Summary: Experts on social media, teens, and health advise that overall, we can improve online health by changing the way social media algorithms are designed, changing the way we use social media, and educating children from an early age about safe and healthy social media use.
Key Points:
- The impact of social media use differs by the individual
- Most teens know and understand social media algorithms are designed to keep them scrolling
- Many are unaware social media algorithms prioritize ragebait and clickbait posts
- Teens agree digital education should start early
- Close to six out of ten teens recognize that social media companies have failed to protect them from false information and negative content
The Ongoing Mental Health Crisis Among Adolescents and Young Adults
In 2024, when the Surgeon General of the United States issued an advisory – called a Surgeon General’s Advisory, or SGA – on the loneliness epidemic in the U.S., he was speaking to us al. However, there’s a recurring theme in the 2024 SGA and an earlier SGA on the youth mental health epidemic: the impact of social media on youth, teens, and young adult health.
The role of social media in the lives of teens and young adults is complex, and the advisories we refer to above both imply we need to rethink our approach to social media and how we can help youth, teens, and young adults navigate the new normal, where social media is everywhere, and most young people use it every day.
To learn more about those SGAs, please navigate to our blog and read these articles:
Youth Mental Health Crisis: Improving Adolescent Mental Health: A National Challenge
The Loneliness Epidemic: How Does the Loneliness Epidemic Affect Teens?
To learn more about the impact of social media on teens and mental health, please read this article:
Does Social Media Harm Teens and Mental Health?
Those articles are good primers for understanding the focus of this article: a new report by Mental Health America (MHA) on the impact of social media on youth, teen, and young adult health and wellbeing.
Social Media and Digital Health: A New Concern for Youth, Teens, and Young Adults
A new study called “Breaking the Algorithm: Redesigning Social Media for Youth Well-being” explores the relationship between social media and mental health. This report is based on the outcome of a social media summit held in May 2024 that included a wide range of youth leaders, mental health researchers, parents, and policymakers. After the summit, the organizers gathered data for the report in two ways:
- A survey of 1,500 youth and young adults, ages 13-25, on the following topics:
- Social media use
- Social media platform features
- Relationships and social media
- Education and social media
- In-person focus groups with youth ages 15-19, on the following topics:
- Digital education
- Social media algorithms
- Peer relationships on social media
- How youth use social media
In this article, we’ll review the results of the report, which collates and presents data collected through the survey on the focus groups. Here’s a preview of the data the report presents:
- 72% of teens report feeling peaceful when they don’t have their phone
- 44% of teens report feeling anxious when they don’t have their phone
- 40% of teens report social media makes them feel better when they feel sad, depressed, or anxious
- 8% of teens report social makes them feel worse when they feel sad, depressed, or anxious
And within those parameters, here’s something else to consider:
In the past year, 39% of teens say they’ve reduced the time they spend on social media: that’s what we mean when we say the situation is complex. When talking about social media, contradictions abound. That’s why this new report is important: we need to redesign social media – or our relationship to it – so we can move forward with the knowledge we’re protecting the health and wellness of our youth, teens, and young adults during the digital age.
What Do Teens and Young Adults Think About Social Media and Digital Wellbeing?
One thing that’s helpful about this report is the focus on youth, teens, and young adults themselves. With regards to social media, the flow of information about what’s safe and what’s not is, and, since these issues began appearing, has been a one-way street: adults and social media companies telling youth what’s safe and what’s not.
As we’ll see, that’s part of the problem: admonishments without guidance and advice without understanding.
Based on interviews and consultation with youth and youth leaders, the authors of the report identified three areas youth recognize the potential for problems and the need for change:
- The algorithms and their design
- Peer interactions online and offline
- Education and Digital Wellbeing
We’ll share the survey and focus groups insights in these areas, then review suggestions for improvements, i.e. redesigning social media for youth wellbeing.
Here’s what they found.
The Results: What Teens Say
Part One: The Platforms Themselves, Their Algorithms, Their Design
About Agency and Control of Content
- 87% of teens know algorithms curate what they see
- Many are aware that:
- Algorithms are designed for profit
- Algorithms are designed to increase engagement, i.e. keep them scrolling
- Fewer are aware that:
- Algorithms promote posts that work toward profit and engagement such as ragebait and clickbait style content
- 60% of youth feel like they have control over what they see, however, use of settings features and awareness of features are inconsistent:
- 58% of users say they know about blocking, while 89% have blocked someone
- 57% of users say they know about content and keyword filters, while 14% have used them
About Negative Content Appearing Anyway
- Youth in focus groups commonly noted:
“There is a large culture of misinformation regarding nutrition on social media that has done much to impact my own eating habits and relationship with food.”
- Participants reported seeing negative content about mental health while experiencing negative mental health symptoms
- Youth recognize:
- Platforms are not transparent about why they show specific content in feeds
- Platforms don’t prioritize truthfulness or prioritize regulating harmful content
- Youth in focus groups noted the two following phenomena:
“They [algorithms] radicalize opinions by giving users videos with ideas they already like, so they’re only exposed to their own viewpoint.”
“Since the algorithm mostly feeds you what you want to see, that can make it really easy to see things one-sided or in an exaggerated way.”
About Endless Scrolling
- Youth in focus groups noted:
- They felt some control over content
- They didn’t feel control over how long they stay online
- 87% of youth know platforms are designed to keep them online. Participants observed:
“…[they] make going online addicting and harder to log off.”
- 59% said they didn’t have control over how much time they spend on social media platforms
- Youth identify different types of online experiences:
- Positive experiences such as making meaningful connections, learning new hobbies/skills, pursuing interests
- Negative experiences such as “mindless consumption of meaningless or harmful content.”
- Knowledge and use of features that promote a healthy amount of screentime are inconsistent:
- 77% of users say they know about usage reminders
- 47% have used them
Part 2: Online or Offline? New Ways to Connect/Old Ways to Connect
Why Youth Want Social Media
- To maintain pre-existing connections:
- Young immigrants use social media to stay in touch with family:
“Social media has definitely done a lot to strengthen my relationships, especially with long-distance relationships with my family in other countries.”
- Youth who move use it to keep up with friends:
“I moved from California in 2023, so I use social media to keep in touch with friends and reply to each other’s stories and posts.”
- To connect with like-minded peers:
- 52% of youth report online communities are an essential part of their support network
- 48% report online communities affirm their identity
The Impact on Offline Connections
- Youth value online connection while recognizing their online lives impact how they interact with peers offline. One participant shared this insight:
“Social media has impacted my relationships by facilitating constant connectivity, but it has also led to less meaningful interactions…Offline connections sometimes suffer as conversations become more superficial and distracted by digital interruptions.”
- In addition, youth also recognize the over-the-top nature of social posting:
“I don’t always need to know what’s going on in other people’s lives.”
Support Navigating the Good and the Bad
- Most youth are clear-eyed about social media:
“It’s like 50% good, 50% bad. Social media allows me to stay connected to so many people, but it can also lead to issues in real life.”
- Youth want adult support figuring out how to keep the good and lose the bad because social media is not going anywhere
- Different groups are at different risks of different harms: there’s not a one-size-fits-all solution
- Here’s a summary of the most common POV endorsed by youth in the survey:
As opposed to bans or arbitrary restrictions, youth want adults to provide accurate information, encourage agency in the decision-making process, collaborate on decisions, and understand that young people, provided they have access to accurate information, want the opportunity to navigate the positives and the negatives of social media on their own terms.
Part Three: On Digital Wellbeing and Education
Need for Education
- Youth recognize the need to learn about digital safety and wellbeing
- 95% say it’s essential to teach youth about online safety/wellness
- 89% say digital wellbeing should be taught in schools:
“In high school, I was taught about avoiding cyberbullying, but never learned about how to keep yourself from getting addicted to the internet or how to ensure you don’t spend too much time online.”
- 57% of youth believe social media platforms fail in the following areas:
- Helping them manage interactions
- Curating positive content
- Helping them control screen time
Need for Balance
- Youth indicate the need for education on the following topics:
- Identifying false information
- Finding balance between online and offline activity
- Avoiding over-reliance on social media
- Students say:
“Schools barely touch on digital wellness. They should focus on teaching proper usage of social media instead of just warning about its dangers.”
- 90% of survey respondents said social media platforms need to provide more information on how to manage content, time, and social media use to promote overall digital wellbeing, which has a direct impact on offline wellbeing
We encourage everyone who’s not a youth, teen, or young adult to review those results carefully. They hold clues as to how we can meet and overcome the challenges social media pose to youth, teen, and young adult mental health. They also show that our youth know there are dangers, and want out help managing them.
Let’s take a look at the next section of the report: the recommendations.
Rewriting the Code: What We Can Do
There’s another thing about this report that makes us pay attention. It’s a youth-driven project. Meaning the content and the analysis involved the direct participation of young people. Here’s an excerpt of from the executive summary:
“The conclusions of this report were interpreted through the lens of our project team of youth leaders from across the U.S. It outlines findings and recommendations to make social media more mental health-friendly for young people.”
Let’s take a look at those recommendations now.
How to Fix? Update for Social Media, Teens, and Mental Health in 2025
One: Algorithm and Design
- Design algorithms that promote wellbeing. Sites can proactively prompt users toward healthy social media use based on their activity
- Make wellbeing prompts interesting. Rather than simple screentime reminders, prompts can include interesting questions that promote awareness and discourage passive scrolling
- Explain why some content appears, and some doesn’t – and don’t make users scroll through a thousand pages to find explanations
- Make opting out of features like autoplay and infinite scroll easy and intuitive
- Promote and make it easier to filter content, block keywords, block other users, and use other control features. Make these controls easy to find, rather than at the end of a maze of settings menus.
Two: Online And Offline Peer Interactions
- Create a distraction free-mode, like an in-person mode of physical connection mode that users can turn on while interacting with peers IRL
- Enhance anti-harassment features. Make it very simple and easy to:
- Detect and report cyberbullying
- Detect and report any online harassment
- Enable features across platforms
- Make features fully customizable
- Reward positive engagement. Currently, many platforms give badges or similar awards for high levels of engagement. However, platforms could give badges for being supportive, being respectful, being helpful, sharing artistic content, or contributing to the positive experiences of others.
- Design features that promote offline, real-world, engagement with peers
Three: Digital Wellbeing and Education
- Expand digital wellness education in schools, which often only includes education on cyberbullying. Expand to include:
- Education on how algorithms work
- How to recognize misinformation
- How to manage screen time
- Increase digital resources for teachers. Though digital technology, modernize:
- Lesson plans
- Class assignments
- Homework assignments
- Interactive learning activities
- Learn and educate. Rather than establish punitive, arbitrary guidelines for social medial use, teach students about the negatives of social media use and the reason boundaries are important. Teach them the skills they need to regulate their social media use independently.
- Model positive digital behavior. Parents and educators can lead by example, and demonstrate the value of mindful, intentional, offline activity, behavior, and interaction, by getting offline themselves and engaging in healthy real-world activity.
- Collaboration and cooperation. School, teachers, parents, and policymakers should collaborate with healthcare providers and social media companies to promote digital wellness. Social media companies and healthcare providers can create and disseminate toolkits and packages that help youth and families engage with digital technology in safe, healthy, and productive ways.
We think implementing these recommendations would be an excellent place to start revisioning, rethinking, and rebooting or our relationship to social media and digital technology in 2025. To reiterate, a group of teen leaders created these recommendations after participating in a social media summit in 2024.
These are their recommendations about how we can help solve a problem that directly impacts them: let’s empower them by listening closely to what they say they need.
