Social networks can affect the well-being of girls and boys at different ages, according to research that raises the possibility of windows of vulnerability in adolescence.
The psychologists found that girls who increased their time on social media between the ages of 11 and 13 were less satisfied with their lives a year later, with the same trend in boys aged 14 to 15.
The researchers found no link between social media and well-being at other ages, except at age 19, when higher use was again followed by a drop in life satisfaction for both sexes.
“We found that there are certain ages, which differ between the sexes, when social media most substantially predicts life satisfaction,” said Dr. Amy Orben, an experimental psychologist and first author of the study at the University of Cambridge.
The researchers embarked on the work hoping to shed light on whether the rise of social media has played a role in rising levels of mental health problems in young people. According to the charity Young Minds, the number of children aged five to 16 with a suspected mental health problem increased by 50% between 2017 and 2021, suggesting that five children in each classroom are now affected.
Orben and colleagues analyzed data from 84,000 people in the UK aged 10 to 80 years who were enrolled in the Study Understanding Society wave Millennium Cohort Study. These captured information about people’s mental health and well-being and their informed use of social media, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp.
The researchers found a two-way effect, where at particular ages, social media use was linked to a drop in life satisfaction one year later, while lower life satisfaction was linked to higher social media use social the following year. The findings are averages and cannot be used to predict how a particular individual may respond to social media.
The study, published in nature communications, does not prove that social networks harm well-being, but the researchers suspect that there may be “windows of vulnerability”, opening at different times for boys and girls. Given the extensive and complex changes that occur in adolescence, biologically and socially, the mechanisms may take some time to materialize.
Professor Yvonne Kelly, an epidemiologist at UCL who was not involved in the study, said the findings confirmed what she and others had shown, including that higher rates of depression among girls were linked to more time on social mediaonline bullying and lack of sleep.
“One of the big challenges with using information about the amount of time spent on social media is that you can’t really know what’s going on with young people and what they’re encountering while they’re online,” Kelly said.
“To advance the science, and more importantly, to make changes that improve the well-being of young people, we need more detailed and nuanced data about people’s online experiences. It is this kind of information, including that held by social media companies, that will help us better understand the causal processes, for better or worse, that are at play.”
Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, a co-author of the study and a psychologist at the University of Cambridge, said it’s helpful to set rules about when children use social media so it doesn’t interfere with their sleep. It’s also important to educate them early on about the range of issues they might face, she added, such as not being invited to parties, social pressure and images that might upset them.
Dr. Holly Scott, a psychologist at the University of Glasgow, said the study provided “strong new evidence” that there were different sensitive periods for boys and girls. “Girls seem to be more sensitive to the impact of social media a little earlier than boys, which may be because maturational processes, such as puberty, start earlier,” she said.
“The important next steps are to understand from an adolescent perspective what benefits and challenges social media offers, so that we can build on this evidence measuring social media in hours per day, to develop a comprehensive view of the opportunities and barriers. that today’s 24/7 online social world can create for our youth,” added Scott.
