Adolescents feel worse about their lives the more they use social media, a study published in Nature Communications earlier this week found. The effect is particularly pronounced in girls between 11 and 13, and boys between 14 and 15– at these ages, the more they go online on services such as Instagram and TikTok, the worse they feel about themselves the following year. These are ages when social development and self-perceptions are shaped. There is already evidence that toxic social
Adolescents feel worse about their lives the more they use social media, a study published in Nature Communications earlier this week found. The effect is particularly pronounced in girls between 11 and 13, and boys between 14 and 15– at these ages, the more they go online on services such as Instagram and TikTok, the worse they feel about themselves the following year. These are ages when social development and self-perceptions are shaped. There is already evidence that toxic social media exposure leads to depression, anxiety and low self-esteem in children. Last year, a whistleblower who worked at Facebook released documents that showed the company found its popular image sharing service Instagram made body image issues worse for “one in three girls”. Among teens who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of American users traced it to Instagram, one document from Facebook’s (now Meta) own research showed.
In tandem with the rise in smartphone and internet penetration in recent years has been an increase in reports of teenagers struggling with issues of mental health, and of authorities attempting to address these. China famously passed an order allowing under-18s to play video games only three hours a week during stipulated hours of the weekend. In the US, the surgeon general called for research on the relationship between technology and youth mental health. Worryingly for a country like India, these conversations are rare in the Global South and scientific evidence of how these factors affect children even more scant. These are problems that need the intervention of all sections of society: Academia, parents, teachers and, crucially, technology companies that sit on tremendous amounts of population scale data. Understanding the true extent and the mechanics of the problem has to be the first step before we can begin to help our young.
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