high levels of use<\/a> were also associated with increased risk in middle and late adolescence. But the estimated effects were about half the size of those for early adolescence.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Social]()
Social media is now a part of everyday life for many children and teens. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
The study\u2019s conclusion was that higher levels of social media use were associated with small increases in future risk of high depressive symptoms and poor wellbeing later in adolescence.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe largest risks for all mental health problems were observed during early adolescence for both male and female participants, supporting the need to consider policies that mitigate the adverse effects of social media on the mental health of younger adolescents.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Delete the apps\u2019<\/p>\n
Responding to the study findings, New Zealand expert Dr Samantha Marsh, a senior research fellow at the University of Auckland\u2019s Department of General Practice and Primary Care, said: \u201cIt\u2019s once again confirming what we already knew, which is high levels of social media use \u2013 even prior to the introduction of TikTok \u2013 harms the mental health of young people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marsh, who also appeared in the Under The Influence series, agreed with Sawyer that the data showed less social media use could reduce depression among teenagers, but warned the numbers did not show an exact decrease.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean that restricting access would prevent 11 cases per 100. It means we\u2019d expect fewer teens to be affected across the population if we could reduce that heavy usage.<\/p>\n
\u201cImportantly, what it also tells us is that this is a \u2026 modifiable risk factor. There are lots of factors for mental health problems. This is a potential one that we could something about.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added that the data was now old and did not include recent highly addictive apps such as TikTok, so the true scale of the problem could be worse.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not really measuring modern social media use as we know it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope we\u2019re at that stage where we\u2019re moving past just describing the problem and moving into: \u2018Well, what are we going to do with the problem?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Marsh said there remained little comparable research in New Zealand, but the country had still started to shift in some attitudes and actions \u2013 particularly among a new generation of parents.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne thing that I have noticed really strongly coming through is young people in their 20s, who have gone through it … they\u2019re saying that \u2018it took our childhood and we\u2019re not going to do the same thing to our own children\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I\u2019m hoping the new generation of parents … are going to say no to this stuff for their kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked how parents could actively help their children spend less time on social media, she recommended a back-to-basics approach, including promoting physical play and time outside, having tech-free zones in the home and deleting social media apps entirely.<\/p>\n
For more on this topic, watch Under the Influence, the Herald\u2019s new online video series about the harm social media can do to young people and how we can respond <\/p>\n
Sign up to The Daily H<\/a>, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The paper, The Effects of Social Media on Adolescent Mental Health: Findings from a population-based cohort study in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3225,3471,198,3419,1359,28642,11424,71,1073,111,43,139,4061,69,157559,4887,84607,11590,1072,117182,383,47066,672,6306,4741],"class_list":["post-520539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-according","tag-among","tag-can","tag-depression","tag-described","tag-develop","tag-finds","tag-from","tag-media","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-number","tag-nz","tag-paediatrician","tag-reduce","tag-restricting","tag-save","tag-social","tag-staggering","tag-study","tag-teenagers","tag-teens","tag-use","tag-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}