Teenagers and young adults who saw warnings about the possible health harms of social media said the messages discouraged them from using the platforms and made them more aware of potential consequences, according to a study published earlier this month in the medical journal JAMA Health Forum.
The national study exposed young people aged 13 to 17 and 18 to 29 to messages describing how social media is not safe and can cause addiction, negative body image, sleep disturbances, depression, anxiety and broader mental health harm. Participants in both age groups said all the messages tested in the survey were effective.
Which warnings worked best
Warnings about general mental health, depression and anxiety were the most persuasive, said the study's senior author, Dr. Thomas Robinson, holder of the Irving Schulman Endowed Chair in Child Health and a professor of pediatrics and medicine at Stanford University. Participants also saw messages encouraging voluntary breaks from social media, which proved less effective, he added.
Robinson said one limitation of the study is that it asked participants to predict their own future behavior rather than measuring what they actually did. He added that similar questions have been used in other studies and have proven to be reliable predictors of behavior.
Pushing for regulation
Robinson said the results mark the first time a study has measured the effects of social media warnings. Because the warnings appear to be persuasive, he said parents concerned about social media's impact on their children could consider asking elected representatives to pass legislation and regulation that includes this type of warning.
Robinson stressed that responsibility for addressing the potential harms of social media use should not fall on parents and children alone.
The study follows a landmark settlement Meta reached in August, in which the company agreed to pay $18 billion to end lawsuits filed by several states alleging it designed its platforms to addict children and harm their mental health. The parent company of Facebook and Instagram did not admit wrongdoing and said keeping teenagers safe is a priority.
Robinson said the settlement represents a turning point, because for the first time there appears to be growing momentum to push for more comprehensive regulation and legislation.
Talk to your children
Warnings alone are unlikely to get young people to cut back on social media use.
Dr. Melissa Greenberg, a clinical psychologist and founder of the Princeton Psychotherapy Center in New Jersey who was not involved in the new study, said that if a warning suddenly appears that a person has never seen before, it will make them stop and think. Eventually, though, the novelty wears off, since people stop noticing things that are always there, she said.
Greenberg said social media affects children in different ways, so they need different kinds of warnings. A parent's teenager might need a specific conversation about body image or violence seen online.
For that reason, she said, parents who allow their children to use social media should keep an ongoing conversation going with them.
Those conversations should start earlier than many parents expect, Greenberg said, probably around age 7 or 8. She said children are often a step ahead of adults on these issues.
Greenberg suggested starting by asking children whether they have heard of social media. If the answer is yes, she said, it is time to have the conversation.
What to ask your kids
Even if parents do not discuss social media at home, children can learn about it at a friend's house, be exposed to games borrowed from a library, or be told during an extracurricular activity that their photos are being posted online.
If a child uses social media, Greenberg recommended talking with them regularly about how the experience is going. She said conversations often focus on how much time children spend on screens, while parents forget to ask about the content they are actually seeing.
Greenberg suggested asking children questions such as what they are doing, what draws them to it, what they like about it, and whether anything about it bothers them.
She said it is important to remember that children may not have the language to explain how social media really affects them. They may not realize that chasing likes on posts is causing anxiety or irritability because they feel no one likes them, which is why giving feedback is important.
Won't warnings backfire?
The article's author raised a comparison to the book and film "Thank You for Smoking," in which the main character, who represents the tobacco industry, argues that telling children their parents do not want them to smoke will actually make them want to smoke more. Asked whether discussing this study's warnings with children could make them want to rebel by using social media more, Greenberg said she had never seen that happen in her practice.
The author said they had also never heard of that happening in talks given to parents across the country about managing their children's social media use.
Greenberg said young people who become absorbed in social media lose track of time just as adults do, and that children likely do not see cutting back as a form of rebellion against their parents, since the parents themselves also use social media.
Now that warnings are known to be effective, the recommendation is for parents to talk to their children about the potential harms of social media use, and also to speak to elected officials, since many parents would welcome help addressing the effects of social media on their children.
