How social media was impacting the mental health of young Aussies
Late last year, the Australian Government banned children under 16 from social media. This ban forces age-restricted social media platforms to prevent Australians under the age of 16 from creating or keeping an account.
According to the government’s eSafety Commissioner, “The social media age restrictions aim to protect young Australians from pressures and risks that users can be exposed to while logged in to social media accounts.”
One area of particular interest in relation to the ban is the impact that social media has had on youth mental health, but what does the scientific literature actually say about this?
According to a new study led by the Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI), young people between 12 and 18 years old who spend two hours or more a day on social media are more likely to experience depressive symptoms and poorer wellbeing than those whose use is limited to an hour or less.
The research, which looked at the self-reported social media use and mental health of almost 1,200 students from Melbourne for 10 years from 2012, found that for depression and poor wellbeing, there were roughly six additional cases per 100 adolescents with high social media use.
“To put this in other words, we might expect that if we were to reduce social media use from over two hours to less than one hour a day, we may expect six less cases of depression or poor wellbeing per 100 adolescents,” the study’s lead author, Dr Nandi Vijayakumar from MCRI, told an AusSMC media briefing.
The study also investigated how this impact changed with age, and found that for both genders and across depression and wellbeing, there was a stronger impact on early adolescents, between the ages of 12 and 13.
“We estimated about 11 additional cases of high depressive symptoms and poor wellbeing in females with high relative to lower social media use, and about seven additional cases in males per 100,” Dr Vijayakumar said, emphasising that the increase in risk did persist into older adolescents, particularly for depressive symptoms.
The researchers say that these early years typically encompass the time that young people are undergoing rapid brain development, and are most sensitive to peer approval and social feedback and exclusion, while parts of the brain responsible for emotion regulation are still maturing.
“So early adolescents may be less equipped to manage some of the more challenging aspects of social media, such as social comparisons, cyberbullying, online conflict, and exposure to harmful content.” Dr Vijayakumar said.
Dr Vijayakumar also highlighted that prior to the social media ban, the majority of teens were already using social media for more than two hours per day, compared with when the study began in 2012, which may mean the impact could be even greater now than when the study was first designed.
The authors suggest their findings do support policies that seek to reduce social media use in young people, especially in younger adolescents, where they found the greatest risk to mental health.
This article originally appeared in Science Deadline, a weekly newsletter from the AusSMC. You are free to republish this story, in full, with appropriate credit.
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