Senior Research Scientist Linda Charmaraman, Ph.D., co-authored this "Health advisory on social media use in adolescence", released by the American Psychological Association. The advisory examines potential beneficial and harmful effects of social media use on adolescents’ social, educational, psychological, and neurological development, and provides recommendations based on the scientific evidence to date.
Psychological scientists examine potential beneficial and harmful effects of social mediaa use on adolescents’ social, educational, psychological, and neurological development. This is a rapidly evolving and growing area of research with implications for many stakeholders (e.g., youth, parents, caregivers, educators, policymakers, practitioners, and members of the tech industry) who share responsibility to ensure adolescents’ well-being.b Officials and policymakers including the U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy have documented the importance of this issue and are actively seeking science-informed input.c
The recommendations below are based on the scientific evidence to date, and the following considerations.
A. Using social media is not inherently beneficial or harmful to young people. Adolescents’ lives online both reflect and impact their offline lives. In most cases, the effects of social media are dependent on adolescents’ own personal and psychological characteristics and social circumstances—intersecting with the specific content, features, or functions that are afforded within many social media platforms. In other words, the effects of social media likely depend on what teens can do and see online, teens’ preexisting strengths or vulnerabilities, and the contexts in which they grow up.
B. Adolescents’ experiences online are affected by both 1) how they shape their own social media experiences (e.g., they choose whom to like and follow); and 2) both visible and unknown features built into social media platforms.
C. Not all findings apply equally to all youth. Scientific findings offer one piece of information that can be used along with knowledge of specific youths’ strengths, weaknesses, and context to make decisions that are tailored for each teen, family, and community.
D. Adolescent development is gradual and continuous, beginning with biological and neurological changes occurring before puberty is observable (i.e., approximately beginning at 10 years of age), and lasting at least until dramatic changes in youths’ social environment (e.g., peer, family, and school context) and neurological changes have completed (i.e., until approximately 25 years of age). Age-appropriate use of social media should be based on each adolescent’s level of maturity (e.g., self-regulation skills, intellectual development, comprehension of risks) and home environment. Because adolescents mature at different rates, and because there are no data available to indicate that children become unaffected by the potential risks and opportunities posed by social media usage at a specific age, research is in development to specify a single time or age point for many of these recommendations. In general, potential risks are likely to be greater in early adolescence—a period of greater biological, social, and psychological transitions, than in late adolescence and early adulthood.
E. As researchers have found with the internet more broadly, racism (i.e., often reflecting perspectives of those building technology) is built into social media platforms. For example, algorithms (i.e., a set of mathematical instructions that direct users’ everyday experiences down to the posts that they see) can often have centuries of racist policy and discrimination encoded. Social media can become an incubator, providing community and training that fuel racist hate. The resulting potential impact is far reaching, including physical violence offline, as well as threats to well-being.
F. These recommendations are based on psychological science and related disciplines at the time of this writing (April 2023). Collectively, these studies were conducted with thousands of adolescents who completed standardized assessments of social, behavioral, psychological, and/or neurological functioning, and also reported (or were observed) engaging with specific social media functions or content. However, these studies do have limitations. First, findings suggesting causal associations are rare, as the data required to make cause-and-effect conclusions are challenging to collect and/or may be available within technology companies, but have not been made accessible to independent scientists. Second, long-term (i.e., multiyear) longitudinal research often is unavailable; thus, the associations between adolescents’ social media use and long-term outcomes (i.e., into adulthood) are largely unknown. Third, relatively few studies have been conducted with marginalized populations of youth, including those from marginalized racial, ethnic, sexual, gender, socioeconomic backgrounds, those who are differently abled, and/or youth with chronic developmental or health conditions.
a These recommendations do not address the use of all technology among youth, including educationally-based platforms or digital interventions that use evidence-based approaches to promote adaptive health outcomes. Rather, these recommendations reflect the literature on social media specifically, which is defined as technologically-based applications, platforms, or communication systems using online architecture that promotes asynchronous, unilateral, permanent, public, continually-accessible, social cue-restricted, quantifiable, visually-based, or algorithmic-based social interactions.1,2
b These recommendations enact policies and resolutions approved by the APA Council of Representatives including the APA Resolution on Child and Adolescent Mental and Behavioral Health (PDF, 72KB) and the APA Resolution on Dismantling Systemic Racism in contexts including social media. These are not professional practice guidelines but are intended to provide information based on psychological science.
c The U.S. Surgeon General released an advisory in 2021 (PDF, 1MB) focused on protecting youth mental health that recognizes the importance of examining the impacts of social media on children.
Source: https://www.wcwonline.org/2023/health-advisory-on-social-media-use-in-adolescence
Digital Wellbeing Educators has a clear objective: increase the capacity of lecturers and teachers to integrate digital education in a way that promotes the digital wellbeing of students. Through building teacher capacity, the project will improve students’ abilities to manage their online time, make the most of digital learning, critically assess the media they consume and create, and become responsible, confident digital citizens.
Digital communications, smart phones and social media have transformed the way students and young people communicate and increasing evidence shows the benefits to learning outcomes when digital pedagogic strategies are used effectively. However, it is increasingly evident that the online space is not benign: peer pressure, cyber-bullying, oversharing of personal information can all cause significant problems, inhibiting a young person’s development as a confident online learner and citizen. Even greater concerns exist regarding the vulnerability of young people to being encouraged to express negative attitudes and behaviours, linked to exclusion and intolerance, and the route to radicalization and incitement to violence.
While debate continues about whose job it is to regulate the online space, we are convinced that Higher Education Institutions and the wider education sector have a role to play in equipping our students to manage their online lives, both as a means of ensuring their personal wellbeing and also ensuring that that have the digital competences required for future career success. Through Digital Wellbeing we will build our capacity to better teach students the critical thinking, media literacy and interpersonal / intercultural communication skills that they need to flourish online.