WASHINGTON — A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine offers nearly a dozen recommendations for social media companies, Congress, the U.S. Department of Education, and others to minimize the harm of social media use on adolescents’ health while maximizing its benefits. The report says social media companies should participate in the development of a new set of industry standards for design, transparency, and data use.  

Smartphone technology has transformed children’s relationship with the internet in the last 15 years, and over the same time period, mental health among young people has declined. The report says social media platforms have the potential to influence adolescents in many ways. For example, algorithms that generate content recommendations can provide young people with important health information or expose them to unscientific treatments, and persuasive design elements can keep their attention on their phone even if they try to disengage. The differences between an adolescent brain and adult brain also mean that teenagers can be uniquely affected by social media use. Adolescents have less-developed controls for regulating emotions, have heightened sensitivity to rewards, and are meant to seek out independence and explore new identities during this specific time of their maturation.  

The report concludes there is not enough evidence to say that social media causes changes in adolescent health at the population level, but research shows social media has the potential to both harm and benefit adolescent health. Much of the research into the connections between social media and adolescent health cannot distinguish the direction of the relationship between the two, as social media may influence health, but health may also influence how young people use social media. Most research also cannot establish if that relationship is causal, or capture individual differences among adolescents. There is also much to be learned about how specific platform features — such as “likes” or the endless scroll format of some platforms — may affect adolescent health. For these reasons, the report says a more judicious approach is warranted rather than a broad-stroke ban, and does not make recommendations for specific limitations on teens’ access to social media.  

“There is much we still don’t know, but our report lays out a clear path forward for both pursuing the biggest unanswered questions about youth health and social media, and taking steps that can minimize the risk to young people using social media now,” said committee chair Sandro Galea, dean and Robert A. Knox Professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. “Our recommendations call on social media companies, Congress, federal agencies, and others to make changes that will protect and benefit young people who use social media.” 

“Many of our children have grown up using social media, and the impact of social media use on adolescent health is something that parents, doctors, teachers, and adolescents themselves are concerned about,” said Victor J. Dzau, president of the National Academy of Medicine. “Now is the time for research to help answer this pressing question and inform ongoing public policy debates about social media.” 

Setting New Industry Standards

The report recommends the International Organization for Standardization — an international, nongovernmental organization with a long history of setting and supporting technology standards — should convene a working group to develop standards for social media platform design, transparency, and data use. New standards for social media operations and platform design would allow for better transparency and tracking by the public and the Federal Trade Commission. Social media companies should adopt the standards created by this working group, and a public statement from platforms promising to comply with the new standards would be a meaningful step, says the report. 

International coordination will be central to the success of any effort to increase transparency in social media. While there may be resistance to this recommendation, the report says, industry stakeholders are often in the best position to support new operations, and would be an essential part of the working group. 

Protecting Against Abuse on Social Media

The anonymity of the internet can embolden perpetrators of online harassment of minors, from cyberbullying to sexual exploitation. The report recommends social media companies develop systems for reporting, follow-up, and adjudication of online harassment and abuse. These systems should be easy to use, universal, accountable, and transparent. In the same way hotel and airline companies have made prevention of human trafficking an industrywide responsibility, so should technology and social media companies take steps to ensure their users can easily report online abuse, and to ensure that these reports are followed up on.  

The report also recommends that the Federal Trade Commission revise its regulations to clarify how to make such reporting comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which limits how children’s data can be collected, used, or shared online. 

To help young people who are bullied, harassed, or preyed upon by sexual predators on social media, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration should develop support and intervention programs for young people who are harmed online, the report says. Providing such support is consistent with SAMHSA’s mission and could build on existing work, such as the StopBullying.gov program and the 988 crisis call line.  

Evidence of Benefits and Harms

Despite many years of research, the evidence clarifying precisely how social media influences health is limited, the report says. The rigorous study designs that would shed light on the extent to which social media causes harms are severely lacking. 

Research suggests the harms of social media use can include encouraging young people to engage in unhealthy social comparisons and displacing time that could be given to sleep, exercise, studying, or other activities. Social media’s distracting power can work against an adolescent’s ability to sustain attention, a skill necessary for academic success and emotional adjustment. Some young people can also develop a dysfunctional need to use online games, which is related to anxiety and depression. It is possible that dysfunctional social media use may pose a similar problem.  

The benefits of social media use suggested by research can include connecting children and adolescents with friends and family. Young people coping with bereavement, serious illness, or mental health problems may find support online that they do not have offline, as can LGBTQ+ teenagers seeking help or community. Social media communities can also be a valuable venue for learning — for example, the report points to fan fiction writing communities as a place for young writers to find mentorship.  

Educating Teachers and Medical Professionals

Patients need providers who can counsel them on social media use and spot potential warning signs. Young people who are struggling with underlying psychological problems may use social media to cope and may not necessarily realize that the coping mechanism is itself a stressor. The report recommends that accrediting bodies for the education of doctors, nurses, and social workers should incorporate training on the effects of social media on child and adolescent health into curricula. 

The report says teaching media literacy in grades K-12 has the potential to help adolescents be more sophisticated users of social media, but new curriculum standards and teacher training are needed. The Department of Education should draw attention to digital media literacy, and state boards of education should set curriculum standards for the topic. Teacher training should also emphasize digital media literacy, and the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation should set requirements for student teachers and professional development for veteran teachers.  

Unanswered Questions and Informing Policy

The report calls for new research on social media and adolescent health supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and other research funders. This research should prioritize:  

• Clarifying how specific platform features influence health, especially through research that uses randomized designs, experimental platforms, and data from natural experiments. 

• Creating validated tools to measure exposure to platform features.  

• Understanding causal directions between social media use and adolescent health. 

• Studying the epidemiology of problematic use, specific mechanisms through which social media use impacts health, the effectiveness of efforts to remediate harms of social media, and the role of parents and other adults in influencing positive use. 

• Establishing long-term cohort studies. 

• Conducting audits of social media algorithms. 

• Clarifying how specific platform features influence health, especially through research that uses randomized designs, experimental platforms, and data from natural experiments. 

• Creating validated tools to measure exposure to platform features.  

• Understanding causal directions between social media use and adolescent health. 

• Studying the epidemiology of problematic use, specific mechanisms through which social media use impacts health, the effectiveness of efforts to remediate harms of social media, and the role of parents and other adults in influencing positive use. 

• Establishing long-term cohort studies. 

• Conducting audits of social media algorithms. 

Social media companies should make a good faith effort to ensure researchers can access their data. The report recommends the removal of any prohibitions on researchers’ use of publicly available data in platform terms of service. 

Undertaken by the Committee on the Assessment of the Impact of Social Media on the Health and Wellbeing of Adolescents and Children, the study was sponsored by the Democracy Fund, Ford Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, Luminate Projects Limited, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Open Society Foundations, and the National Academy of Sciences’ W.K. Kellogg Foundation Fund.  

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions that provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions related to science, engineering, and medicine. They operate under an 1863 congressional charter to the National Academy of Sciences, signed by President Lincoln. 

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