A new report from Pew Research Center reveals some enlightening insights into how teens and their parents view social media, and the impacts it may be having on their mental health. Their survey of teens between the ages of 13 and 17 and their parents found that parents are generally more worried than their kids about the mental health of teens today. While both groups said that social media is having an impact on adolescent wellbeing, parents are more likely to name social media as a major influencing factor.
In fact, social media was the top reason parents gave when asked about what most negatively impacts teens’ mental health. Among parents who are concerned about teen mental health, 44 percent said social media has the biggest negative impact on teenagers, compared with only 22 percent of teens. As one dad in the survey group put it, “Social media is a big part of teens’ lives nowadays, and they are always trying to live up to the expectations of all the friends on their pages.”
How do teens view social media?
More teens than ever are reporting that they spend too much time on social media—45 percent, up from 36 percent only three years ago. However, teens see social media in a more favorable light than their parents, citing connections with friends and creative expression as the positive factors that keep them coming back.
Still, many teens do have concerns about how social media could be impacting mental wellbeing. Interestingly, teenagers were more likely to be worried about social media’s impacts on their friends’ mental health than their own. Nearly half of teens surveyed shared concerns about their peers’ mental health due to social media use, but only 14 percent thought they were personally impacted.
As one teen boy in the survey group shared, “The overuse of social media in our society seems to be the main cause of depression among those in my age group. People seem to let themselves be affected by the opinions of people they don’t know, and it wreaks havoc upon people’s states of mind.”
How do teens view mental health?
The report reveals a significant gap in how teens and their parents perceive and communicate about mental health. While 80 percent of parents report being extremely or very comfortable discussing their teen’s mental health, only 52 percent of adolescents feel the same. As one teen in the survey said, “Everyone expects teens to have it all figured out by the time we get out of high school. Sometimes we don’t know what we want to do. We are figuring life out too.”
Roughly half of teenagers are comfortable speaking with a parent about their mental health, and nearly as many feel comfortable talking with a friend. However, far fewer teens express comfort with therapists (31 percent), other family members (26 percent), or teachers (12 percent). Girls, in particular, are more likely than boys to say they’re highly concerned about mental health and to feel at ease discussing it with friends.
While social media may contribute to negative mental health outcomes for adolescents, many of them actually use it as a mental health resource: 34 percent of teens said they sometimes get mental health information from social media platforms like TikTok by following therapists and mental health influencers.
Besides social media, teens also cite bullying (in person and online) and the pressures and expectations placed on teens today as negatively impacting their mental health. As one teen in the survey said, “Everyone expects teens to have it all figured out by the time we get out of high school. Sometimes we don’t know what we want to do. We are figuring life out too.”
