Study Finds Weak Evidence Linking Social Media Use to Teen Mental Health Problems (theguardian.com)
- Reference: 0180591524
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/01/15/2248249/study-finds-weak-evidence-linking-social-media-use-to-teen-mental-health-problems
- Source link: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/jan/14/social-media-time-does-not-increase-teenagers-mental-health-problems-study
> Screen time spent gaming or on social media [1]does not cause mental health problems in teenagers , according to a large-scale study. [...] Researchers at the University of Manchester followed 25,000 11- to 14-year-olds over three school years, tracking their self-reported social media habits, gaming frequency and emotional difficulties to find out whether technology use genuinely predicted later mental health difficulties. Participants were asked how much time on a normal weekday in term time they spent on TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and other social media, or gaming. They were also asked questions about their feelings, mood and wider mental health.
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> The study found no evidence for boys or girls that heavier social media use or more frequent gaming increased teenagers' symptoms of anxiety or depression over the following year. Increases in girls' and boys' social media use from year 8 to year 9 and from year 9 to year 10 had zero detrimental impact on their mental health the following year, the authors found. More time spent gaming also had a zero negative effect on pupils' mental health. "We know families are worried, but our results do not support the idea that simply spending time on social media or gaming leads to mental health problems -- the story is far more complex than that," said the lead author Dr Qiqi Cheng.
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> The research, [2]published in the Journal of Public Health , also examined whether how pupils use social media makes a difference, with participants asked how much time spent chatting with others, posting stories, pictures and videos, browsing feeds, profiles or scrolling through photos and stories. The scientists found that actively chatting on social media or passive scrolling feeds did not appear to drive mental health difficulties. The authors stressed that the findings did not mean online experiences were harmless. Hurtful messages, online pressures and extreme content could have detrimental effects on wellbeing, but focusing on screen time alone was not helpful, they said.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/jan/14/social-media-time-does-not-increase-teenagers-mental-health-problems-study
[2] https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/advance-article/doi/10.1093/pubmed/fdaf150/8371934
"tracked self-reported" (Score:3)
Stopped reading right there. That's no "study", but a speculation based on fantasies.
And yeah, yeah, I know "psychologists" can reliably understand and classify my "psyche" by asking me clever questions.
That Freud portrait out front should have told you so much.
just another moral panic (Score:2, Troll)
i remember quite a few of these “panics”: backwards masking, stranger danger, poisoned halloween candy, dungeons & dragons, rap music, video games the list goes on.
all of them had something in common, which was rabid media outlets with a hot-button issue that drove readers/viewers with a mix of politician grandstanding.
What's your baseline here? (Score:3)
Does anyone here have any specimens of adolescents that don't look like mental cases?
I know there are some. But they can be hard to spot.
Re: (Score:2)
You don't say!
Why don't you grow up, spawn some, bring them up and come and share your achievements with us, eh?
Just remember: Figures don't lie... (Score:1)
...but liars figure.
I can make numbers dance to any tune, too. But that don't make it true.
They always reverse cause and effect. (Score:2)
Clearly if you have mental issues, you are likely to have fewer real life friends and also have a greater need for socialization.
So you get online and stay there a lot.
Not that hard to understand.
The basic problem with most of these type of studies is the desire for a simple fix and the fear of the new tend to make the uneducated reverse cause and effect.
If you want to blame something you think is associated with a problem, chances are it is a symptom/attempt to treat that problem.
Stupid (Score:2)
This is retarded. The hypothesis has never been that on an individual level, more social media time = more problems.
Here's what I think: Most of the intense harm comes in very small lumps. These harmful lumps might come in a sea of banal harmless usage, or they might be nearly the entire usage some people have. There is no reason to think that the volume of usage for a given person would correlate with their personal level of harm.
On the other hand, the ubiquity and unavoidability of social media use in
In other unrelated news (Score:2)
University receives large anonymous donation.