Why social media is bad for mental health among adolescents and adults: a meta-analysis of community-based activities for 12 to 20 years ago

The UCLA Center for the Developing Adolescent and the University of California, Los Angeles are both located in Los Angeles, California, USA.

First, youth need healthy ways to channel their motivation to explore their world. These could be school-based extracurricular activities, special-interest clubs and sports or community-based activities, such as volunteering in social-service agencies. In order to have the greatest impact, programmes must be thoughtfully designed. A meta-analysis showing that community service was positive for young people aged 12 to 20 was published in a year ago. These ranged from participants’ thoughts about themselves to their level of motivation in school. But this happened only if participants were also given an opportunity to process their experiences, such as through keeping a journal or in group discussions.

The prevalence of depression and suicidality has risen over the past fifteen years in some people, at least among those who have data available. Some people want to discuss the rise of social media.

Today’s youth are the future leaders, innovators and citizens who will confront profoundly challenging issues such as climate change and rising social inequalities. It isn’t enough to manage their mental health when they are in crisis. Adults have to understand the strengths of young people and support them in order to help adolescents discover their place in the world.

The “Is it Normal?” instinct can become very high when the teen years arrive. Adolescence is marked by many changes, including ones that manifest physically and, their more challenging counterpart, ones that manifest emotionally. The moods and deep feelings are intense, and — for parents worried about teen mental health following the pandemic — cause for panic amid reports of heightened depression and anxiety among adolescents.

Social media is often blamed for this rise. Digital media can interfere with sleep, in-person interactions and other healthy behaviours, which is not good for mental health. However, most meta-analyses, cohort studies involving hundreds of participants, and other rigorous, well-designed studies suggest that associations between the use of digital media and mental health are relatively small and probably of little clinical significance27.

Other single-cause explanations are not as convincing. Adolescents, parents or other carers being more willing to discuss issues with each other and with health-care providers, for example, might contribute to increased reports of sadness and negative mood from adolescents. But this in itself is unlikely to be driving the rising rates of suicidality.

Lisa Damour: We certainly have a teen mental health crisis, and part of what contributes to the crisis isn’t just that teenagers suffered in the pandemic but also that we don’t have a clinical workforce to provide as much care as they deserve.

Boosting mental health in young people by volunteering and helping families: The importance of parental involvement and connections to the amygdala

Brain scans have shown that the limbic regions important to motivation and learning are more active in children than in adults. The age of participants in studies has a difference between them. Neuroscientists have also linked greater connectivity between limbic regions and prefrontal neural networks in youth to enhanced performance in various cognitive skills, including decision-making and working memory2.

A young volunteer teaches children in a makeshift school at a camp near Mogadishu, Somalia, for people displaced by famine. Credit: Mohamed Abdiwahab/AFP via Getty

And various studies indicate that, whether young people are helping their families with chores or through financial contributions, providing emotional support to friends or volunteering in their communities, they seem to be primed to contribute in many ways9–11.

A clinical study shows that adolescents who volunteered with children younger than 1 had lower levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines and cholesterol compared with adolescents who did not volunteer. (Both body weight and biological markers of inflammation have been linked to depression and other mental-health problems.) Young people from marginalized groups tend to have worse mental health when compared to those with a greater sense of meaning and purpose.

The data from the questionnaires showed that adolescents who have secure and supportive relationships with their parents or other caregivers have lower levels of depression and a stronger sense of identity than those who do not. Positive parenting has been found to have a link to certain brain regions associated with regulation of emotions, such as the amygdala.

Many studies have shown that interventions to improve relationships in families, introduced by public-health and psychology researchers over the past three decades, can reduce the use of substances and improve mental health in youth16. Interventions include use of educational tools to increase parental involvement in adolescents, guidance on how to improve communication between adolescents and their caregivers, and links to external support services.

Other studies, largely from behavioural psychology and education research, have shown that relationships with caring adults outside the family home can also be important in shaping the lives of young people.

Sports can be used to introduce youth to adult mentors. And various studies examining the importance of role models suggest that formal mentoring programmes, such as those involving a young adult in the community spending time with an adolescent, can positively affect the mental health of youth17. Teenagers who experience homelessness, are in the foster care system or have unstable home environments will benefit most from a mentoring program.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03172-y

Sleep, mental health, and the impact on youth development and behavior in the 21st century: A case study in Washington, the Seattle School District

It’s likely that sufficient sleep is key to enabling exploration and discovery in this time of life. Both correlational and experimental studies (mainly in adults) have shown that regular and sufficient amounts of sleep enhance many types of learning. Research has shown, for example, that sleep-deprived people are more likely to have lapses in attention, deficits in working memory, decreased memory encoding and compromised reinforcement learning18 than are control groups. The brain is less efficient in coding increases in rewards if you are sleep deprived, and the amygdala is more readily activated in people who are sleep deprived.

Reducing homework, changing the start of school to later in the day, and introducing family-based interventions to promote a good night’s sleep are some of the things that have shown promise. When the Seattle School District in Washington state delayed high-school start times by an hour in the summer of 2016–17, for instance, students slept more each night and their grades improved. The same effects of later school start times were shown in other studies.

Also, studies indicate that mental health during adolescence is particularly sensitive to sleep. There is a consistent link between sleep problems and most of the psychiatric disorders that are evident during this period, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety and depression22.

Much of the existing research on youth development and mental health is based on adolescents from high-income, predominantly Western nations. Researchers only studies the countries with the majority populations. To understand which mental-health needs can be supported worldwide, more psychologists, psychiatrists, and neuroscientists need to study adolescents in the global south and minority groups.

Some concerns for contemporary youth cross national borders. International collaborations can help improve collective understanding.

For instance, a 2021 literature review searched studies published since 2016 for terms such as climate anxiety and climate mental health. The See Change Institute is a California-based non-profit organization that studies the role of human behavior in social and environmental change. According to its results, climate change is an existential concern for many US adolescents and young adults, who will have to contend with the increasingly concerning environmental, social and economic effects of a warming world in their lifetimes (see go.nature.com/3ejph7t).

The latest data show increases in the proportion of youth who did not go to school because of safety concerns. Teen girls experiencing sexual violence increased, as well as teen boys reporting electronic bullying.

The first look at trends since the start of the Covid-19 epidemic came from responses to the CDCs bi-annual Youth Risk Behavior Survey.

Some teens who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or questioning are in a state of distress.

Few measures of adolescent health and well-being showed continued improvement, including declines in risky sexual behavior, substance use and bullying at school. Most other indicators worsened greatly, according to the CDC report.

Is It Normal to Ask My Baby to Tell Me if It’s Normal? Ask My Mom How I Can Help You Get Away From Adolescence

Training for staff to recognize mental health challenges, counseling and mentorship programs and others that encourage connection and intervention is one of those tools.

King spoke of the importance of regular conversations regarding mental health when he called for action from Congress.

She said that it was important to speak with the children about what they were feeling. “I’m urging our families to come together, look for signs, look for ways that you can have these conversations with your children. You need to get to know them. Have these routine conversations all the time.”

Many of the challenges facing youth health and well-being are “preventable,” Houry said. “When I look toward our young people’s future, I want to be filled with hope, not heartbreak.”

For many parents, the “Is it normal?” game begins early on. I have sent questions to family and friends and all worried parents ask their No. 1 nemesis, Google.

My fetus isn’t moving a lot in the morning, so is it normal? Is it normal my baby doesn’t nap? Is it normal that a kid can’t read? Is it normal for my child to only lose a few baby teeth?

Most parents don’t much care about whether their child is a genius or normal, they are more interested in what experts think about their child.

What is Emotional Distress and How to Survive It? Lisa Damour in her book raising the emotional lives of Teenagers

According to Lisa Damour in her new book, raising the emotional lives of Teenagers is not a cause for concern because difficult feelings are often not a cause for concern. Not only are sadness and worrying healthy and natural parts of being a teenager, but the ability to experience these feelings (without a parent panicking) and to learn how to cope with them is developmentally necessary.

CNN spoke to Damour about how we have become less tolerant of big feelings, how to handle them when they arise, and the ways in which parents can help.

Also, in the wake of the pandemic, what I am observing is that parents saw their kids go through an extremely hard time and are now surrounded by headlines about the ways in which teenagers especially suffered. It makes sense that parents are feeling more anxious than ever about their teenagers experiencing emotional distress.

The other time we become concerned is when one emotion is calling all the shots, like when they are so anxious that their anxiety is governing all their decisions, or so sad that depression is getting in the way of their typically forward development.

Damour: There is a lot of commercial marketing around wellness that can give people the impression that they are only mentally healthy or their kids are mentally healthy if they are feeling good, calm or relaxed. This is not how a definition of mental health should be.

One of the aims of this book is to prove that mental distress is not only inevitable — it is part of mental health and experiencing it is part of how kids grow and mature.

Damour: The metaphor I find that helps us listen is to imagine that you are an editor and your teenager is your reporter. When they get to the end of the article, it’s your job to produce the headline.

This exercise helps us tune in to what a teenager is saying and hear and distill what it is they are communicating. It keeps us away from doing what we do often, such as having an idea and waiting for the kids to stop crying so we can share it.

If you come up with a good headline, teenagers often feel completely heard and get all the support they need. Teenagers know when we are listening without an agenda and trying to understand what they are saying, and they can also tell if we are talking about the issues of the day.

The most helpful thing for teenagers, even though they experience difficulty, is to experience compassion. It is a gesture of generosity to hear someone out.

Damour: There are many other healthy ways kids regulate emotions besides talking. It’s possible to regulate emotion by listening to the music that is in a mood. Teenagers are able to discharge their emotions physically by jumping on a trampoline or banging on drums. Sometimes they allow them to be discharge through creative channels.

The value of emotional expression that brings relief is something that should not be taken for granted as adults.