Are the Kids Alright? Smartphones, Social Media, and Teen Wellbeing

By Marianna B. Ganapini

Do you ever wonder how the ubiquity of digital devices is affecting your wellbeing? How about the wellbeing of the young people in your life?

If so, you’re not alone. Researchers and policy-makers are now carefully studying the psychological impact of technology and social media engagement in hopes of reducing technology’s possible negative effects on adolescents. The key question: is there a real causal connection between the increasing use of technology and adolescents’ mental health problems?

Research indicates that teenagers spend 6.5 hours a day looking at a screen and at least half of this time is spent on mobile devices (e.g. smartphones, tablets). According to some researchers, there is evidence of direct negative effects of digital technologies on mental wellbeing, affecting teens and young adults in particular. ‘Mental wellbeing’ is usually considered to be a broad concept encompassing social abilities (such as self-control, establishing close personal relationships) and mood states (e.g. depression).

Jean Twenge – Professor of Psychology at San Diego State University – has been a major advocate for the idea that digital technologies and, in particular, social media engagement are detrimental to the mental wellbeing of teens in the US. More specifically, she has published several books and journal articles in which she argues that teens who spend a lot of time on social media are less likely to engage in in-person social interactions. This, she claims, has harmful effects on their happiness level: they feel lonely and possibly become less capable to cope with stress and anxieties. 

Professor Twenge is not alone in thinking new technologies are a threat: in Mind Change, Susan Greenfield argues that “social networking sites could worsen communication skills and reduce interpersonal empathy” (p265) and points out that social media engagement should not substitute off-line social interactions.

Similarly, in The Teenage Brain Frances Jensen has studied the effects of smartphones-use on the teenager’s brain. She is Professor and Chair of the Department of Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania, and her research indicates that the teen’s brain is prone to addiction. Social media engagement and the use of smartphones could constitute a new form of addiction for teens, leading professor Jensen – together with other researchers – to suggest that parents should start closely monitoring teens’ use of smartphones.

However, many are now questioning this widespread alarmist narrative. Indeed, establishing a cause-effect correlation between social media engagement and wellbeing in teens has proven to be very difficult. Several studies have found no direct effects of digital technologies on teens’ depression. Indeed, a number of researchers studying the impact of digital tools and smartphones on teens’ mental health have concluded that there is no evidence that digital tools directly impact teens’ wellbeing. They have also criticized Twenge for lack of scientific rigor in analyzing the available data on this issue.

For instance, Amy Orben (Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford) and collaborators have looked at subjects in Ireland, UK, and the US, concluding that “there is a small significant negative association between technology use and well-being, which—when compared with other activities in an adolescent’s life—is miniscule.” (p.693).  Similar studies indicate adolescents using more social media do not show different levels of mental wellbeing compared with teens spending less time on social media. There is also strong indication that adolescents do not feel less happy when they spend more time on social media: on average social media and new technologies do not affect their mood.

Candice Odgers (Professor of Psychological Science at the University of California Irvine) and collaborators arrived at a similar conclusion: online engagement does not per se produce any significant negative effects on teens’ happiness level. Finally, other studies suggest that social media can actually enhance life satisfaction and interpersonal relations, and this seems true also for teens. 

Although no direct causal relation may have been found between teens’ wellbeing and their social media engagement, policymakers and researchers still have some specific concerns: 

• Online safety: online safety is a key concern when it comes to teens using social media. Online safety encompasses issues such as bullying, non-consensual sharing of personal content (pictures, videos), confronting unwanted sexual material, privacy concerns and so on. Although online engagement may not be responsible for making these problems more acute than they would be offline, the internet provides new way in which these problems could manifest themselves. 

• Sleep disruption The time teens spend on social media platforms can decrease the amount of time they spend sleeping for two reasons. One: they may end up going to bed late because they are on their phones till late at night. Two: spending time online up to 2 hours before bedtime tends to cause people to experience difficulty falling asleep. 

• News Consumption: many teenagers and young adults get their news online and many of them trust the information they get through social media. This is particularly concerning given the current “post-truth” era. In fact, there is evidence that teens are not able to discern the trustworthiness of a website and use poor heuristics to determine the reliability of the information they receive online. 

Envisaged Solutions / Suggestions 

All researchers agree that more studies and more data are needed to assess whether the internet and social media have detrimental effects on teens’ mental wellbeing. In light of the concerns raised above, a few key recommendations emerge.

First, when it comes to the methodologies employed in studying this phenomenon, an important step in the right direction is to gather studies that don’t simply rely on people’s self-reports on their wellbeing and tech-use: objective and large-scale data and research are called for. Second, public policies are needed to better protect children and teenagers from online safety threats. For instance, online platforms are incentivized to actively tackle the problem of cyberbullying and harmful speech online, and public authorities and policy makers are trying to provide new guidelines to protect children’s online privacy.

Finally, it is key that teens and young adults learn how to distinguish reliable vs. unreliable online sources and identity misinformation on the internet. Thus, many agree we need digital civic classes in school to foster media literacy and civic online reasoning (i.e. “the ability to effectively search for, evaluate, and verify social and political information online” (p.165)). To curb the spread of online misinformation, data-driven large-scale solutions and public policies (e.g. preemptive debunking strategies) should also be promoted. 

As of now, the jury is still out on whether or not online engagement and screen time have significant detrimental effects on teens’ mental health. Researchers need to gather more data and more studies to be able to offer us a clearer picture of this issue. In the meantime, though, there are other risks linked to teenagers’ use of technology (e.g. online privacy, misinformation), and now is the time to look for solutions to address those problems. 

Marianna B. Ganapini is a researcher and an assistant professor at Union College. Passionate about answering the biggest questions on the human mind and behavior, she works at the intersection of philosophy and psychology. Her current research focuses on technology, human irrationality and mental wellbeing. Staunchly advocating for a multidisciplinary approach to learning and teaching, Marianna has taught a range of courses on moral psychology, artificial intelligence and human reasoning at Johns Hopkins University, Goucher College and Union College. She has a Ph.D from Johns Hopkins and her work has been presented and published in numerous peer-reviewed venues nationally and globally.

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