Does social media make teenagers ill? What research says and what it doesn’t

“The smartphone has made a whole generation ill” or “There is no evidence for that”: you hear both sentences, often from experts. How can that be? This article explains what researchers are actually arguing about, and why parents still don’t have to wait for the debate to end.

What the dispute is about

In his book “The Anxious Generation” (2024), the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt points out that since the early 2010s, teenagers in several countries have been reporting anxiety and depressive symptoms more often, that is, during the period in which smartphones and social media became part of everyday life. He sees a causal link in this. The question is whether one caused the other, or whether both happened at the same time, partly for other reasons. In her review of the book in the journal Nature, the developmental psychologist Candice Odgers argues against this: the available data are mostly correlational and usually show small or inconsistent effects; a “rewiring” of a whole generation by social media has not been demonstrated ^[3].

What large studies show

The two contradict each other less than it seems. A small average effect can mean that most teenagers are hardly affected, but some are clearly affected. And “not safe enough” is a statement about precaution, not proof of harm.

Why the answer is so difficult

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is now also focusing more on the design of services (for example on mechanisms that tempt you to keep scrolling) rather than only on how long individual children use them ^[4].

What parents can take away from this

Research is developing quickly. We will update this article when new longitudinal or intervention studies are available.

• #mental-health
• #research
• #teenagers