Experts are becoming increasingly concerned about the effects of social media use on teen mental health. Seattle Public Schools just filed a lawsuit against social media giants like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube, alleging the platforms have been “causing a youth mental health crisis,” making it hard for the school system “to fulfill its educational mission.”

And as an article at CNN.com notes, TikTok is of particular concern. Why?

A rise in technology use has been linked to increased rates of mental health issues in young people. “Psychologists say as smartphones and social media grew around 2012, so did the rate of depression among teens,” the article asserts. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) reports that between 2004 and 2019 the rate of teen depression nearly doubled. According to psychologist Dr. Jean Twenge, the problem became even more acute for teen girls: “by 2019, one in four US girls have experienced clinical depression.”

Twenge noted that TikTok’s algorithm in particular is “very sophisticated” and “very sticky,” keeping teens engaged on the platform longer than any other social media platform. Last year, TikTok’s more than one billion global users “spent an average of an hour and a half per day on the app in last year,” topping usage charts, according to the digital analytics platform SensorTower.

Teens tend to lose a sense of time while scrolling through TikTok. “A lot of teens describe the experience of going on TikTok and intending to spend 15 minutes and then they spend two hours and or more. That’s problematic because the more time a teen spends on social media, the more likely he or she is to be depressed. And that’s particularly true…at the extremes of use,” said Twenge.

One young adult, Jerome Yankey, said he used to stay up all night while in college, scrolling on TikTok. “I saw me not putting the effort into my own life, rather just trying to live vicariously through what I’m seeing,” explained Yankey, noting that his grades suffered with the lack of sleep, and he lost touch with friends and with himself.

When he deleted the app in 2021, it made an enormous, positive change in his life: “It’s so great to be able to be sleeping again starting at midnight,” he said. “It’s great to be able to be up early and be more productive with the sun.”

Read the full article here.

Yurkevich, Vanessa. “Why experts worry TikTok could add to mental health crisis among US teens.” CNN.com, 11 Jan 2023, https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/11/tech/tiktok-teen-mental-health/index.html.

Photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash