Social Media Use Leads to Negative Mental Health Outcomes for Most Adolescents

The rising prevalence of mental health problems among adolescents has prompted increased scrutiny of social media as a contributing factor. Previous research has produced mixed results, likely due to the varying impact of social media on different dimensions of mental health. To advance understanding in this area, this study examined how social media use affects three critical dimensions of adolescent mental health – well-being, self-esteem, and friendship closeness. Specifically, we examined whether adolescents experienced consistent (unity) or contrasting (duality) effects across these dimensions by analyzing 44,211 daily diaries from 479 adolescents over 100 days. We found that the majority of adolescents (60%) experienced unity in negative effects of social media, suggesting that social media use is a contributor to mental health issues. Moreover, 13.6% of adolescents experienced duality in effects, indicating that social media use simultaneously harms and benefits different dimensions of their mental health. Exploratory analyses demonstrated the importance of considering platform-specific effects, revealing negative impacts of TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram use and positive or null effects of Snapchat and WhatsApp use on the three dimensions of mental health. Our findings highlight the need for tailored strategies that account for the varying impacts of social media on adolescent mental health.