Teen Social Media Bans Based on Studies That Never Tested Children, Review Finds
Governments around the world are increasingly restricting or outright banning social media use for teenagers. These policies are typically adopted with the scientific argument that reducing screen time can improve the mental health of the younger generation. However, a new scientific review has uncovered a startling gap in this body of evidence.
The researchers examined all 40 experiments that form the backbone of the arguments in favour of social media bans for young people. The result: not one of these dozens of studies involved participants under the age of 16. In other words, the research most frequently used to justify restricting the digital activity of teenagers never actually tested the teenage group itself.
The review was initiated by Dr. Monika Neff Lind, a clinical psychologist at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), alongside two colleagues. As a mother herself, Dr. Lind admitted she would initially have been delighted to find proof that distancing children from social media genuinely helped them. However, the facts on the ground told a different story.
Across the 40 collected experiments, the average age of participants was adult, with the youngest recorded subject being 16 years old. The policies are therefore considered misdirected, as they are applied to an age group that has never been studied.
The argument that strong results in adults can be automatically applied to teenagers also proved unconvincing in this case. This is because the impact of social media restriction on adults is itself still very weak. Approximately one-fifth of the studies actually found that limiting social media had no effect at all, or even worsened the subjects’ psychological state, such as increasing feelings of loneliness and decreasing life satisfaction.
A report from the National Academies reached a similar conclusion. The relationship between social media and adolescent mental health is considered small and far more complicated than the narrative currently developing in the public sphere.
Beyond issues of data validity, the researchers warned that top-down imposition of rules tends to provoke defiance from teenagers, who are in a developmental phase requiring autonomy and respect. The use of age-estimation technology based on selfie photos is also prone to detection errors on young faces.
‘We don’t know how a social media ban will affect youth because we’ve never studied that question,’ said Dr. Lind.
The research team stressed that the honest position at present is to acknowledge these restrictive policies as a mass experiment. Rather than an outright ban, governments are advised to focus on making the digital platforms themselves safer right from the design stage.