Eight hours per day. A full workday. A flight from Indianapolis to London.
That’s the average time kids between the ages of eight and 18 spend in front of a screen, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Five of those hours are spent on social media, according to the American Psychological Association. The discussion of how much time children and teenagers have been spending on social media has sparked questions about the negative consequences this time can have on their mental health.
Kayela Miller, a psychology student at Ivy Tech, is part of the generation raised on social media. Social media has played a role in her psychology studies and has changed the way she views time spent on it.
“Social media has impacted society gravely,” Miller said.
The APA cites that 41% of the group of teens with the highest average social media time per day also rated their mental health as poor or very poor. This is in comparison with the 23% of teens with the lowest use of social media.
As of 2024, Priori Data reports that there are 5.16 billion active social media users, nearly 60% of the global population. Facebook is the most popular, followed by YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.
The sheer number of users and the increase in usage has propelled legislators in Indiana to limit the effect that social media can have on minors through recent House bills. These bills include limiting social media use by minors, requiring age verification for material on social media harmful to minors and providing internet and social media literacy education.
As legislation is passed, more studies into social media are at the forefront of psychology, and experts are trying to understand what can be done.
Max Coleman, PhD of Sociology from Indiana University, has been studying the trends of the effects of social media on mental health.
According to an academic article published in 2019, the number of students who exhibited signs of depression, attempted suicide or reported making a suicide plan doubled between 2012-18. Similarly, a statistic from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey reported that 57% of high school girls reported feeling persistent signs of sadness or hopelessness, 30% seriously considered attempting suicide, 24% made a suicide plan and 13% of attempted suicide. “These are some of the things that really worry me,” Coleman said.
Correlation is not causation, however, as Coleman explains, there are plenty of reasons for concern. The experts do not know that social media causes mental health issues, but they know that the two are correlated, meaning those who used more social media had negative effects on their mental health.
The idea of “perfection”
Similarly, studies of depression as it pertains to young girls are linked to negative connotations with body image — pro-anorexia imagery, “what I eat in a day” videos and the promotion of diet culture all connect to the mental health of kids who see it on social media.
“We are shown people with what society deems as the ‘perfect’ body or facial features and it can mess with people’s heads and make them ask themselves why they don’t also look like that,” Miller said.
In addition to the idea of the physical comparison of bodies, Coleman said the idea of seeing the “perfect” lives of those you are close with can have a negative effect on a teen’s mental health. How many likes did that post get? How many followers does she have?
Coleman also explained other reasons why social media and mental health may be linked, citing concerns over cyberbullying and less in-person social time.
Who is most at risk?
Social media is not all glamor shots and happy families, however. Graphic images, political arguments and hate comments can flood timelines,
In a study between 1991 to 2019, Black adolescents saw an 80% increase in suicide attempts. In a related statistic, Black high school students now report the highest rate of suicide attempts, 14% compared to the 9% of their white counterparts.
Videos of police brutality are affecting Black students at an alarming rate and may be correlated to the issues facing Black youth. According to a Congressional Report published in 2020, the suicide rate in Black youths is increasing faster than any other racial or ethnic group and is steadily on the rise.
What can be done?
Ella Faulhaber, co-author of the study “The effect of self-monitoring limited social media use on psychological well-being,” tried to find a way to stop these statistics from getting worse.
What she found: the best thing to do is limit the use of social media.
“I truly believe that people have the power to limit their social media usage themselves … Don’t give up. Our study suggests that it is possible,” Faulhaber said.
Firstly, Faulhaber said to track your usage. Either through the ‘screen time’ setting on the iPhone or through a third-party app, simply tracking what you are doing is a tool to help monitor yourself.
“In just two weeks of limiting social media usage, we saw significant improvements (in the participants’ mental health),” Faulhaber said.
The other main thing Faulhaber suggests is turning off notifications, citing that so many of us pick up our phones and mindlessly scroll simply because they are on.
“There are a lot of different mechanisms involved … there are a lot of very powerful statistics that show just how much (social media) can be a problem for mental health,” said Coleman.
For more information or to utilize Indiana’s mental health resources, visit in.gov/bewellindiana to learn more.
This reporting is made possible by a grant from the Indianapolis African-American Quality of Life Initiative, empowering our community with essential health insights. https://iaaqli.org/
Contact Staff Writer Hanna Rauworth at 317.762.7854 or follow her on Instagram at @hanna.rauworth.