From recent New York Times best-sellers like The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness to research from The American Psychological Association, there is widespread and warranted concern about the effects of social media on youth mental health. Social media and youth mental health are cited as current priorities of the U.S. Surgeon General — in the executive summary of its 2023 Social Media & Youth Health Advisory, the Surgeon General’s office found that “adolescents who spent more than 3 hours per day on social media faced double the risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes including symptoms of depression and anxiety,” and on average, teenagers spend about 3.5 hours on social media each day.”   

Pathways to Resilience hosted a conversation about addressing the impact of social media on youth with Abby Palmer Cox, First Spouse, state of Utah;  Sarah Coyne, Ph.D., Associate Director, School of Family Life, Brigham Young University; Aimee Winder Newton, Senior Advisor to Utah Governor Spencer J. Cox and Director of the Office of Families, state of Utah; and Holly Rawlings, Leader of Research & Family Education, Gabb Wireless. We discussed the effect that social media has on children and the roles that parents, government, educators, and the research community can have in protecting children.   

“There is a link to what we’re seeing in the research, and it’s undeniable that social media is a huge problem [regarding the] mental health of our children. We can’t deny this any longer,” said First Spouse Cox, a member of the Pathways to Resilience steering committee and opening speaker for the learning network session.  “We’re coming to this as experts, as grandparents, as parents, as community members, as political leaders, we have to be able to address this and look at the data in clear-eyed and wide-eyed ways.” 

Read key takeaways below and watch the full recording of the session on our event page. 

Center parents in engagement and education efforts regarding social media, with a focus on proactive and corrective measures that curb, disrupt, and prevent predatory and unhealthy behaviors

• Look at the data and what’s on the horizon 
  • Stay current with news and findings, such as the social media and mental health collaborative literature review, and technology trends, like the emergence of AI. “We’re very concerned when we see social media apps where you can become a friend with a bot, that’s some scary stuff; I could see it being very easy for children who struggle to make social connections relying on an AI connection that feels so close to reality but is really an empty promise of connection,” Rawlings said.  
• Encourage parents to lead by example 
  • Coyne referenced a BYU Wheatly Institute report that pointed to parent social media use as more predicative of mental health harms like depression and anxiety than the actual social media use by the child. She also pointed to technoference and phubbing as phenomena that correlate with adverse outcomes for youth. “The No. 1 predictor of positive adolescent outcomes is parental warmth and support: nothing to do with phones, nothing to do with media.” 
• Equip parents to lobby and advocate for policy change 
  • All panelists spoke about the importance of digital literacy, critical thinking, and legislation that is aligned with research and best practices. States have pursued individual efforts, but First Spouse Cox underscored the need to focus efforts at the federal level so policy can address the actions of social media companies broadly, across platforms and companies. “For far too long, social media companies have gone around the parents. There’s parental responsibility, but social media companies also need to be held responsible for dangerous algorithms, they’re very much on purpose. We can do both.” 
• Educate and empower parents  
  • Newton cited that Utah health and human service campaigns such as  Live On (suicide prevention), SafeUT (crisis intervention), and  Unmask the dangers of social media all have messaging that is dedicated to parents. “Legislation is good, but at the end of the day, parents are the ones who are going to have to make the hard decisions, so we felt it was important to educate them,” she said.

Focus beyond screen time to consider content, context, privacy, and individual susceptibility

• Implement safety measures and guardrails that allow children to leverage the benefits of connectivity and navigate digital spaces 
  • According to Newton, Utah bills S.B. 194 Social Media Regulation Amendments and H.B. 464 Social Media Amendments (both passed in March 2024 and slated to go into effect October 2024) will require social media companies to enact a strict age assurance process, include default privacy settings, disable addictive features, offer tools for parents to set time limits and see connected accounts, and not collect or sell certain data on minors without parental consent. According to Amy Newton, “one thing we heard from social media companies as they’ve been talking to us is that they’re not willing to have a stricter platform unless their competitors are. Nobody is going be the first and risk losing those consumers to a different platform. So, they’re basically saying government is going to have to rein this in, it’s going to take government reining everybody in for them to do it.”  
• Assess social media readiness and monitor interactions while recognizing there is not a one-size-fits-all approach for kids and things will vary by child. 
  • Coyne pointed out that social media spaces can be both positive and negative. They can expose children to cyberbullying, upward social comparisons, radicalization and developing behaviors that affect their ability to disconnect and function in everyday life. However, social media spaces can also bring a sense of community and belonging that is especially important for marginalized communities.  
  • Parents who have high levels of rules and restrictions tend to have kids with higher levels of depression, worse anxiety and worse body image. “We know, especially in adolescence, really high levels of restriction tend to backfire,” she said. 
  • Avoiding a one-size-fits all approach is an important consideration, and it is unique to individual families and children. “I think whether or not to have social media is a really personal decision that every family has to make on their own,” Coyne said, emphasizing that every family is different, every child is different, and that parents will have to factor developmental readiness among various considerations.   
• Advocate for ongoing, sustained, and specialized research around the effects of social media on youth, e.g. the Children and Media Research Advancement (CAMRA) Act.  

Provide opportunities for youth to digitally detox, and experience life without social media

Gabb devices do not have internet and do not support games and social media apps. They also are set up to send alerts for dangerous behavior, such as sending or receiving nude photos.  

Recently, Gabb worked with a school in Indiana to conduct a 35-day phone fast. Prior to the fast, students spent roughly five hours online. Without any devices, Rawlings said students were more motivated to make person-to-person connections. After the fast, students reported improvements in their mental health, well-being, and sleep, and healthy connections with peers and faculty; they spent less time on social media than before (three hours for those with smartphones, one hours for students with Gabb phones), and many deleted their social media accounts or removed the apps from their devices.  

Rawlings also found that, universally, students exhibited trepidation to tremendous anxiety about getting back their phones. “They had this really great ability to reflect. They described having a phone as another job, and one thing that I think was really profound was the concern that they expressed for their younger siblings; the majority felt like they got social media way too early, that they weren’t ready for it,” she said, sharing that the social media impacts that the students noted ranged from small to tragic. 

The students that we’ve worked with want autonomy. But they are looking to the adults in their life for some boundaries.” 

Watch the full Pathways Learning Network session below or on our event page. Pathways to Resilience will continue to amplify strategies for promoting healing and resilience and share resources for those seeking to implement similar approaches.