New, better research emphatically shows why lawmakers and schools should not curb teens’ social media and phone use

Recent, increasingly optimistic studies of teens and social media are displacing older, poorly-grounded studies (updated).

“Excessive smartphone use among youth is linked to increased anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues” while restrictions promote “enhanced social interactions.” Gov. Gavin Newsom declared, along with school Superintendent Tony Thurmond and other officials applauding new legislation to restrict or ban students from having smartphones. “Research continues to demonstrate the potential harms of smartphone use among children,” California State Assembly member Josh Hoover, R-Folsom, agreed. “The growing use of these devices in a child’s everyday life can contribute to lower test scores, anxiety, depression, and even suicide.”

These statements combine long outdated but, unfortunately, still repeated claims with wild alarms that were never supported. California’s governing officials persist in lagging 10 to 20 years behind the times and enacting pointless policies on teenage issues.

The emotional, one-sided campaign to ban and restrict teens from smartphones and social media – California’s major media with few exceptions simply refuse to report dissenting views – relies heavily on anecdotes and weak, long-outdated studies while ignoring the growing body of newer, better-designed research showing such curbs are a bad idea.

Examples are overwhelming. New York University statistician Aaron Brown’s 2024 review of 476 studies cited by those who blame social media for harming teens found most are now 15 or more years out of date. Of the few valid studies, “the evidence not only doesn't support [their] claim about teen health and mental health; it undermines it.” Likewise, recent, large-scale reviews by Stetson University psychologist Christopher Ferguson and colleagues of dozens of studies of social media and teens found “screen media plays little role in mental health concerns” and desistance from screens brought no improvements.

Ferguson’s findings have been challenged by psychologists Jonathan Haidt, Zach Rausch, and David Stern (all of whom blame social media for teens’ depression) in reanalyses that – ironically – wind up confirming Ferguson’s larger findings. Even assuming social media is the only factor in teens’ mental health and going along with Haidt’s et al’s strivings to maximize effects, social media is associated with at most 7% to 8% of teens’ poor mental health – barely more than the tiny effect Ferguson found. (For those interested in the numbers, the entire argument – as with another wildly-overstated recent study – is over effect-size values of Cohen’s d = 0.08, versus d = 0.16 or d = 0.20, all vanishingly tiny on a d-scale ranging from -3.00 to + 3.00 and certainly no basis for policy.)

The Centers for Disease Control’s detailed 2021 survey of 7,000 teens found students (especially girls and LGBTQ youth) who had been violently and/or emotionally abused by parents and household grownups were much more likely than non-abused teens to use screens. That is, teens who log more screen time are more depressed because more have been abused, not because they’re online. The CDC’s just-released 2023 survey of 19,000 teens strongly confirms that pattern and reveals several bombshells on the real issues affecting teens’ mental health, to be detailed in a future substack.

Similarly, University of California psychologist Candace Odgers and colleagues’ 2024 review of scores of studies found “not that social-media use predicts or causes depression, but that young people who already have mental-health problems use such platforms more often or in different ways from their healthy peers.”

As reviews expose flawed past research, recent, better-designed, long-term studies are revealing complexities.

The 2022 four-year Stanford Medicine and Data study tracking 250 seven-to-15-year-olds found no relationship between even younger teen’s online/phone use and “their well-being and adjustment outcomes.” The eight-year 2024 Trondheim study of 600 teens found, “increased social media use predicted more time with friends offline” and “no support for the assumption that social media use predicts declines in social skills.” That is, teens who socialize well online also socialize well elsewhere.

“Research does not definitively show that excessive screen time causes teen anxiety or depression,” the 2024 review in the prestigious journal Nature concluded. In fact, more restrictions on teens were “significantly associated with problematic internet use.”

A detailed, 2024 multi-institutional study of 2.4 million people worldwide over 15 years found “internet access and use predict well-being positively and independently” for all ages, including teens. Likewise, the 2024 National Academy of Sciences “committee’s review of the literature did not support the conclusion that social media causes changes in adolescent health at the population level,” although some individuals find heavy internet use troublesome.

A 2023 University of Manchester study of 12,000 teens found, “social media use is one of the least influential factors of adolescent mental health, with others (for example, bullying, lack of family support and school work dissatisfaction) exhibiting stronger associations.” That finding dovetails with U.S. CDC survey numbers showing abuses by household adults are by far the biggest predictor of teens’ depression.

Still, even if social media and smartphones don’t harm teens as previously thought, shouldn’t schools ban them as annoyances and distractions? Again, the latest research suggests caution.

The CDC survey showed teens (especially already depressed teens) who don’t use screen media are 1.4 times more likely to attempt suicide and 2.1 times more likely to harm themselves than teens who use screen media. Pew Research’s 2022 study of 1,316 teens found large majorities reporting that social media helps them feel “more accepted” and connects them to “people who can help them get through tough times.”

Teens “are embracing online mental health tools—from social media to therapy and mental health apps—as resources for seeking support and managing their own mental health and well-being” and are “careful to use trusted sources,” the conservative Common Sense Media’s 2024 study of 1,254 young people concluded.

“Linking smartphones and social media to youth well-being distracts us from the real difficulties faced by young people,” a 2024 report by Princeton University’s multi-university research team warned. “Poorly-formulated legislation will eliminate important sources of information for vulnerable teenagers and wipe out anonymity on the social web.”

That warning is apt, given the CDC’s 2021 finding of widespread domestic abuses of teens accompanying skyrocketing drug and alcohol abuse by grownups. Overdose deaths by ages 25-64 (teenagers’ parents, parents’ partners, relatives, etc.) soared by 200% in the nine-county Bay Area region and by 213% across California from 2010 to 2023 – exactly the period teens became more depressed.

A 2024 series of research findings by LGBT Tech found surprising qualms among adults about requiring age verification and restricting social media use by youth in troubled families, such as gay youth. Again, more on the topic will be discussed in a near-future post on 2023 CDC survey numbers.

Yet, the governor, legislators, and school and health officials remain silent on these major, very real threats to teens’ mental health. Are schools and other institutions right to forbid phone and social media use that is disruptive and distracting? Absolutely; nearly all already do. But selective enforcement is very different from officials’ latest one-size-fits-all, save-the-children stampede to enact wholesale bans and controls on students’ screen use that combines the zeal, misinformation, and cost-free culture-war politics surrounding past mistakes later research found ineffective or even harmful.

Popular “save the children” crusades have surrounded every new media and culture decade after decade, from dime novels, jazz, comics, voice telephones, rock’n’roll, video games, rap music, etc., to social media, often bringing unintended consequences. Let’s not rush into yet another mistake.