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.

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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