Both the boys and girls in the study hit a second period of social media sensitivity around age 19. “That was quite surprising because it was so consistent across the sexes,” Dr. Orben said. Around that age, she said, many people go through major social upheaval — like starting college, working in a new job or living independently for the first time — that might change the way they interact with social media, she said.
Although the new report drew from richer data sets than previous studies did, it nevertheless lacked some information that would be helpful in interpreting the results, experts said. Waiting a whole year between responses is not ideal, for example. And although the surveys asked how much time the participants spent communicating on social media, they did not ask how they used it; talking to strangers while simultaneously playing a video game might lead to different effects than texting with a group of friends from school.
Taken together with past work, the findings suggest that while most teenagers are not affected much by social media, a small subset could be significantly harmed by its effects. But it is impossible to predict the risks for an individual child.
“For your 12-year-old, what does that mean for them? It’s hard to know,” said Michaeline Jensen, a clinical psychologist at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Given the small effect seen in the study, “very few of these kids would be going from normal functioning to clinical levels of depression,” she said. But “that’s not to say that none of them would.”
Dr. Jensen pointed out that the study also found a link in the opposite direction: For all ages, participants who felt bad about their lives wound up spending more time on social media a year later. This suggests that for some people the technology may be a coping mechanism rather than the cause of their gloom.
All these experts said that they were often frustrated by the public debates about social media and children, which so often inflate the platforms’ harms and ignore the benefits.
“It carries risks — peer influence, contagion, substance use,” Dr. Jensen said. “But it can also carry lots of positive things,” like support, connection, creativity and skill mastery, she added. “I think a lot of times that does get overlooked because we’re so focused on risks.”
Audio produced by Kate Winslett.
Credit: Source link
