What We Know About Social Media Harmful Content
48% of teens between 13-17 feel social media is harmful. TikTok, Meta, Youtube, and other platforms have safeguards, but is it enough?
💬 Our quick CONVERSATION STARTERS:
1 in 5 teens say social media hurt their mental health
Just last week we wrote about some very personal thoughts about mental health and social media. It’s been hard here on Substack to keep up with the pressure of putting out content.
This week, for Mental Health Awareness Month, we want to focus a bit more on social media harmful content, in particular on teens.
“Most teens credit social media with feeling more connected to friends,” according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center. “Still, roughly 1 in 5 say social media sites hurt their mental health, and growing shares think they harm people their age.”
U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 and their parents finds that parents are generally more worried than their children about the mental health of teenagers today.
Roughly half of teens (48%) say social media platforms have a mostly negative effect on people their age, up from 32% in 2022. But fewer (14%) think they negatively affect them personally.
Among teens who say they are at least somewhat concerned about the mental health of teens today, 22% cite social media as the main factor.
Another 8% of these teens point to technology broadly or another type of technology.
About one-in-five teens who are at least somewhat concerned cited bullying – in person or online (17%). And 16% say the pressures and expectations placed on teens today is what most negatively impacts teen mental health.
How are social media platforms responding?
A recent BBC investigation has found young teenagers are being exposed to content about weapons, bullying, murder and suicide soon after joining social media platforms.
Journalists Andy Howard and Harriet Robinson, from BBC West, created six fictional profiles aged 13 to 15 years old on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.
Here’s how the platform responded to the BBC investigation:
A TikTok spokesperson said its teen accounts “start with the strongest safety and privacy settings by default”. They added: “We remove 98% of harmful content before it's reported to us and limit access to age-inappropriate material. Parents can also use our Family Pairing tool to manage screen time, content filters, and more than 15 other settings to help keep their teens safe.”
Instagram parent company Meta did not provide a specific comment, but told BBC it also has teen accounts, which offer built-in restrictions and an “age-appropriate experience” for 13-15-year-olds. The company said while no technology was perfect, the additional safeguards should help to ensure sure teens are only seeing content that is appropriate for them.
A YouTube spokesperson said: “We take our responsibility to younger viewers very seriously, which is why we recently expanded protections for teens on YouTube, including new safeguards on content recommendations. We generally welcome research on our systems, but it's difficult to draw broad conclusions based on these test accounts, which may not be consistent with the behaviour of real people.”
Divergent data and studies
The book The Anxious Generation (2024), by New York University Stern School of Business social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, argues that increasing time spent on smartphones and social media, at the expense of play, is rewiring the brains of children and adolescents and driving soaring rates of mental illness. It leapt to the top of the bestseller list when it was released a year ago.
According to a recent article in Nature, scientists acknowledge that smartphones and social media can potentially be harmful for some people, if screen time displaces healthy activities, such as sleep, or if posts encourage them to self-harm, for instance. But these tools can also help people connect to support, advice, education and friends.
Many researchers are concerned that parents and children are hearing the alarming message propagated by Haidt’s blockbuster book and major media, rather than the more nuanced one suggested by other scientists.
“Parents and kids are very aware of the narrative and very worried,” says Megan Moreno, an adolescent-medicine physician at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
That sparks family battles over screens — and leaves parents unsure what to do.
In addition, according to a study published earlier this month in Nature Human Behaviour, adolescents with mental health conditions report spending more time on social media than those without mental health conditions.
UK-based researchers Luisa Fassi, Amanda M. Ferguson, Tamsin J. Ford, and Amy Orben, from the University of Cambridge, and Andrew K. Przybylski, from the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford, found that adolescents with mental health conditions reported spending more time on social media — mean of 50 extra minutes per day — and were less happy about the number of online friends than adolescents without conditions.
There were differences in social media use by condition type, with adolescents with internalizing conditions spending more time on social media, engaging in more social comparison, and experiencing greater impact of feedback on mood, alongside lower happiness about the number of online friends and lower honest self-disclosure. Adolescents with externalizing conditions only reported more time spent.
“This highlights aspects of social media use that might present an increased risk to this already vulnerable group and provides a window for future research to ensure that the digital world is safe for all children regardless of mental health status,” the authors write.
What is the Substack community saying?
- in Techno Sapiens: “Teens’ concern about the effects of social media on their peers may be a good angle for media literacy efforts. Teens may be more likely to buy-in to efforts to help their peers (versus themselves) avoid online harms and use social media in healthier ways.”
- in FYI with Chris Martin: “Social media is not always awful, and it is certainly not always awesome. […] Social media continues to be the most widespread and influential discipleship force in the world, foremost in the lives of our teenagers. Their relationships with and perspectives on social media are complex. But that’s okay. Let’s avoid frustration and pursue clarity. That starts with open and regular communication.”
- in The Up And Up: “In my own listening sessions, I often hear young people describe social media as a vice — they know it isn’t always good for them, but it’s something they have a hard time restricting.”
In the
podcast, Simone and Malcolm Collins touched on personal anecdotes, discussing the impact of social media on personal and professional lives, and the evolving landscape of media and news reporting.