The use of social media by children and adolescents is an issue that often concerns their parents, as there are concerns about the dangers they may pose.
One example is the tragic case of Molly Russell, a 14-year-old schoolgirl from England, whose suicide in 2017 continues to be a major topic on some social media platforms that glorify depression and suicide. Since Russell’s case resurfaced earlier this year, other similar incidents have come to light. As a result, the UK’s health secretary, Matt Hancock, suggested that social media companies could face sanctions if they do not do more to regulate content and limit young people’s access to certain dangerous material.
Hancock is not alone in his concerns. Shaun Fenton, chairman of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference, said the impact of social media on children's mental health was "a real tragedy of our time".
There is a danger, however, that ministers, principals and others, rushing to find something to blame for the incidence of mental illness among young people, will blame social media use for it.
In general, this panic and fear does not help young people. On the contrary, it encourages them to react and resist such rules. Just last year, a well-known headteacher was calling for the abolition of exams, because they were seen as a threat to children's mental health. However, this sends a bad message to young people. It tells them that they are too fragile to cope with the education system or that certain aspects of learning are too difficult for them.
It would be much better for young people to see anxiety not as a threat, but as a normal response to certain situations. Similarly, as we move into an increasingly technological age, we should try to understand how we interact with social media, without panicking and creating new laws.
At present, our understanding of how we use social media and how it affects us is very limited. This is true for many of the studies used to justify restricting social media through legislation or mental health levies. For example, a study by the Royal Society of Public Health, which reported that the relationships between social media use by teenagers and the occurrence of mental illness, was designed to be approximate and potentially produce spurious results because participants were able to guess the study’s hypothesis.
An even more popular study conducted in 2011, by the American Academy of Pediatrics, claimed that excessive social media use created a phenomenon called “Facebook depression.” However, it relied on inaccurate news reports rather than primary research. Indeed, one scholar whose work was used to support the study stated that his research did not support the claims made about “Facebook depression.”
In short, the case for heavy social media use causing mental illness is not as clear-cut as ministers, educators and NHS managers would have you believe.
Not that all the research so far is of dubious value. A study published in Psychiatric Quarterly in 2017 found that social media is not a strong predictor of poor mental health. But it did find that online behavior known as “vaguebooking” – when someone frequently posts depressing and negative posts – was indicative of suicidal tendencies. This research suggests that the way someone uses social media is much more indicative of mental illness than how much time they spend online. With that in mind, governments should perhaps consider supporting, rather than punishing, social media companies that are struggling to help young people who use social media in a relevant way.
The relationship between mental health and social media remains poorly understood and it will take a long time before we can fully decipher it.
