{"id":412750,"date":"2026-01-14T17:18:05","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T17:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/412750\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T17:18:05","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T17:18:05","slug":"social-media-time-does-not-increase-teenagers-mental-health-problems-study-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/412750\/","title":{"rendered":"Social media time does not increase teenagers\u2019 mental health problems \u2013 study | Social media"},"content":{"rendered":"

Screen time spent gaming or on social media does not cause mental health problems in teenagers, according to a large-scale study.<\/p>\n

With ministers in the UK considering whether to follow Australia\u2019s example by banning social media<\/a> use for under-16s, the findings challenge concerns that long periods spent gaming or scrolling TikTok or Instagram are driving an increase in teenagers\u2019 depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions.<\/p>\n

Researchers at the University of Manchester followed 25,000 11- to 14-year-olds over three school years, tracking their self-reported social media habits, gaming frequency and emotional difficulties to find out whether technology use genuinely predicted later mental health difficulties.<\/p>\n

Participants were asked how much time on a normal weekday in term time they spent on TikTok, Instagram<\/a>, Snapchat and other social media, or gaming. They were also asked questions about their feelings, mood and wider mental health.<\/p>\n

The study found no evidence for boys or girls that heavier social media use or more frequent gaming increased teenagers\u2019 symptoms of anxiety or depression over the following year.<\/p>\n

Increases in girls\u2019 and boys\u2019 social media use from year 8 to year 9 and from year 9 to year 10 had zero detrimental impact on their mental health the following year, the authors found. More time spent gaming also had a zero negative effect on pupils\u2019 mental health.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know families are worried, but our results do not support the idea that simply spending time on social media or gaming leads to mental health problems \u2013 the story is far more complex than that,\u201d said the lead author Dr Qiqi Cheng.<\/p>\n

The research, published in the Journal of Public Health<\/a>, also examined whether how pupils use social media makes a difference, with participants asked how much time spent chatting with others, posting stories, pictures and videos, browsing feeds, profiles or scrolling through photos and stories. The scientists found that actively chatting on social media or passive scrolling feeds did not appear to drive mental health difficulties.<\/p>\n

The authors stressed that the findings did not mean online experiences were harmless. Hurtful messages, online pressures and extreme content could have detrimental effects on wellbeing, but focusing on screen time alone was not helpful, they said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur findings tell us that young people\u2019s choices around social media and gaming may be shaped by how they\u2019re feeling but not necessarily the other way around,\u201d said Prof Neil Humphrey, a co-author. \u201cRather than blaming technology itself, we need to pay attention to what young people are doing online, who they\u2019re connecting with and how supported they feel in their daily lives.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Screen time spent gaming or on social media does not cause mental health problems in teenagers, according to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412751,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[64,63,137,514,515],"class_list":{"0":"post-412750","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}