Submission statement: Two major new scientific studies from Australia and the UK that not only dispute the narrative that social media is harmful to young people, but also argue that kids who use social media, at least moderately, have the best outcomes and that banning them may lead to worse outcomes. This comes as governments like Australia ban social media for under-16s, and possibly the UK, Spain, and the US implementing similar draconian and potentially illiberal measures that could strip vulnerable young people, especially LGBTQ+ (and even more especially the trans community), from their only lifeline (remember the “remove the transgender” from KOSA’s sponsors?). As the article further states:
> These platforms aren’t just “distraction machines” or “attention hijackers” or whatever scary framing is popular this week. They’re where social life happens for a lot of young people. Cutting kids off entirely doesn’t return them to some idyllic pre-digital social existence. It cuts them off from their actual social world.
> Both sets of researchers make the same point: online experiences aren’t inherently harmless—hurtful messages, online pressures, and extreme content can have real effects. But blunt instruments like time-based restrictions or outright bans completely miss the target, and are unlikely to help those who need it most. The Australian authors recommend “promotion of balanced and purposeful digital engagement as part of a broader strategy.”
SouthernSerf on
> The Australian authors recommend “promotion of balanced and purposeful digital engagement as part of a broader strategy.”
Ohh academic speak for we don’t have any functional plan or solution please give our organization more money so that we can continue to produce even more research that will continue to again produce no actionable plan.
Business-Special2221 on
The choice of after-school use from 3-6 pm sees like a strange cutout of times to use, which from reading it seems like the Australian study did. That would seem to leave out a pretty significant chunk of time potentially available for social media usage, especially times that could be associated with negative outcomes, e.g. lack of sleep etc.
Naggins on
Largely good article but this is incorrect –
>In other words: Australia’s ban may be taking kids who would have been moderate users with good outcomes and forcing them into the “no use” category that the study associates with worse well-being.
This does not follow from the study’s findings. Children who had normal use of social media no longer being able to use social media will not worsen their well-being.
Author falls into the same trap as Jonathan Haidt of completing misunderstand causative relationships. Social media use is a behaviour. Behaviours are expressions of emotional states.
Social media use is increasing at a time when awareness and concern over mental health problems is increasing. Social media is part of that story, but it’s not all of it.
OgreMcGee on
The apps as they are today are bad.
Even Facebook 12 years ago or MySpace existed today were what we had i dont think we would have this response.
I have a very hard time believing any infinite scroll brain rot engine like tiktok or reels is going to have much of any valuable use case.
Insofar as there is, it’s one that is a net loss relative to much more direct connection via discord or blogs etc.
monjorob on
From what I could tell reading the original Manchester study, ( the one that found no effect of social media use on emotions) it consisted of self reporting questionnaires over 3 years that merely asked “how many hours a day do you use social media” and then asked to self report internalized emotions.
I kept looking for where they would provide some sort of testing to verify that the kids social media self reporting is accurate, but couldn’t find it. I’d say people are notoriously inaccurate in self reporting their own screen time.
To me that’s not exactly convincing and the other study which finds a U shaped effect makes more sense that adolescents have found healthy ways to engage with the technology on their own.
Math_Junky on
There are hundreds of studies on social media and its effects. You should be looking at meta-analyese and large reviews of the literature to get an idea of where the evidence points.
7 Comments
Submission statement: Two major new scientific studies from Australia and the UK that not only dispute the narrative that social media is harmful to young people, but also argue that kids who use social media, at least moderately, have the best outcomes and that banning them may lead to worse outcomes. This comes as governments like Australia ban social media for under-16s, and possibly the UK, Spain, and the US implementing similar draconian and potentially illiberal measures that could strip vulnerable young people, especially LGBTQ+ (and even more especially the trans community), from their only lifeline (remember the “remove the transgender” from KOSA’s sponsors?). As the article further states:
> These platforms aren’t just “distraction machines” or “attention hijackers” or whatever scary framing is popular this week. They’re where social life happens for a lot of young people. Cutting kids off entirely doesn’t return them to some idyllic pre-digital social existence. It cuts them off from their actual social world.
> Both sets of researchers make the same point: online experiences aren’t inherently harmless—hurtful messages, online pressures, and extreme content can have real effects. But blunt instruments like time-based restrictions or outright bans completely miss the target, and are unlikely to help those who need it most. The Australian authors recommend “promotion of balanced and purposeful digital engagement as part of a broader strategy.”
> The Australian authors recommend “promotion of balanced and purposeful digital engagement as part of a broader strategy.”
Ohh academic speak for we don’t have any functional plan or solution please give our organization more money so that we can continue to produce even more research that will continue to again produce no actionable plan.
The choice of after-school use from 3-6 pm sees like a strange cutout of times to use, which from reading it seems like the Australian study did. That would seem to leave out a pretty significant chunk of time potentially available for social media usage, especially times that could be associated with negative outcomes, e.g. lack of sleep etc.
Largely good article but this is incorrect –
>In other words: Australia’s ban may be taking kids who would have been moderate users with good outcomes and forcing them into the “no use” category that the study associates with worse well-being.
This does not follow from the study’s findings. Children who had normal use of social media no longer being able to use social media will not worsen their well-being.
Author falls into the same trap as Jonathan Haidt of completing misunderstand causative relationships. Social media use is a behaviour. Behaviours are expressions of emotional states.
Social media use is increasing at a time when awareness and concern over mental health problems is increasing. Social media is part of that story, but it’s not all of it.
The apps as they are today are bad.
Even Facebook 12 years ago or MySpace existed today were what we had i dont think we would have this response.
I have a very hard time believing any infinite scroll brain rot engine like tiktok or reels is going to have much of any valuable use case.
Insofar as there is, it’s one that is a net loss relative to much more direct connection via discord or blogs etc.
From what I could tell reading the original Manchester study, ( the one that found no effect of social media use on emotions) it consisted of self reporting questionnaires over 3 years that merely asked “how many hours a day do you use social media” and then asked to self report internalized emotions.
I kept looking for where they would provide some sort of testing to verify that the kids social media self reporting is accurate, but couldn’t find it. I’d say people are notoriously inaccurate in self reporting their own screen time.
To me that’s not exactly convincing and the other study which finds a U shaped effect makes more sense that adolescents have found healthy ways to engage with the technology on their own.
There are hundreds of studies on social media and its effects. You should be looking at meta-analyese and large reviews of the literature to get an idea of where the evidence points.