ILYA MARRITZ So what happens if the laws go into effect, big if and if the algorithms change so that social media becomes less sticky and works more like early Internet chat rooms?
JACQUELINE NESI I think there would probably be pros and cons to be honest.
ILYA MARRITZ Jacqueline Nesi is assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University. She studies the impact of social media on teens.
JACQUELINE NESI There would certainly be pros in terms of removing or reducing some of the risk factors that we see on social media, things like overuse that interferes with sleep, things like exposure to some of these really problematic types of content, you know, bullying and other or negative interactions that happen online. There are risks, too. You know, I think that social media also provides, in many cases, an important opportunity for teens, particularly those who are marginalized in different ways in their offline lives. Friends with an opportunity to connect and to discover interests and to find others who are similar to them. And I do think that some of those benefits would be taken away.
ILYA MARRITZ She told me there's a ton we don't know about teens mental health and the apps. Most studies only show correlation, not causation. One paper she found more compelling was a 2022 quasi experimental study. That's the technical term published in the American Economic Review.
JACQUELINE NESI The study looks at the introduction of Facebook on college campuses around the U.S. and because Facebook was introduced at different times, somewhat randomly, you can look at the timing of its introduction and then you can look at mental health concerns in combination with that. So the idea is that at college campuses where Facebook was introduced, they did see a decrease in mental health immediately following the introduction of Facebook.
ILYA MARRITZ There could be other things going on as well.
JACQUELINE NESI I suppose there could be other things going on. You certainly it's less likely in a quasi experimental study like that than it is in a correlational study where you just measure social media use and you measure mental health and then you look at associations between them. It's less of an issue in this quasi experimental study because the timing that Facebook was introduced was kind of random across colleges. So it would be unlikely that at all of those schools there was the same factor that was also playing a role in the increase in mental health concerns at the same time as the introduction of Facebook.
ILYA MARRITZ Another area that has correctly garnered a lot of attention is suicide rates. Yeah. What do we know about these kinds of tragedies in a social media world?
JACQUELINE NESI We know that rates of suicide in general have increased among adolescents in recent years, and that's obviously hugely problematic and something that we want to understand better and get to the bottom of. There's some evidence that rates have increased the fastest, so they've increased among pretty much everyone, but they've increased the fastest among early adolescent girls. So girls in the 10 to 14 age range. I certainly think that that may be true. I also think that there is one piece to consider, which is that the rates among girls in that age group, 10 to 14, were also the lowest to start with. We would actually expect that those rates would increase the most in some cases just because they started out very low. Obviously, any suicide in a young person is too many. But I do think we have to be careful when we're talking about, you know, percentage increases in the rates of a behavior that's actually so uncommon.
ILYA MARRITZ So now tell me about the data that makes you hesitate to draw a connection between social media and declining mental health among young people.
JACQUELINE NESI The thing that gives me some pause is the fact that the effect sizes are somewhat small. So on the one hand, there's the argument that these effect sizes are meaningful, even if they're small. But on the other side, there is a question of are there other factors that are just more important when we think about teens mental health? The other thing I would say is that just in general, when I think about this topic, I think there's a bigger question about how definitive we need to be on the evidence before we do something about it. And I think that's sort of a bigger maybe policy question than it is a research question.
ILYA MARRITZ Have there been any surprising conclusions that you've come to in this research, any specifics you wish that, you know, more people outside of the academy would know about?
JACQUELINE NESI I think one of the things that's actually surprised me in this research is we would expect that teens who are more vulnerable in different ways. So whether that's teens who have existing mental health concerns or teens who are struggling socially in their offline lives, then have a harder time on social media as well. So running a. To more of the risks online. And we do find that. But we also find that those same teens who are more vulnerable are also encountering more of the benefits online. So they're really taking advantage of social media, connecting with others and, you know, discovering their interests and exploring identities. I just think that's really interesting that it's these more vulnerable youth that are both encountering more risks but also taking advantage of more benefits.
ILYA MARRITZ How optimistic are you that we will be able to really learn something so that five years from now, ten years from now, we can definitively say this is what social media does to young and developing brains, This is how we should configure it.
JACQUELINE NESI The field of social media research in particular is still somewhat early in terms of the typical trajectory of, you know, fields of science. Social media has not actually been around that long. So I do think that we're somewhat early, particularly in terms of studies that are able to establish causality. It's going to be difficult to ever reach a point where we can say 100% for sure. These are exactly the ways that social media is causing a problem for teens, and these are exactly the ways that we should fix them to make it better. So I think that there is a certain amount of needing to decide sort of when do we get to the point where we feel the evidence is strong enough to to make some changes?
ILYA MARRITZ There's a question that we ask a lot on this show in different forms, and I think it applies really strongly here, which is what advice would you give to news consumers trying to make sense of this issue, especially for parents, but not only parents? How do you make sense of teens, young people on social media when there's a lot of studies, but a lot of the conversation lacks precision and it lacks conclusive evidence? What's your advice for news consumers?
JACQUELINE NESI I really feel for parents of adolescents right now because it is really hard to track what's accurate and what's not coming out of the headlines related to this issue. There's a lot of panicked headlines out there, a lot of very negative headlines. So I think the advice that I would give would be to dig a little bit deeper When people do come across straightforward and negative statements about social media having a causal effect on teens mental health, to see where that data comes from, you know, see if it's trustworthy. The other thing I would say is for parents sort of outside of consuming the news on this topic is that some of it just comes down to, you know, what do we ultimately think is best for our kid?
ILYA MARRITZ Excellent. Jacqueline Nesi, thank you very much.
JACQUELINE NESI Thanks so much for having me.
ILYA MARRITZ Jacqueline Nesi is assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University.
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