Connected and Vulnerable: Study Reveals That Excessive Use Of Networks Can Cause Depression In Young People

Social media use among teens has been on the rise, and it’s been linked to symptoms of depression. A large study of nearly 12,000 children found that spending more time on social media than usual can lead to more feelings of sadness over the next year. However, feeling sad doesn’t necessarily lead to more social media use. This suggests that excessive use can worsen mental health, and it’s important for parents and educators to provide guidance to teens from an early age.

In recent years, social media use among teens has increased dramatically. Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat have become part of teens’ daily lives, raising serious concerns about how this may affect their mental health.

Many parents, educators, and mental health professionals have been wondering whether excessive use of these platforms is causing emotional problems like depression, or whether teens who are already depressed are more likely to use social media. Understanding this relationship is essential to helping families and creating effective public policies.

In 2021, nearly half of teens in the United States reported feeling sad or hopeless frequently, a 50% increase in just 10 years. Previous research has shown a link between social media use and depressive symptoms, but it’s not clear whether one causes the other or whether they just occur at the same time.

To clarify this, it is necessary to follow young people over time and analyze how these changes develop within each person, something that most studies have not yet done. For this reason, the US Surgeon General, in 2023, called for more longitudinal research, that is, studies that observe the same individuals for several years, to better understand this relationship.

A model called the “Differential Susceptibility to Media Effects Model” (DSMM) helps to understand why social media can affect adolescents in different ways. This model suggests that the effects of media are not the same for everyone and depend on personal factors, such as emotional sensitivity, developmental stage and social environment.

During adolescence, young people go through many emotional and cognitive changes, which makes them more vulnerable. This means that the same content can affect two different adolescents differently. In addition, social media use can be a cycle: it can both worsen mood and be a consequence of a depressive state, creating a pattern that reinforces itself.

To investigate this, the researchers used data from a large national study called the ABCD (Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study). This study follows thousands of children in the United States from the age of 9 or 10 for several years, measuring both the time they spend on social media and their levels of depressive symptoms.

The goal was to find out whether there was a bidirectional relationship, that is, whether social media use led to depression and whether depression also led to more social media use.

Data were collected between 2016 and 2022 at four different time points: at the beginning of the study and then annually for three years. The sample was large, with almost 12,000 children at the beginning, and the researchers used advanced statistical methods to analyze changes within each person over time.

They also considered factors such as gender, race, household income and parental education, to ensure that these factors did not skew the results.

The results showed that when a teen increased their social media use in a given year above what was typical for them, there was an increase in depressive symptoms the following year. This was observed between the first and second years, and between the second and third years of the study.

However, the opposite was not observed: Teens who were more depressed in a given year did not necessarily increase their social media use the following year. In other words, social media use appears to influence mental health more than the other way around.

Another important finding was that differences between adolescents (e.g., who uses social media more or less overall) did not explain depression levels.

What really mattered was the change in each individual’s behavior over time. This reinforces the idea that the problem lies in increasing usage time, rather than how much a person uses on average.

Based on these findings, the researchers recommend that doctors, parents, and educators be aware of young people’s social media use, especially as they transition from childhood to adolescence. Providing clear guidance on healthy use of these platforms can help prevent the development of emotional problems.

This study contributes significantly to the understanding of this complex relationship and highlights the importance of early, evidence-based interventions.

READ MORE:

Social Media Use and Depressive Symptoms During Early Adolescence

Jason M. Nagata, Christopher D. Otmar, Joan Shim,  

Priyadharshini Balasubramanian, Chloe M. Cheng, Elizabeth J. Li, Abubakr A. A. Al-Shoaibi, Iris Y. Shao, Kyle T. Ganson, Alexander Testa, Orsolya Kiss, 

Jinbo He, and Fiona C. Baker

JAMA Netw Open. 2025; 8(5) : e2511704. 

doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.11704

Abstract:

In 2023, the US Surgeon General issued the Advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health, identifying critical research gaps that preclude evidence-based guidance given that most studies of social media and mental health have been cross-sectional rather than longitudinal and have focused on young adults or older adolescents rather than on younger adolescents. To evaluate longitudinal associations between social media use (time spent on social media) and depressive symptoms across 4 annual waves spanning a 3-year follow-up period from late childhood to early adolescence. In this prospective cohort study using data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study across 21 study sites from October 2016 to October 2018, children aged 9 to 10 years at baseline were assessed across 4 waves (baseline, year 1, year 2, and year 3), with year-3 follow-up through 2022. Sample sizes varied across waves and measures due to attrition and missing data. Analyses retained all available data at each wave. Data were analyzed from January 2024 to March 2025. Self-reported time spent on social media at baseline to 3-year follow-up. Reciprocal associations between social media use and depressive symptoms (Child Behavior Checklist) at baseline and at 1, 2, and 3 years of follow-up were assessed using longitudinal, cross-lagged structural equation panel models. Covariates included sex, race and ethnicity, household income, and parental educational level. At baseline, the sample included 11 876 participants (mean [SD] age, 9.9 [0.6] years), of whom 6196 (52.2%) were male. After adjusting for stable between-person differences and covariates, within-person increases in social media use above the person-level mean were associated with elevated depressive symptoms from year 1 to year 2 (β, 0.07; 95% CI, 0.01-0.12; P = .01) and from year 2 to year 3 (β, 0.09; 95% CI, 0.04-0.14; P < .001), whereas depressive symptoms were not associated with subsequent social media use at any interval. The final random-intercept cross-lagged panel model demonstrated a good fit (comparative fit index, 0.977; Tucker-Lewis index, 0.968; root mean square error of approximation, 0.031 [90% CI, 0.029-0.033]). Between-person differences in social media use were not associated with depressive symptoms (β, −0.01; 95% CI, −0.04 to 0.02; P = .46) after accounting for demographic and family-level factors. In this cohort study of 11 876 children and adolescents, reporting higher than person-level mean social media use in years 1 and 2 after baseline was associated with greater depressive symptoms in the subsequent year. The findings suggest that clinicians should provide anticipatory guidance regarding social media use for young adolescents and their parents.