something that others are enjoying). FOMO is heightened by the curated way that people present their lives on social media. Youth can also feel the pressure to maintain online streaks of contact through gamified features of apps in which users are encouraged to maintain consecutive daily exchanges with other users to keep their “streak,” alive. Users may feel a sense of pleasure or reward when maintaining a streak but also feel pressure to keep the streak going. Failing to send a message, picture, or video each day results in losing the streak, which can lead to feelings of disappointment.

Youth can experience distress when thinking about being disconnected and potentially excluded. These pressures can lead to compulsive scrolling and less offline engagement. Time spent on social media can displace behaviours and experiences that benefit well-being, such as in-person interactions, time with family, sleep, physical activity, chores, and hobbies. Problematic social media use may contribute to sleep difficulties, which in turn can affect development, emotion regulation, and mental health.

Can Social Media Benefit Youth?

Social media can also benefit youth. It provides opportunities to strengthen existing friendships, create new ones, find community, and increase social support. It can be used to express creativity and explore identity and self-expression, particularly for youth who lack like-minded peers in their community. Through social media youth can receive health-related education and supports. In addition, youth may choose social media use over risky behaviours such as substance use, risky sexual behaviours, and risky driving.
Because of the potential benefits, youth should have the opportunity to access social media, while being protected from the potential harms.

What Can Be Done to Mitigate the Risks?

Social media companies can put protections in place, including making the functionality and permissions of apps developmentally appropriate for youth.

Parents/caregivers can understand the risks and protections and provide developmentally appropriate information to their children. They can manage their children’s social media use, and model healthy social media use, ensuring their own use does not interfere with meeting their children’s needs.

Schools can teach up-to-date media literacy and ensure teachers are adequately prepared.

Youth can be supported to create their own strategies and given opportunities to share them.

Policymakers can:

• strengthen standards that prioritize user safety within social media apps
• ensure that social media literacy is in curricula and teachers are adequately prepared to teach it
• ensure funding for continued research and that results are shared publicly

Healthcare providers can learn about and educate youth about potential harms (and benefits) of social media and how to protect themselves. Providers can screen youth for problematic use that may impair functioning or development, or lead to psychological harm, and guide youth on how to make changes.

Everyone can reframe the narrative to be more strengths-based, recognizing the value youth see in social media, and promoting self-efficacy and intentional use. This includes avoiding deficit- and shame-based language, which can create feelings of guilt and shame. Instead, social media use can be approached as an integral part of current youth existence, recognizing that it involves positive, negative, and neutral relationships to mental health.