As governments around the world work to restrict the lives of adolescents access to smartphones And social networksA fierce scientific debate broke out over the question of whether these digital technologies are actually harming young people’s mental health.

The controversy, sparked by a recent and influential book blaming phones for young people’s growing anxiety, has revealed deep uncertainties in the research data – even as policymakers from Arkansas has Australia moving forward with sweeping bans and restrictions.

A timeline of the controversy

In March, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt of New York University published a popular science book titled The anxious generation. This attributes the increase in mental illness among young people over the past 15 years to the advent of smartphones and social media.

One in advance review of Haidt’s book by Candice Odgers, a psychology scientist at Duke University, published in Nature, expressed a common criticism among expert readers: while social media is sometimes associated with poor results, we don’t know if it’s causes these poor results.

In April, Haidt replied that some recent experimental studies, in which researchers encourage people to reduce their use of social media, show a benefit.

In May, psychologist Christopher Ferguson of Stetson University published a “meta-analysis» of dozens of social media experiments and found that, overall, reducing social media use had no impact on mental health.

Then, in August, Haidt and colleague Zach Rausch published a blog post argue Ferguson’s methods were wrong. They said doing the meta-analysis in a different way showed that social media actually affects mental health.

Shortly after, one of us (Matthew B. Jané) published his own blog posthighlighting the problems with Ferguson’s original meta-analysis but showing that Haidt and Rausch’s reanalysis was Also defective. This article also argued for a proper reanalysis of Ferguson’s meta-analysis always provides no convincing evidence that social media affects mental health.

In response to Jané, Haidt and Rausch revised their own message. In September and October, they returned with two further postspointing out more serious errors in Ferguson’s work.

Jane agree with the mistakes Haidt and Rausch found and set about reconstructing Ferguson’s database (and analyses). from scratch.

Discussion and further work are still ongoing. Another team recently published an analysis (as a preprint, which has not been independently verified by other experts) disagreed with Ferguson, using methods every bit as unreliable as Haidt and Rausch’s first blog post.

The evidence is varied – but not very strong

Why so much debate? This is partly due to experiments in which researchers encourage people to reduce their use of social media and produce varying results. Some show benefit, others harm, and still others no effect.

But the bigger problem, in our opinion, is simply that the evidence from these experimental studies is not very good.

One of the experiences included in Ferguson’s meta-analysis, some German Facebook users reduced their use of the social media platform for two weeks, while others continued to use it normally. Participants were then asked to self-report their mental health and life satisfaction.

People who were asked to use Facebook less reported spending less time on the platform. However, there was no detectable impact on depression, smoking behavior, or life satisfaction at any time point between the two groups. There was a difference in self-reported physical activity, but it was very small.

Another famous study recruited 143 undergraduate students, then randomly assigned them to either limit their use of Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram to ten minutes a day for a month or to make no changes. The researchers then asked participants to report on their anxiety, depression, self-esteem, autonomy, loneliness, fear of missing out and social support.

At the end of the month, there were no differences between the two groups on most measures of mental health and well-being. Those who reduced their social media use showed a slight decrease in self-reported loneliness, and there was also a slight improvement in depression scores among people who reported high levels of depression at baseline.

Existing social media experiments can’t answer the big questions

Studies like these address narrow, specific questions. They are simply unable to answer the big question of whether long-term reduction in social media use is beneficial for mental health.

On the one hand, they look at specific platforms rather than overall social media usage. On the other hand, most experiments don’t really define “social media.” Facebook is obviously a social media, but what about messaging services like WhatsApp, or even Nintendo’s online gaming platform?

Furthermore, few if any of these studies involve interventions or outcomes that can be measured objectively. They involve asking people – often undergraduates – to reduce their use of social media and then asking them how they feel. This creates a series of obvious biases, not least because people may report feeling differently depending on whether or not they have been asked to make changes in their lives.

In a medical study evaluating the effect of a drug on mental health, it is common to administer a placebo – a substitute that should have no biological effect on the participant. Placebos are a powerful way to mitigate bias because they ensure that the participant does not know whether they actually received the drug or not.

For social media reduction studies, placebos are virtually impossible. You can’t make a participant think they’re cutting back on social media when that’s not the case.

Individual changes and social problem

Additionally, these studies all work at the level of changes in an individual’s behavior. But social media is fundamentally social. If a college class uses Instagram less, it may not have any impact on their mental health. even if Instagram is badbecause everyone around them is still using the platform so much.

Finally, none of the studies focused on adolescents. Currently, there is simply no reliable evidence that getting teens to use social media less has an impact on their mental health.

Which brings us back to the fundamental question. Does reducing social media improve adolescent mental health? With current evidence, we don’t think it’s possible to know.