Yes, social media could be making your kids depressed, study finds

Any potential link between social media use and kids’ mental health often comes down to a what-came-first conundrum: does more time glued to TikTok, Snapchat or Instagram make youth more depressed, or are distressed kids just more likely to spend more time on social media?   A new study suggests it’s the former, not the latter, at play.   Researchers who followed nearly 12,000 children found the more time nine- and 10-year-olds spend engaged with social media, the more depressive symptoms they have a year or two years later.   Kids’ social media use soared, on average, from seven to 73 minutes per day, over the three years of the study, and their depressive symptoms rose by 35 per cent, according to the paper, published in JAMA Network Open.   The study is the first to use a “within-person” approach, meaning researchers tracked changes over time in each child, and not between kids.   “There has been ongoing debate about whether social media contributes to depression or simply reflects underlying depressive symptoms,” lead author Dr. Jason Nagata, an associate professor in the department of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, said in a background news release.   “These findings provide evidence that social media may be contributing to the development of depressive symptoms.”   It’s not clear why. However, adolescence can make for a “critical period of vulnerability during which social media exposure may have lasting implications for mental health,” the researchers wrote.   “As a father of two young kids, I know that simply telling children to ‘get off your phone’ doesn’t really work,” Nagata said.   “Parents can lead by example with open, nonjudgmental questions about screen use,” he said. “Setting screen-free times for the whole family, such as during meals or before bed, can help build healthier habits for everyone, including adults.”   The researchers used data from an ongoing study spanning 21 sites, the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, the biggest longitudinal study — meaning it’s following young people over multiple time points — of adolescent health, brain and cognitive development in the U.S. The study recruited children aged nine to 10 from October 2016 to October 2018, and followed them through 2022, when they were 12 to 13. Kids were asked questions about the number of hours and minutes spent per weekday and weekend day on social media.   Depression scores were measured by having parents fill out a widely used questionnaire used to detect behavioural and emotional problems in children and teens.   The researchers wanted to explore whether changes in social media use over time preceded shifts in symptoms of depression, or vice versa.   “Young people who are depressed might be more likely to spend more time on their phones or social media as a way to cope, or as a way to escape, because they’re looking for feedback loops that reaffirm negative thoughts,” said Canadian co-author Kyle Ganson, an assistant professor in the faculty of social work at the University of Toronto. The team found that as time on social media increased from one year to year two, and year two to year three, so did depression scores. However, the reverse wasn’t true — “a rise in depressive symptoms didn’t predict a later increase in social media use,” according to the background release.   It’s not the first study to find a dose-response association, meaning more time was associated with higher depression scores. However, the researchers don’t know what, exactly, the kids were doing online. “Obviously time is one thing but content is another,” Ganson said. “Texting or DMing (direct messaging) with friends or sharing memes — some of that might actually be very pro-social and very positive and very connecting for young people,” he said. “Whereas doomscrolling and getting lost in social media rabbit holes might be more isolating and lead to more comparisons, which could lead to more depression,” Ganson said. “We don’t have a direct answer as to why” more time on phones and screens were associated with more depressive symptoms. “Multiple factors are likely playing into it,” he said. “These young people might be going to social media as a way to escape difficult family conflict or difficult family issues.” They may have lower self-esteem “and so they gravitate towards social media because it feels a bit safer, but it isolates them from their peers” and exposes them to negative content. According to a recent Macdonald-Laurier Institute report, Wired for Worry , while one to two hours a day of social media use has been associated with positive mental health outcomes, “mental health worsens as use increased beyond that,” and that “the preponderance of the evidence indicates that social media is a major contributor to, and likely a leading cause, of declining youth mental health.” One side note of the latest work is that the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study relied on parental reports of depressive symptoms, “which I think does make sense given the age of some of these young people,” Ganson said. However, “parents only have a perception of their children. They don’t have an internal experience.” For youth, “We can’t think of social media as benign,” Ganson said. “We’re not going to take it away — it’s impossible to take this away from young people. It’s less about taking it away and more about moderating it, making sure you’re finding ways to socialize with peers in person, through extracurriculars, through sports, through groups, through art, through theatre, music — whatever it might be. “Finding those activities that take you off of the screen, that make you feel good about yourself.” Parents can help by encouraging “in-person socialization,” he said, and putting limitations around screen time and social media use, like no phones in the bedroom, “or being aware of what your kids are doing online. Doing regular check-ins with your kids about what they’re doing on social media, what kinds of interests they have. So that it’s not just, ‘Oh, my kid’s in the corner or in their room with the door locked on social media.’ “It’s about being very open with communication and helping them navigate these different areas,” Ganson said. Parents should also check their own screen time, “because that does obviously influence their kids’ behaviour as well.” National Post

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