the Children’s booklet and screensAnd, which was published earlier this year, easily summarizes studies on the effects of digital media on the development of youth. The book took approximately 400 specialists and 87 chapters to cover thousands of studies conducted. However, with the reporting of the news feature, the discussion between researchers on whether smartphones and social media are a major cause of adolescent mental health, is unlikely to end soon. This means that there is still a lot for scientists and technology companies to do it.
Smartphones change the lives of young people all over the world. Many adolescents, parents, careers, teachers and policy makers are concerned about the effects of these devices. Successful TV program for Netflix Teenager Fears about teenagers were enlarged content harmful online. It is important that scientists be transparent about uncertainty in the current evidence and that they give priority to the research that will help everyone know what to do.
Are smartphones and social media really harm the mental health of teenagers?
The opinion that smartphones and social media has been amplified behind a disturbing rise in the conditions of the mental health of the adolescents in part. Anxiety generationA selling book published last year by social psychologist Jonathan Hydet. He argues that adolescents who adopt smartphones and social media, and abandoning childhood full of social communication and playing in real life, is the biggest cause of “the tide wave of mental illness for teenagers that started in early 2010.” But many researchers question this thesis.
Some research-and a common experience-indicates that phones can distract them, and that applications can be addicted, by encouraging people to pass without heavily through social media content, for example. Technology companies, often with ophthalmic -based business models, have an incentive to maintain people’s connection.
Researchers agree that the origins of mental health conditions-which often become clear during adolescence-complicated and form genes, family, friendships and other personal experiences. Technology is likely to have an effect, but the extent of this effect, and whether it helps, hurts, may not depend on the background of the individual, the social media platforms they use and the content they see. It turns out that the youth’s response to social media varies from person to person. Review 2023, for example, the evidence highlighted that the display of self -harm on the Internet was linked to harmful behavior in many studies1. But in some cases, mental health professionals say, the troubled youth who think of self -harm have found decisive support and online assistance.
There is a common approach to the study of technology and teenage mental health is with population studies. According to the analysis of 25 reviews published between 2019 and 2021, most of these ties were found weak or inconsistent between the use of social media and mental health of adolescents, although some of these links are explained as large and harmful2.
One of the reasons for these different conclusions can be that many studies are systematically weak. They often depend on self -reported screen scales, but such data is unreliable in a known way3. It also fails to distinguish between a variety of things that teenagers do on screens, from watching Tiktok to school work.
Social media ban-there are better ways to maintain children’s safety
There are ways to dismantle some of these tangles at least, but they need technology companies to play the ball. Scientists agree that they need better and accurate granules data about what young people do and see them on their phones. Researchers are frustrated because companies that have these data are often reluctant to share it. It is recognized that this is a region fraught with risks legally and morally: young people cannot submit research approval if they are below the legal age, and their privacy and security must be protected. However, it should be possible for companies and researchers to determine ways to access and analyze these data, with appropriate guarantees.
For their part, researchers should focus on strict studies well designed. They can engage in an approach used in other areas called numerical cooperation, where researchers who have views of clash together work in joint studies that can solve their dispute. The involvement of young people, teachers, parents and sponsorships in research design would improve its validity and public reception. Often, the study that finds a little evidence of negative effects is received badly, as it appears contradictory to what people test on the ground.
Finding ways to help young people to move in technology should not wait for their consequences to be strengthened. Schools that prohibit phones-as many do now-provide a natural experience to study whether this restriction enhances grades and luxury. You did not find a study that included 30 secondary schools in England, published in February, evidence that the reinforcement policies are linked to a decrease in the use of the phone or the improvement of mental health4 – A suggestion that blocking the phone may not be the healing medicine.
The screens are now deeply included in the lives of young people-for every school work to video calls with the family-where researchers cannot randomly appoint teenagers to a completely free life. But scientists can test practical measures on a small scale. For example, they can ask for some families that were randomly chosen, but not others, keeping the teenager’s phone outside their bedroom at night, as Amy Urbin, who studies digital mental health at Cambridge University, UK. Technology companies must work with external researchers to test and develop platforms that support young people online-such as social media sites that are almost easy to impossible, quit smoking5.
The goal should be to care for young people who flourish, flexibility and flexibility to make enlightened decisions on the health use of technology and are able to balance the screen time with sleep, exercises and other paths in the real world. Then they can teach adults how to find this balance as well.