Confusion Surrounds the Association Between Social Media and Mental Health in Adolescents

The connection between social media and mental health in youth must be interpreted cautiously as research is limited by serious conceptual issues.

2
1266

A systematic review of research on how social networking sites influence depressive and anxiety symptoms reveals a poorly understood association between time spent on social sites and these symptoms. Citing studies’ lack of depth and poor design, researchers Elena Marie Piteo and Kelly Ward call for improved study designs to examine the benefits and harms of social media use.

“Given social networking sites (SNSs) have become a pervasive part of the culture, it is critical to understand the ways in which they may be advantageous or detrimental to the mental health of young people,” they write.

The last thirty years have seen an unprecedented rise in digital, networked technologies. Concern over the effects of these technologies, particularly on young people, is now about as popular as the usage of social media sites themselves. The pendulum has swung from the techno-salvationism emanating from Silicon Valley (and psychologists’ own enthusiasm for anonymous identity play in the 1990s) to deep suspicion and doubt about how social media affects mental health. Such sentiments suggest a mixture of unfulfilled promises and disturbing, unexpected consequences.

The social web tends to widen the generational gulf between “digital natives” and “digital immigrants.” Common discourse likens social media to addictive drugs that “fill the void” of addicted users, and studies link the use of social media with the risk of depression, anxiety, and worse overall well-being.

Yet, as social media continues to embed itself in global culture, affecting how we work, play, spend, vote, and relate to others, scholars are finally leveling decades of sharply divided empirical outcomes and popular opinion, pointing out that the polarized body of research on social networking sites and mental health would do well to inquire into how sites are used. For example, are users enhancing meaningful connections or comparing themselves to others?

Researchers at the University of Notre Dame and Aquinas College reviewed 19 studies published in the last 15 years that assessed the relationship between social media and anxiety and depression symptoms in children and adolescents between 5 and 18 years of age. Despite a variety of methodological issues and confounding variables, significant associations were found across the literature.

Indeed, evidence has shown an association between the amount of time spent on social networking sites and higher levels of depression and anxiety symptoms. The authors urge us to interpret these results conservatively because effect sizes were small, and many studies were of poor quality. Surprisingly, few studies looked at the ways people engage social media and the relationship between these different styles and activities and anxiety symptoms.

“Overall, the quality of the studies was poor to fair. All of the studies, except for four, were cross-sectional in design, which means that cause and effect cannot be inferred. Four studies did not clearly define demographic characteristics, including age range, and two studies had small sample sizes.”

A big part of the problem is that lack of understanding of the robust possibilities of the digital world led early interest in this association to take social media for granted as a homogeneous “thing” to be studied quantitatively, in terms of time spent, rather than qualitatively, in terms of what happens on these sites. This is reflected in disregard for the sites that people were using and whether their participation was active (like posting reviews or communicating with a friend) or passive (scrolling a feed, watching news clips). Importantly, most studies fail to distinguish the emotional valence of activities: did the user console a bereaved friend, or did they watch videos of puppies licking each other?

They recommend that future studies measure results longitudinally and use validated, reliable ways of operationalizing social sites and depression and anxiety symptoms.

“The effects of media tend to be small, but this does not mean that they are not important. Rather, there may be many dispositional, social, and contextual and developmental factors, which may actually influence this relationship.”

They point to confounding factors that could explain this relationship, like “fear of missing out, frequent social comparison and perceived social support.” Future studies should hone in on the conditions by which social networking sites may interfere or enhance emotional regulation development in young people.

This study is part of a wave of research concluding that social media must be studied in greater and with greater complexity and nuance. Small effect sizes, confounding variables, different outcome measures across reviewed studies, and tremendous difficulty conceptualizing social media plague present efforts.

We may not be able to conclude much about the mental health effects of social media yet. Nevertheless, a rigorous, qualitative understanding of the social dynamics and actual activities on these sites holds great promise for making detailed recommendations that prioritize mental health without inadvertently suggesting that adolescents isolate themselves socially.

 

****

Piteo, E. M., & Ward, K. (2020). Review: Social networking sites and associations with depressive and anxiety symptoms in children and adolescents – a systematic review. Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 25(4), 201–216. https://doi.org/10.1111/camh.12373 (Link)

2 COMMENTS

  1. I recently read an article “The Flight From Conversation” which originally appeared in the New York Times opinion section in 2012, but was reposted by a younger person interested in the topic. Written by Sherry Turkle, a psychologist roughly my age, it cites no specific research, yet we can assume her findings are based on research.

    What strikes me about these calls for “more research needed” is the sort of innocent naivete that they project. Don’t these people know that the rise towards dominance of “social media” was based on research? That it is a system designed to have certain psychological effects on the people who use it, the peoples of Earth?

    The research has been done! The decisions have been made! And we are in the midst of one of the most extensive tests of this system since in was put in place: Can you get an entire planet to fear something they can’t even see or touch? By a rough estimate, it has proved at least 50% “effective.”

    Are we, who watched psychiatry put it’s piece of this system into place starting many many years ago, not yet ready to conclude that this was all planned out – no matter how carelessly?

    In the mid 1800s, in response to a flood of translations into European languages of texts originally written in Sanskrit, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese, or one of the Persian languages, the West turned its eyes towards the possibility that they had allowed their “Captains of Industry” to boldly expand without taking into account certain basics of life that might have informed a more balanced approach. This had as one of its effects the Abolishionist Movement, which sought to abolish slavery.

    These ideas, though, once spotted, were severely suppressed by “modern” psychology and its various allies in politics and culture. And then they were pounded solidly into the ground with two World Wars and the violent introduction of the next great path to world salvation: Dialectic Materialism.

    We live today in a world shaped in part by this conflict, a conflict that could be described a nearly eternal. And even though we know today that the “spiritual” thinkers of 150 years ago were walking on quite solid ground, we are also painfully aware that the materialists won the higher political ground, and have successfully retained it almost uniformly across the entire planet. Thus, now even if some of us are convinced of the importance of spiritual ideas, we are somewhat reluctant to bring them up, as the opposition has attained (through systems with Orwellian names like “mental health” and “critical theory”) the power to punish us for such beliefs.

    Social media, then, is only their latest attempt to divert Spirit from recognizing the truth of its own existence by giving it “entertaining” things to do that it will find (they hope) irresistible. And they seem to be, by most accounts, quite successful at this.

    Report comment

    • I have noticed that when something the researchers WANT to be true is proven false, “More research is needed.” Whereas when there is the slightest hint that what they want to be true MIGHT be supported, it is broadcast all over the world as if it is utterly proven true. A little bias there?

      Report comment

LEAVE A REPLY