Does social media cause mental health problems?
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine call for more transparency and research on the relationship between social media and mental health.
Listen, there are legitimate concerns about whether social media is contributing to mental health problems for adolescents. But making an evidence-based claim that social media is causing adolescents’ mental health to decline requires lots of rigorous research that is tough to do. The reality is that, at the moment, I just don’t think we have the data to make a strong claim for a causal relationship between social media and adolescents’ mental health, and neither does the United States’ National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. In their new report, they stated:
“The committee’s review of the literature did not support the conclusion that social media causes changes in adolescent health at the population level. Nevertheless, there are potential harms associated with the platforms” (pp. 5-6).
Now, that doesn’t mean the National Academies aren’t concerned. They are, and so am I. They call for more transparency and cooperation from social media companies (yes!) as well as more funding for research into the effect of social media (yes!). Social media companies’ reticence to be even minimally transparent has been frustrating to me and I think legislation is needed to create ways for those companies to partner with researchers to investigate the effects of social media while also protecting those companies’ intellectual property, etc. (The National Academies made a similar recommendation.) I firmly believe can figure out how to study social media effects safely without jeopardizing companies’ ability to benefit from their efforts. (But don’t get me started on algorithmic boosting - as far as I’m concerned, if a company’s algorithm boosts bad information, they’re responsible for it.)
The National Academies’ summary (just 15 pages) is well-worth reading. And I hope members of the US Congress read it, also. Social media may in fact be quite detrimental to some, many, or all adolescents - but we need more and better data to figure that out. Social media companies should want to know the answers, also.