The risks and benefits of social media for teenagers

Tik­Tok, Ins­tagram and Snapchat are now part of the daily lives of 10–24-year-olds, wheth­er it’s to fol­low the lives of influ­en­cers, watch videos or send mes­sages to each oth­er. Social net­works are often presen­ted as a threat to the well-being of teen­agers. For some years now, these plat­forms and their reper­cus­sions have been the sub­ject of numer­ous sci­entif­ic stud­ies, widely repor­ted in the media. 

Recently, neur­os­cient­ists at the Uni­ver­sity of North Car­o­lina¹ in the United States showed that cog­nit­ive changes were tak­ing place in the brains of teen­agers who spend a lot of time on social net­works. They seem to devel­op a heightened sens­it­iv­ity to social rewards, and there­fore to the com­ments and opin­ions of those around them. The authors them­selves qual­i­fy these res­ults, stat­ing that they do not know wheth­er this effect is pos­it­ive or neg­at­ive. Fur­ther­more, since adoles­cence is a peri­od when social rela­tion­ships devel­op, these cog­nit­ive changes could be explained by oth­er factors, such as the devel­op­ment of links with peers. 

Thou­sands of oth­er stud­ies have examined the rela­tion­ship between teen­agers and social net­works. Luisa Fassi, a doc­tor­al stu­dent in psy­chi­atry, is work­ing on this issue in the MRC Cog­ni­tion and Brain Sci­ences Unit at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity in the UK. As part of a sys­tem­at­ic review, she ana­lysed around 5,000 stud­ies to determ­ine wheth­er digit­al plat­forms influ­enced the men­tal health of adoles­cents. For the spe­cial­ist, the cur­rent state of research does not yet provide a clear answer.

What is cer­tain, for the time being, is that teen­agers are not doing as well as they used to. “The men­tal health of teen­agers has been declin­ing for some years now. Com­pared with pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions, they seem to have more prob­lems such as anxi­ety, depres­sion and eat­ing dis­orders”, says Luisa Fassi. There has also been an increase in the sui­cide rate, par­tic­u­larly among girls. Admis­sions to emer­gency depart­ments for sui­cide attempts rose by more than 40% in 2021 com­pared with the pre­vi­ous three years, accord­ing to data from Santé Pub­lique France pub­lished by Libéra­tion². 

Social net­works are often presen­ted as one of the explan­a­tions, or even the real cause, of this mal­aise. In 2015, Jean Twenge, an Amer­ic­an psy­cho­lo­gist, noted that teen­agers were increas­ingly suf­fer­ing from loneli­ness and depres­sion, and that this deteri­or­a­tion in their men­tal health was dir­ectly linked to the wide­spread use of smart­phones and social net­works. Since then, there seems to be a con­sensus in the media and among politi­cians about the harm­ful influ­ence of these plat­forms. Last Decem­ber, Emmanuel Mac­ron described the Chinese applic­a­tion Tik­Tok as “the num­ber one [psy­cho­lo­gic­al] dis­rupter” for chil­dren and teenagers. 

For Luisa Fassi, “there has been a lot of debate on this issue over the last few years, and the sub­ject has been extens­ively stud­ied, but we don’t have enough evid­ence to say that social net­works are the main explan­a­tion for the decline in young people’s men­tal health. We are liv­ing in a time of crisis: teen­agers are facing increas­ing instabil­ity in the eco­nomy, at work, in the cli­mate, etc. It’s prob­ably a multi-factori­al phe­nomen­on.” Accord­ing to her research, stud­ies show rather het­ero­gen­eous res­ults, with pos­it­ive, neg­at­ive, weak, and strong links. “This dis­crep­ancy between the state of sci­entif­ic know­ledge and the pub­lic’s intu­ition is partly due to the mis­in­ter­pret­a­tion of cer­tain cor­rel­a­tion­al evid­ence, which shows an asso­ci­ation and is presen­ted as a caus­al link,” she explains.

If we’re feel­ing more anxious, we’re going to spend more time on or TikTok.

Sev­er­al stud­ies have shown an asso­ci­ation between time spent on social net­work­ing sites and men­tal health. The more time teen­agers spend on social net­work­ing sites, the worse they feel. Anxi­ety, depres­sion, and mood swings are on the rise. This does not mean, how­ever, that the applic­a­tions are dir­ectly respons­ible for this deteri­or­a­tion. “The link can go either way: if you feel more anxious, you’ll spend more time on Ins­tagram or Tik­Tok,” explains Luisa Fassi. Con­versely, stud­ies that look at the phe­nomen­on over time show more het­ero­gen­eous res­ults, with impacts on cer­tain groups of teen­agers. Girls are more neg­at­ively affected by social net­works than boys. Bey­ond gender, age also plays a role. A study pub­lished in Nature in 2022³ ana­lysed the rela­tion­ship between time spent using plat­forms and feel­ings of sat­is­fac­tion in life, for 17,000 people aged between 10 and 21. The time of greatest sens­it­iv­ity for both genders was 19, but for boys alone it was 14–15. For girls, this peri­od is between 11 and 13.

“Social net­works are not the only thing that can eas­ily be tested in a study. There are many com­pon­ents, which need to be ana­lysed sep­ar­ately to under­stand their impact. So, there’s the time spent on it, but also the type of con­tent and activ­it­ies to which we are exposed”, says Luisa Fassi. A wide range of con­tent coex­ists on applic­a­tions such as Ins­tagram, Face­book, Tik­Tok and Snapchat. You can look at your friends’ pho­tos, chat by mes­sage, watch videos, and so on. The most pop­u­lar activ­ity among 11–18-year-olds is chat­ting with friends or fam­ily, accord­ing to a sur­vey by the Généra­tion Numérique asso­ci­ation. And it is exactly this type of activ­ity that is asso­ci­ated with bet­ter men­tal health, accord­ing to the stud­ies ana­lysed by the doc­tor­al stu­dent. Con­versely, cyber-bul­ly­ing or expos­ure to offens­ive con­tent has a neg­at­ive impact on teen­agers’ men­tal health.

So, are social net­works good or bad for young people’s mor­ale? When asked by par­ents or politi­cians, Luisa Fassi uses this meta­phor: “Is drink­ing bad? Are we talk­ing about water or alco­hol, and in what quant­it­ies? Too much water can be dan­ger­ous for our bod­ies”. This is a dif­fi­cult ques­tion, because social net­works are com­plex plat­forms with mul­tiple uses and con­tent. Their busi­ness mod­el is based on algorithms and the cre­ation of an indi­vidu­al­ised exper­i­ence to cap­ture and hold atten­tion. The con­tent on offer is tailored to the tastes, pas­sions, and habits of each indi­vidu­al, which makes research into this sub­ject more com­plic­ated. Fur­ther­more, research­ers do not have access to data dir­ectly from the plat­forms, which could provide a wealth of pre­cise and use­ful inform­a­tion on the time spent, activ­it­ies under­taken, types of con­tent, etc. Most stud­ies are based on self-declar­a­tion by par­ti­cipants, and the real­ity can some­times dif­fer from the data shared by individuals.

“It’s not like a drug, for which we can launch a clin­ic­al tri­al and know the effects. We need more evid­ence and cumu­lat­ive data”, says Luisa Fassi. When will we have these answers? “The pace of research devel­op­ment is very high. I hope that in five years’ time, we will have clear­er answers to inform poli­cy­makers and guide reg­u­la­tions. How­ever, even when we have pre­cise answers, they will most likely be nuanced and con­tra­dict­ory, with dif­fer­ent effects for dif­fer­ent groups, depend­ing on the men­tal his­tory of adoles­cents, their age, gender, region of ori­gin, etc.”

Sirine Azouaoui