Especially TikTok, YouTube and Instagram harm young people’s mental health
The mental health of young people is rapidly declining and social media is said to to be a contributing factor. But not every platform is the same, show UvA researchers. “Snapchat and WhatsApp have predominantly positive effects on friendships.”
60 per cent of teenagers experience lower self-esteem, reduced well-being and feel less connected to friends after using social media. That was published by UvA scientists in a preprint. For that study, 479 teenagers aged between 14 and 18 kept a diary of their social media use for 100 days. The UvA researchers asked them which social media platforms they used the most and subjected the five most frequently mentioned – TikTok, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Instagram and YouTube – to a more extensive analysis.
This is the first time these five platforms have been compared in research. More often, all social media are lumped together. “The landscape of social media apps is changing so fast, says social media researcher Amber van der Wal and first author of the preprint. “You can’t come up with a Facebook study among teenagers now. That’s why the different platforms are often taken together.”
That social media is bad for young people’s mental health, everyone agrees upon, right?
“That seems to be the prevailing public opinion, but in science not everyone agrees on that yet: in recent years, a lot of studies with conflicting results have been published. In addition, there are different ways of studying it. Some studies compare groups that use more and less social media with each other, other studies look at the differences ‘within’ individuals: does someone feel better or worse when they use more or less social media? We chose the latter method.”
Did you expect the effects of social media to vary by app?
“Intuitively, I did expect that Snapchat and WhatsApp could have a positive effect on the closeness of friendship, because young people connect with each other through those apps. As it turns out: Snapchat and Whatsapp do have a positive effect on friendship closeness for 71.5 per cent and 77 per cent of teenagers, respectively. But that the differences between the other apps would be so big I didn’t imagine.”
“For TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, we find negative effects on all three dimensions of mental health – well-being, self-confidence and close friendships – for a large group. The fact that friendships were included in this list was a surprise to me. YouTube, for example, has a negative effect on their friendships for almost 80 per cent of the respondents, for TikTok it is 71.5 per cent.”
Do you have an explanation?
“More research is needed for that, but I can imagine that if you spend a lot of time on YouTube, you have little contact with your friends as a result. Or vice versa: that on the very days when you can’t have contact with your friends you start watching a lot of videos and feel less connected at the end of the day.”
What about Instagram, it has a chat function and shares photos, just like Snapchat. Can you explain why that medium has negative implications?
“Instagram causes fewer negative effects than TikTok and YouTube, but indeed more than Snapchat. Almost 38 per cent of teenagers who use Instagram experience a negative effect on friendships. From focus groups and interviews with teenagers, the perception emerged that Instagram is still mainly used to look at photos and videos. The DM function can be used to forward something, but the real communication still takes place mainly via Snapchat and to a lesser extent via WhatsApp.”
So the more communication between teenagers, the better off they actually are?
“Yes, it does look like that. And it also shows that we shouldn’t lump all social media together, because it can also have benefits.”
Yet 60 per cent of teenagers do experience negative effects.
“Yes, and I am also concerned about that. But of the remaining 40 per cent, a small group experiences (predominantly) no effects; 5 per cent only positive effects and the rest both positive and negative effects. For that last group, the very best thing would be if you could find a way to maintain the positive effects and eliminate the negative effects. So we have to look for a way to keep contact with friends and curb endless movie watching.”
How could you do that?
“I think it is very important to talk about this: parents with children and through education in schools. And then I also refer to WhatsApp and Snapchat, because now it may seem like those platforms are just great, but kids can get nasty videos sent there as well, so caution is always needed.”
“In addition, I would also be in favour of restricting social media access across the EU. An outright ban under the age of 16 would be too rigorous for me. Children have the right to be informed and, as this research also shows, social media can be very positive. But I do think it is right to protect children. Platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram do have a very seductive design: now you can scroll endlessly and videos start playing automatically. You can take measures to turn off those functions as a default for teenagers.”
