London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Tuesday, Sep 09, 2025

Does social media make teens anxious and depressed? A new study debunks a common belief

Does social media make teens anxious and depressed? A new study debunks a common belief

“We spent eight years trying to really understand the relationship between time spent on social media and depression for developing teenagers,” lead researcher Sarah Coyne explains.
Does excessive social media usage lead to depression and anxiety? While some research has found a link, a new, robust study on the topic has revealed somewhat surprising results: that the amount of time teens spend on social media appears to have no connection to such mental health issues.

“To my knowledge, it’s the longest study ever on social media and mental health,” lead author Sarah Coyne, a professor of family life at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah, tells Yahoo Lifestyle about the research, which followed adolescents over a period of eight years. The findings were published earlier this month in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.

“We spent eight years trying to really understand the relationship between time spent on social media and depression for developing teenagers,” Coyne said in a BYU press release. “If they increased their social media time, would it make them more depressed? Also, if they decreased their social media time, were they less depressed? The answer is no. We found that time spent on social media was not what was impacting anxiety or depression.”

Existing research on the topic, Coyne notes in the study’s abstract, is mostly an observation of data, and “lacks analytic techniques examining individual change over time.” In this new study, however, the same 500 participants completed annual surveys, about both time spent on social media and the state of their mental health, during the ages of 13 to 20 — “really important time periods in terms of mental health and development,” Coyne says.

“Results revealed that increased time spent on social media was not associated with increased mental health issues across development when examined at the individual level,” the study notes. “Hopefully these results can move the field of research beyond its past focus on screen time.”

Coyne, a mother of five, stresses that the findings should not be taken as a green light for adolescents to enjoy limitless time on Instagram, Snapchat or other popular platforms. “One of my biggest fears about the study,” she says, is that it somehow gets misinterpreted, paving the way for “unfettered access to social media for, say, my 11-year-old.”

Instead, the researcher is hoping her findings “move us beyond screen time,” because aiming to “just get kids off phones is not going to help all that much.”

The amount of time teens spend on social media has risen 62.5 percent since 2012 and continues to grow, the study points out. In 2018, the average time teenagers spent on social media was estimated at 2.6 hours per day.

What Coyne found in her research was that, at age 13, adolescents reported an average social media use of 31 to 60 minutes daily, with duration increasing steadily so that by young adulthood, use had climbed upwards of two hours a day.

Based on these realities, Coyne hopes to educate kids about wise social media use, and “empower parents with real tools they can use to help regulate the habits.”

While this new study looked strictly at time spent on social media in relation to mental health struggles, Coyne’s past research has examined other healthy or unhealthy aspects of the ways in which social media is used, prompting her to offer three suggestions on how to use social media more positively:

Be an active, rather than passive, user: Instead of just scrolling, actively comment, post and like the content of other users.

Stop using social media at least an hour before bedtime, as “that hour right before bedtime tends to be really problematic in terms of disrupting sleep,” Coyne notes, and getting enough sleep is “one of the most protective factors for mental health.”

Be intentional in your use of social media and examine your motivations. For example, “If you’re just using it because you’re bored, that tends to bring more negative outcomes,” she says. “If you get on specifically to seek out information or to connect with others, that can have a more positive effect than getting on just because you’re bored.”

Finally, Coyne tells Yahoo Lifestyle, “Social media is not going away anytime soon, [so] the conversations we are having in our society are just not realistic… a fear based, end-of-the-world type of approach. The average teen is of course on social media, so we need to teach them to be thoughtful and mindful about it.”
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
France Faces New Political Crisis, again, as Prime Minister Bayrou Pushed Out
Murdoch Family Finalises $3.3 Billion Succession Pact, Ensuring Eldest Son’s Leadership
Big Oil Slashes Jobs and Investments Amid Prolonged Low Crude Prices
Court Staff Cover Up Banksy Image of Judge Beating a Protester
Social Media Access Curtailed in Turkey After CHP Calls for Rallies Following Police Blockade of Istanbul Headquarters
Nayib Bukele Points Out Belgian Hypocrisy as Brussels Considers Sending Army into the Streets
Elon Musk Poised to Become First Trillionaire Under Ambitious Tesla Pay Plan
France, at an Impasse, Heads Toward Another Government Collapse
Burning the Minister’s House Helped Protesters to Win Justice: Prabowo Fires Finance Minister in Wake of Indonesia Protests
Brazil Braces for Fallout from Bolsonaro Trial by corrupted judge
The Country That Got Too Rich? Public Spending Dominates Norway Election
Nearly 40 Years Later: Nike Changes the Legendary Slogan Just Do It
Generations Born After 1939 Unlikely to Reach Age One Hundred, New Study Finds
End to a four-year manhunt in New Zealand: the father who abducted his children to the forests was killed, the three siblings were found
Germany Suspends Debt Rules, Funnels €500 Billion Toward Military and Proxy War Strategy
EU Prepares for War
BMW Eyes Growth in China with New All‑Electric Neue Klasse Lineup
Trump Threatens Retaliatory Tariffs After EU Imposes €2.95 Billion Fine on Google
Tesla Board Proposes Unprecedented One-Trillion-Dollar Performance Package for Elon Musk
US Justice Department Launches Criminal Mortgage-Fraud Probe into Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook
Escalating Drug Trafficking and Violence in Latin America: A Growing Crisis
US and Taiwanese Defence Officials Held Secret Talks in Alaska
Report: Secret SEAL Team 6 Mission in North Korea Ordered by Trump in 2019 Ended in Failure
Gold Could Reach Nearly $5,000 if Fed Independence Is Undermined, Goldman Sachs Warns
Uruguay, Colombia and Paraguay Secure Places at 2026 World Cup
Florida Murder Case: The Adelson Family, the Killing of Dan Markel, and the Trial of Donna Adelson
Trump Administration Advances Plans to Rebrand Pentagon as Department of War Instead of the Fake Term Department of Defense
Big Tech Executives Laud Trump at White House Dinner, Unveil Massive U.S. Investments
Tether Expands into Gold Sector with Profit-Driven Diversification
‘Looks Like a Wig’: Online Users Express Concern Over Kate Middleton
Brand-New $1 Million Yacht Sinks Just Fifteen Minutes After Maiden Launch in Turkey
Here’s What the FBI Seized in John Bolton Raid — and the Legal Risks He Faces
Florida’s Vaccine Revolution: DeSantis Declares War on Mandates
Trump’s New War – and the ‘Drug Tyrant’ Fearing Invasion: ‘1,200 Missiles Aimed at Us’
"The Situation Has Never Been This Bad": The Fall of PepsiCo
At the Parade in China: Laser Weapons, 'Eagle Strike,' and a Missile Capable of 'Striking Anywhere in the World'
The Fashion Designer Who Became an Italian Symbol: Giorgio Armani Has Died at 91
Putin Celebrates ‘Unprecedentedly High’ Ties with China as Gazprom Seals Power of Siberia-2 Deal
China Unveils New Weapons in Grand Military Parade as Xi Hosts Putin and Kim
Queen Camilla’s Teenage Courage: Fended Off Attempted Assault on London Train, New Biography Reveals
Scottish Brothers Set Record in Historic Pacific Row
Rapper Cardi B Cleared of Liability in Los Angeles Civil Assault Trial
Google Avoids Break-Up in U.S. Antitrust Case as Stocks Rise
Couple celebrates 80th wedding anniversary at assisted living facility in Lancaster
Information Warfare in the Age of AI: How Language Models Become Targets and Tools
The White House on LinkedIn Has Changed Their Profile Picture to Donald Trump
"Insulted the Prophet Muhammad": Woman Burned Alive by Angry Mob in Niger State, Nigeria
Trump Responds to Death Rumors – Announces 'Missile City'
Court of Appeal Allows Asylum Seekers to Remain at Essex Hotel Amid Local Tax Boycott Threats
Germany in Turmoil: Ukrainian Teenage Girl Pushed to Death by Illegal Iraqi Migrant
×