Children who post publicly online even occasionally are more likely than their peers to report feeling depressed and anxious and get too little sleep, according to the results of a new, large-scale survey that sheds new light on how young people’s use of social media and devices can affect their lives in profound ways.
The survey—which will be repeated annually with the same group to assess how their experiences change over time—included about 1,500 11- to 13-year-olds in Florida who participated last November and December. It questioned them about a wide range of online behaviors and how commonly they engage in them or experience them, including news consumption, sharing false information, cyberbullying, and engagement with social media influencers, many of which previously had not been studied, according to the report.
The report offers fresh insights for school and district leaders as they continue to navigate rapidly evolving technology and its effect on children’s mental health, engagement in class, attendance, and more.
“The data clearly shows that some things that kids are doing on these devices are harmful to them,” said Sharon Hoover, a licensed clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and formerly a co-director of the National Center for School Mental Health. “The takeaways for schools are that, yes, the use of phones, including social media use, impacts kids’ mental health and that schools really do have a role to play in terms of digital literacy and ensuring kids are set up with proper knowledge and guardrails around these things.”
Hoover was not involved in the survey.
The mental health harm is about more than simply using phones, the report says
Overall, 78% of respondents said they have their own smartphone, and 99% said they often use at least one kind of electronic device.
But the report says that owning or simply using smartphones doesn’t “appear to be the culprit in the adolescent mental health crisis.” Rather, “publicly posting or sharing things online was associated with adverse outcomes,” the report says.
“Of course, the act of posting itself is not likely what contributes to depression and sleep deprivation in children, but instead what potentially follows: negative feedback from peers and/or strangers, cyberbullying, unfriending or blocking, doxxing, or any number of other online ills,” the report states.
A majority of students who participated in the survey said they post or share things publicly online sometimes or often, with students from higher-income families more likely to report posting. Fifty-six percent of kids from families that earn less than $50,000 annually reported posting something or often, compared with 77 percent of kids from families earning $150,000 or more.
Kids who post publicly online were more likely to report experiencing moderate or severe symptoms of depression and anxiety compared to those who did not make public posts online. Similarly, children who use social media daily were more likely to say that technology “impairs their daily lives” and affects their ability to get enough sleep because they’re on their phones late at night, the report said.
The report did show some potential positives to young people owning their own devices, though.
Respondents who had their own smartphone were less likely to agree with the statement that “life often feels meaningless” (18%) than those who did not have their own smartphone (26%). Smartphone-owning kids were also more likely to say they felt good about themselves (80%) compared with kids without their own phones (69%), the report said.
The researchers believe that children in the 11- to 13-year-old age group may report more positive well-being if they have a phone because they feel more connected and socially in line with their peers, said Stephen Song, an assistant professor in the University of South Florida’s Department of Journalism and Digital Communication, who was part of the team that conducted the survey.
“The devices are an extension of social interaction, and without those devices, they’re cut off in some ways from their peer group,” he said. “There’s also research that shows having autonomy is a good predictor of being happy and feeling good about things … so when they don’t have a phone they don’t have as much autonomy.”
He suggested that “forcing kids to not use phones more than needed,” like restricting access to cellphones and social media outside of class time, “might backfire.”
Digital literacy is key to safer phone and social media use
Hoover argued, however, that such conclusions may be premature.
She said more research is needed to determine the longer-term impacts of phone ownership and social media use on young people’s mental health and well-being before making broad policy decisions based on the survey’s findings.
Regardless, Hoover said parents and schools should have clear “guardrails” in place to ensure children are using their phones and social media in safe and healthy ways.
Schools can implement “digital literacy” courses that teach students skills like online safety and how to identify misinformation, and can host parent information nights to discuss how social media use can affect children and offer recommendations about how to navigate challenges related to the use of devices and bullying, Hoover said.
“I think one of the tenets that we think about with schools is if it impacts learning, schools have to play a role in addressing it—not the sole role, but they have a role,” she said. “Just like how schools partner to do hearing and vision screenings—it’s something we know is predictive of kids’ academic success because there is evidence that social media use, public posting, and cyberbullying are harmful to children.”
Cyberbullying was found to be particularly harmful to the adolescents who responded to the survey.
The report asked kids if they’d experienced any of several forms of cyberbullying in the previous three months, including: having hurtful photos or videos posted about them; being called mean or hurtful names on social media; and having rumors or lies about them spread.
Students were categorized as cyberbullied if they reported that any one of those things had happened to them in the past three months. More than half (57%) reported that they had been cyberbullied in some way, and 20% said they experience cyberbullying weekly or more frequently.
Cyberbullied kids were nearly three times as likely as un-bullied kids to say they felt depressed most days in the prior year—32% vs. 11% respectively.
“This helps shed light on how destructive even minimal cyberbullying can be,” the report concluded.
