Social Media is Bad News for Teenagers, But Not All of Them

A new study of teenagers shows that heavy social media use may contribute to negative outcomes, but only for girls and only among the heaviest users.

We have a new survey out today, “A Digital Divide in American Adolescence: Gender, Class, and the New Teenage Experience.” The report explores how American teenagers (age 13 to 17), spend their time, delves into their social media use, and their personal outlook for the future. There’s lots that is new here, but I want to dedicate this newsletter to discussing one of the more concerning trends revealed in these findings. It’s one that has also been largely ignored.

Consistent with a lot of recent work on the subject, we found that social media use is associated with certain negative outcomes. I should note that at least in this study, only heavy social media use—spending at least four hours a day on these platforms—appeared to matter. There were few differences between moderate and light users. And it was only among girls that social media seemed to be a problem. As I write in the report:

“Heavy social media users report much lower personal satisfaction than those who spend less time on these platforms do. A majority (54 percent) of teen girls who spend less than an hour a day on social media say they feel very or completely satisfied with how things are going in their life. Among teen girls who are heavy social media users (spending at least four hours a day online), only 24 percent feel very or completely satisfied with their life—a 30 percentage point gap.”

Teen girls who are very active on social media get less regular sleep, are less likely to read for fun, and report feeling less excited about their lives. They are also less satisfied with their personal health and feel more pessimistic about the state of the country. These are not the only outcomes where differences emerge, but these are some of the most stark. There are 20 and 30-point gaps in well-being between teen girls using social media casually and those spending a lot more time on these platforms.

It’s important to note both the way social media seems to be influencing the lives of teenagers, and where we see little evidence of any effect. Although some have argued that social media has made teens lonelier and more isolated, our research does not show that heavy social media users are any less sociable. For teenagers, social media use is not strongly associated with friendship formation. Teenagers with few close friends do not report any higher (or lower) social media use than teens with lots of friends. Nor does it appear to have any bearing on how satisfied teens feel about their friendships.

Social Media’s Class Divide

For those closely following the debate over social media—who are well-versed in Jonathan Haidt’s arguments—these findings may provoke little more than a shrug of understanding. “Tell me something I don’t know.” However, there is an aspect of the debate about social media that has been consistently underappreciated. There are structural differences in teen social media use that complicate the conversation about personal responsibility, parenting involvement, and institutional interventions.

We found that teen girls raised by parents without college degrees reported much more frequent social media use than those raised in college-educated households. Teen girls raised in non-college-educated households were also less likely to report that they engaged in efforts to reduce their own social media use. Thirty-five percent of teen girls raised by parents without a college degree report using social media four or more hours a day, on average. For teen girls with college-educated parents, only 23 percent use social media this often. This is not the only evidence of a class gap in technology use. A Pew study showed that more than one in three parents without a college degree said they had a child under the age of 12 with their own smart phone. College-educated parents were half as likely to do this.

Many schools have placed some limits on smartphone access during the school day. In our survey we found that most teens report that their school has a policy restricting access to smartphones, but fewer than four in ten report their school has an outright ban on smartphone use. Parental permissiveness still matters a great deal for how teenagers approach social media and smartphones. These findings suggest that parents without college degrees are less able or willing to restrict access.

Appreciating What Social Media Does

So much of our focus on social media has been to identify its influence on individuals. How is a single person affected by their use of these platforms? Freya India’s recent book Girls® offers an illuminating first-hand account of her own experience growing up online. Her observations are bleak, but her argument is compelling. What struck me is not only the way social media exacerbates age-old insecurities and anxieties, but that it is especially pernicious when young people lack structure and guidance in the physical world. India writes:

“Coming of age with only consumerism as our guide, girls my age had no road map. Without religion, community, or shared responsibilities, there were no clear milestones to adulthood, no real obligations, and no obvious sense of direction.”

This is a theme India returns to throughout the book and a central idea in my own book. I tend to believe that the most lasting damage caused by social media is the culture that diminishes the value of shared obligations. It is this loss that India identifies:

“We had so few opportunities to practice selflessness. No neighbors to try kindness with. No bonds we couldn’t easily break. No obligations to learn loyalty. We grew up in a world of strangers, with so few expectations of each other, so little accountability.”

In the absence of strong cultural norms, institutional constraints, and parental engagement, social media is not a great place for us to spend our formative years. Not every teen’s experience is negative, but the pervasive influence social media has on us, and the time in our lives when it exercises the most power, is a problem.

In previous work, I’ve identified a growing class divide in sociability. Americans with college degrees tend to have more robust social networks than those with less formal education. It’s not hard to imagine a future in which the well-off are able to access real-life friendships, and intimate relationships. And those fewer financial resources are left with an approximation of intimacy, affection and companionship in AI chatbots. It may already be happening.