Social media refers to websites or platforms where users can create and share content, build relationships, and communicate with others. Social media sites have existed since the late 1990s, but their use proliferated with the launch of Facebook and Twitter in 2004 and 2006.
As technology has developed and smartphones have become more accessible, so has young people’s access to social media. Today, estimates suggest that 36% of adolescents in Europe, Central Asia, and Canada have continuous contact with their friends via social media and messaging platforms. This figure is highest among 15-year-old adolescent girls, of whom 44% report continuous contact.
The impact of social media on young people’s lives is complex. Social media may facilitate young people’s connection with others and encourage exploration of their identity and interests as they are exposed to an unprecedented diversity of opinions and information. But social media use can quickly become problematic, developing into addictive behaviours and contributing to mental health problems like low self-esteem, anxiety, and depression.
What Is Problematic Social Media Use?
Problematic social media use develops when young people’s social media use starts to resemble addictive behaviours. Children and adolescents with PSMU may have difficulty controlling the way they use social media, be preoccupied with thoughts about social media when they’re offline, and feel distressed if their social media use is restricted.
While non-problematic social media use can be positive in certain contexts (depending on the region and the aspect of a young person’s life in question), problematic use is associated with harm to young people’s mental and social well-being. Around 11% of adolescents may experience PSMU, peaking at age 13.
Problematic Social Media Use and Depression
Problematic social media use has been linked to depressive symptoms among young people in different parts of the world. A study in Sweden found that young people who spent more than two hours on social media were more likely to feel depressed than those who spent less time online. Similarly, research from Egypt found that problematic Internet use was associated with depression, anxiety, and suicidal tendencies.
However, the causal mechanisms underlying these associations remain unclear. While problematic internet use may contribute to depressive symptoms, depression may also pull young people towards problematic social media use. Social media may represent a maladaptive coping mechanism for emotional distress that constructs a vicious cycle of worsening symptoms.
Social Media Use, Emotional Regulation and Social Skills
Emotional regulation—the ability to identify, accept, and modulate emotional responses—is a core component of mental health and well-being. Difficulties with emotional regulation are a risk factor for most mental health disorders, including anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and personality disorders.
Emotional regulation might play an important role in the relationship between problematic social media use and mental health symptoms like anxiety and depression. Adolescents may use social media to distract themselves from emotional distress, especially if they don’t know or aren’t able to use other, healthy coping mechanisms. These behaviours can develop into dependencies, where young people rely on social media to manage their emotions.
The development or inhibition of social skills may also underpin the association between social media use and mental health symptoms. When young people replace in-person interactions with online exchanges, they can become less confident in in-person social situations, and symptoms like social anxiety can be reinforced over time. Adolescents with social anxiety may become increasingly reliant on the internet as a social outlet, while growing more anxious about real-life socialising.
On the other hand, when social media is used to supplement, rather than replace, existing friendships, it may improve their quality and closeness. For example, as adolescents become young adults and may move away from home for education or work, social media can be an invaluable tool in maintaining connections.
Social Media and Restorative Sleep
Social media use is directly connected to screen time: the more young people use social media, the more time they spend looking at a screen. Screen time and sleeping difficulties are closely associated. Looking at a screen, particularly in the two hours before bedtime, disrupts our body’s natural body clock and sleep-wake cycles, making it more difficult to fall into restful, restorative sleep.
Among adolescents, social media use has been associated with poorer quality sleep, daytime sleepiness, shorter sleep duration, and a later bedtime.
Sleep difficulties in adolescence have a big impact on young people’s mental health. Sleep plays a vital role in the brain and body’s functions, including learning, memory, attention, emotional processing, and thinking. Lack of restorative sleep is associated with various types of emotional distress, including depression, anxiety, anger, confusion, and hopelessness.
Social Media Platforms, Self-Objectification, and Body Image
Young people can use social media in different ways, and this impacts the mental health consequences they experience. Some patterns of social media use may be positive, like staying in touch with friends or connecting with people who share certain interests.
However, others can be harmful. One pattern of social media use that’s been highlighted in recent research is self-presentation and social comparison.
Self-presentation involves sharing opinions, photos, and content about oneself, communicating beliefs and values while making an impression on others. Self-presentation content is common on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, and may be more common among adolescents than any other age group.
While self-presentation itself may not be negative, social media platforms encourage instant feedback and evaluation of self-presentation content. Photos and posts can receive comments, likes, or shares that communicate the ‘social desirability’ of the content. Social media can also push adolescents to compare their content—and themselves—with others, especially popular figures like influencers and celebrities, assessing their own lives against theirs.
These processes can encourage young people to focus on peer acceptance and evaluation, rather than appreciating themselves for who they are. It may impact their body image, self-worth, and self-esteem. Research suggests that social comparison may be associated with body dissatisfaction, anxiety, and depression.
Social media accounts also frequently promote social norms and beauty ideals that present a specific, ‘ideal’ body type and a concept of health and fitness that centres around body shape. Young people using social media may internalise these ideals, increasing body image concerns and disordered eating behaviours.
Research shows that viewing appearance-related content on Facebook is linked to body dissatisfaction, drive for thinness, and self-objectification among girls. Each of these traits is associated with a higher risk of developing an eating disorders.
The Devastating Impact of Cyberbullying
Cyber-bullying is worryingly common among young people. While estimates of the prevalence of cyber-bullying among adolescents vary, most fall between 11% and 48%. Young people who are targeted by cyber-bullying are more likely to experience mental health symptoms, including anxiety and depression. Adolescents who are bullied experience serious psychological distress, such as feelings of loneliness, worry, fear, or depression. They’re also more likely to think about or attempt suicide.
Not every young person who uses social media experiences cyberbullying, and not all cyberbullying takes place on social media. But social media is a common place where cyberbullying happens. Problematic social media use, intense social media use, and online contact with strangers all make young people more vulnerable to cyberbullying.
If young people experience or witness cyberbullying on social media or elsewhere, it’s important that they speak to a trusted adult about what’s happened. This might be a parent, teacher, or close family friend. They may also be able to block the person or group who is perpetrating the bullying and report cyberbullying to the social media platform.
Parents or other adults can speak with a young person’s school or the local government teams that work to build community safety for support. Parents can also report instances of cyberbullying to the social media platform.
Parenting and Problematic Social Media Use
Parents have a huge influence on their children’s lives. And, unsurprisingly, this includes the way they use social media. Positive parenting and a healthy home environment can help protect young people against problematic social media use and its associated harms.
Positive parenting is parenting that centres around responsiveness to children’s needs, affection, and healthy expectations. It’s associated with a range of positive mental and social health outcomes, including healthier social media use. Children raised by positive parenting are more likely to develop effective emotional regulation and social skills, which may help them use social media safely and prevent them from becoming dependent on social media platforms for their emotional or social needs.
Parents may also influence young people’s social media use more directly, such as through parenting controls on devices or by placing restrictions on how long they can use social media each day. However, research suggests that there may not be a simple or clear relationship between parental restrictions and problematic social media use. While consistent rule-setting around social media use may have a positive impact, ‘reactive restrictions’ —when parents intervene in children’s social media use —may encourage problematic internet behaviours.
The Wave Clinic: Specialist Mental Health Support for Young People and Families
The Wave Clinic offers specialist mental health treatment spaces for children, adolescents, emerging adults, and families. We provide residential and outpatient programs with a diverse selection of evidence-based treatment modalities. We emphasise the role of past experiences in shaping our feelings and behaviours, sensitively addressing trauma, including family trauma, with exceptional expertise.
We offer fourteen-day and twenty-one-day parenting and family intensives where parents can develop the skills they need to support a young person through their mental health challenges and build a positive, creative family environment. Through experiential therapy and the creation of memories, we work with families to develop new ways of being and relating in practice.
If you’re interested in our programs, get in touch today.
