Social Media: Threat to Teens' Mental Health
by Felix Richter,
Jun 30, 2025
In 2010, Mashable declared June 30 as Social Media Day, intended to celebrate the impact of social media on communication, connection and culture. Originally launched to recognize the positive impact that platforms like Facebook, Twitter (now X) or Instagram have on human interaction around the world, we’re marking the occasion by acknowledging some of the downsides of social media’s unstoppable rise over the past two decades. Specifically, we’re looking at its impact on children and teens, whose lives have changed fundamentally since social media platforms became ubiquitous.
According to a survey of U.S. teens conducted by the Pew Research Center in the fall of 2024, 48 percent of Americans aged 13 to 17 now say that social media has a mostly negative effect on people of their age, up from just 32 percent two years earlier. Only 11 percent of teenagers in the U.S. now describe the impact of social media as mostly positive, with mental health a key concern for both teens and their parents. 55 percent of surveyed parents said that they’re extremely or very concerned about the mental health of teenagers these days, while 35 percent of teens said the same about their own generation.
When asked to name the single biggest threat to their own/their children’s mental health, teens and parents were both most likely to name social media as the one thing that impacts teens’ mental health most negatively. While 44 percent of parents saw social media as the number one threat to their children’s mental wellbeing, 22 percent of teenagers said the same, with bullying and outside pressure/expectations also high on their minds.
“They live in a fake world of social media that limits them as human beings, distancing them from their family,” one concerned mother said about today’s teenagers, while a teenage boy said that constantly being exposed to other people’s opinions on social media was a big problem for his generation and that overuse of social media appeared to be the main cause of depression among people of his age.
You will find more infographics at Statistaby Anna Fleck,
Jun 30, 2025
Teenage girls are more likely than boys to report negative impacts from social media on their sleep, self confidence, levels of productivity and mental health, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center.
In a survey conducted between September and October 2025, 50 percent of 13- to 17-year-old girls said that social media has hurt their sleep, versus 40 percent of boys the same age. A similar gap occurs for the issue of mental health (25 percent of girls, 14 percent of boys). However, the biggest share of respondents said social media sites neither helped nor hurt their mental health. Around one in five of both sexes said that social media had negative impacts on school grades.
Teens were more positive when it came to the question of friendships. Altogether, 30 percent of teenagers said that social media has helped their friendships either a little or a lot. Girls were slightly more likely to say that social media harmed friendships, at 9 percent versus 5 percent.
According to Pew, there were no meaningful gender differences among teens who say social media helped any of the aspects mentioned on this chart.
June 30 is World Social Media Day.
You will find more infographics at Statistaby Felix Richter,
Jun 30, 2025
With the technological advancements of the past two decades, a lot of new challenges have emerged for parents of young children. As they try to navigate the ever-evolving media and device landscape, it’s as difficult as it is important to strike the right balance between giving kids the chance to learn how to use technology and protecting them from the potential harm that early (over)use of smartphones and social media can doubtlessly inflict on a child’s development.
Given the complexity of the task at hand and the lack of past experience to draw from, it’s understandable that many parents are uncertain how to manage their children’s device use, screen and social media time. And while they acknowledge the potential benefits of smartphones and social media, a sizeable share of parents would like to turn back the time for their children’s sake, according to a recent Harris Poll.
When asked which things they wished had never been invented thinking about their child’s experience growing up, more than half of the surveyed parents said they wished for their kids that social media didn’t exist. More specifically, 62 percent of respondents wished that TikTok had never been invented, 62 percent said they would have liked to spare their kids the toxicity of X (formerly Twitter) and 56 percent wished that Instagram didn’t exist. As our chart shows, the one thing parents wanted gone most for the sake of their children is online pornography, which more than 7 in 10 respondents hoped wouldn’t exist
You will find more infographics at Statista