3
Potential Benefits of Social Media
One of the tasks of this report is to summarize the effect of social media on adolescents and children, including its influence on their education, social development, and family dynamics. Full understanding of these effects involves consideration not only of the harms of social media (the topic of much of the existing research presented in the next chapter), but to explore its potential benefits.
The perception that social media is a threat may be partially attributed to researchers’ interest in exploring harms. When faced with evidence of a deterioration in young people’s mental health the logical reaction is to first consider the potentially harmful role of new technology. There is also a question of publication bias. The tendency for statistically significant or flashy results to be published and null results to be filed away is a problem across disciplines, although it may be particularly acute in social science (Franco et al., 2014; Peplow, 2014). When published literature carries a bias, any subsequent meta-analysis or review will carry that bias forward into overstated conclusions (Meier and Reinecke, 2020; Olsson and Sundell, 2023). For this reason, tests for publication bias are increasingly common in meta-analyses (Peters et al., 2006; van Enst et al., 2014).
Of the 25 recent meta-analyses and reviews presented in Appendix C, 12 discuss the problem of publication bias in the field, and 11 of those 12 publications attempt to measure publication bias with statistical tools. Meta-analyses linking social media use to depression and overuse, as well as those on social capital, social connectedness, and social comparison cite evidence of publication bias in their results (Cunningham et al., 2021; Liu
et al., 2016; McComb et al., 2023; McCrae et al., 2017; Shannon et al., 2022). But other meta-analyses on topics such as sleep deprivation, depression and anxiety, and internet gaming disorder found no such evidence (Alimoradi et al., 2019; Liu et al., 2022; Lozano-Blasquo et al., 2022; Meier and Reinecke, 2020; Shannon et al., 2022; Stevens et al., 2021; Yin et al., 2019; Yoon et al., 2019).
What is more, the meta-analyses presented in Appendix C report small effects and weak associations, drawn mainly from cross-sectional studies establishing associations between social media use and adolescent well-being. Only one of the meta-analyses reviewed in Appendix C, for example, drew on exclusively experimental data (McComb et al., 2023). There is ample room for positive and negative experiences within or between users to be obscured in analyses. It is possible that the small associations reported may be influenced by a balance of good and bad experiences. That the use of social media, like many things in life, may be a constantly shifting calculus of the risky, the beneficial, and the mundane.
The balance between the social value and entertainment young people find online can be compared to other socially uniting, entertaining pastimes. It is reasonable to point out that we seldom pathologize young people who enjoy watching sports. Yet a societal shift wherein all young people were suddenly watching sports all the time, late night, to the neglect of other activities, would give us pause. The committee recognizes that social media is associated with harm for some young people, though whether or not it is the cause of such harm is harder to say. If the aggregate experience of social media were harmful to neutral, then different restrictive actions would be justified in the interest of protecting the most vulnerable. Yet the reality is more complicated. This chapter discusses the beneficial potential of social media with some emphasis on the processes through which benefits may accrue.
WHY ADOLESCENTS USE SOCIAL MEDIA
As the previous chapter indicated, social media sites include a variety of affordances, many of which are powered by algorithms that operate behind the scenes. These very design elements of social media platforms intersect with the adolescent developmental experience in ways that influence their social media use. Academic researchers and public discussion have directed considerable attention to understanding these intersections, contributing to a narrative that social media harms people by undermining relationships, cultivating superficiality, increasing anxiety and depression, and inhibiting the ability to concentrate and sustain attention.
One nationally representative, longitudinal study that followed children ages 10 to 13 over 8 years, found that time spent on social media was
not associated with depression or anxiety (Coyne et al., 2020). Subgroup analyses led the researchers to conclude that “far more adolescents have positive or neutral experience on [social media] than negative,” allowing that the most benefit may accrue to young people with chaotic home lives and those who feel marginalized, groups often at increased risk for mental health problems (Coyne, 2023, p. 18). Such results suggest that social media may benefit some groups of young people.
Adolescent self-reports paint a similar picture. Figure 3-1 shows results of a recent Pew Research survey showing that over 90 percent of a nationally representative sample of teens aged 13 to 17 years find social media to have a positive or neutral effect on them (Anderson et al., 2022), though more than one-third felt the amount of time they spent using social media was too much (Vogels et al., 2022). A modest majority (54 percent) thought it would be very hard or somewhat hard to give up social media (Anderson et al., 2022).
Teenagers, like adults, use social media to accomplish goals and satisfy needs. Recognizing social media as a tool helps understand the real or perceived benefits and the reasons why adolescents use the platform (Lee et al., 2023). When asked about the benefits of using social media, adolescents list connections and socializing, accessing information and learning, along with entertainment and fun, as some of the reasons for using social media (see Figure 3-1).
Social connection is important in early life as it has implications for the development of secure relationships and even good physical health later in life (Caspi et al., 2006; Danese et al., 2009; Holt-Lunstad, 2022; Yang et al., 2016). Social media platforms offer a means of social connection. By using these platforms, adolescents can easily connect with friends, classmates, and acquaintances, allowing them to maintain relationships, expand their social networks, and stay connected even when physically apart. It is not clear the extent to which social media use fosters real social connection, however. A meta-analysis of cross-sectional data found weak but positive associations between social media use and loneliness (Zhang et al., 2022). This association may differ across ages. A survey exploring the relationship between social media use and loneliness in four countries found that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, frequent social media use was associated with greater levels of loneliness among young adults,1 though this correlation could be related to a circular relationship with social media use and other isolating mental health problems (Bonsaksen et al., 2021). Further, social interactions are not always positive and doing so online is no exception (Brooks and Dunkel Schetter, 2011; Holt-Lunstad and Uchino, 2019).
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1 Aged 18 to 39.
SOURCE: Anderson et al., 2022.
Social media can also provide a space for self-expression. Teens can express their identities, share their thoughts, and showcase their creativity through posts, photos, videos, and stories. This enables them to shape their online personas and receive validation and feedback from others—feedback that can be kind or hurtful. Additionally, social media can be used as a means to fulfill a need for belonging. Adolescents often seek acceptance and validation from their peers, and social media platforms offer communities where they can find like-minded individuals who share similar interests, values, or experiences. Furthermore, social media is a source of entertainment for adolescents that can be used to share funny videos, memes, music tailored to their interests, and more. Adolescents can find news, educational content, and discussions on various topics of interest on social media, thereby staying up to date on current events and global issues.
Understanding why youth use social media can help us understand how to tap into mechanisms to maximize their potential benefits. These reasons include learning, entertainment, relaxation, connection, stress relief, and a normal adolescent tendency to seek out varied and novel experiences (Anderson et al., 2022; Hancock et al., 2022). Social media can provide a window to cultural experiences and information and, most
obviously, a venue to socialize. Social media can foster positive emotions, as would happen for a young person using the platforms to connect with grandparents who live far away; it can also be used to avoid negative feelings, as might happen when someone watches a funny video or an online music lesson to take their mind off a bad day at school (Cauberghe et al., 2021). At the center of these experiences are the use of coping strategies, some healthier than others. Although avoidance and escape are not always undesirable, the healthier strategies (e.g., seeking social support) may account for some people having a more positive experience on the platforms than others.
Social Capital and Social Connectedness
One of the most obvious potential benefits of social media is its power to connect friends and family. Adolescents report communication with family and friends as the most common and important functions of using social media (Allen et al., 2014). Indeed, adolescents who take a positive view of social media attribute this firstly to the social connectedness and interactions the platforms allow (Anderson et al., 2022). Qualitative research among young adults suggested that online interactions offer a controllable and accessible way to maintain relationships, especially valuable for maintaining ties to friends and family who live far away (Scott et al., 2022). Some researchers have suggested that the social media affordances for direct, active exchanges with other users, so-called active use, allow for more positive effects on well-being than what is described as passive use, meaning scrolling or consuming the information without contributing, though such patterns may depend on the viewer’s mindset (Beyens et al., 2020). (That is, passive scrolling through a friend’s photos could also bring someone happiness, depending on the person and their attitude toward what they are viewing.) More recent work has questioned the validity of the active use–passive use dichotomy, however (Valkenburg et al., 2021). Use of social media in real life is invariably a mix of active and passive features that are difficult to disentangle experimentally or conceptually (Valkenburg et al., 2021).
Adolescents use social media to maintain friendships and explore their identity, both central developmental tasks for their age (Uhls et al., 2017). It is not clear if online and offline friendships are necessarily equivalent. But friendship in general is important to building a sense of social connectedness, a feeling of connection with other people that encompasses feeling cared for and belonging (Bowins, 2021). Friendship is valuable in its own right, it also promotes life satisfaction and reduces anxiety (Zhou and Cheng, 2022). In experimental settings, messaging with
a friend has been shown to be a valuable means of stress reduction for adolescents (Yau et al., 2021).
The use of social media for connectedness may benefit family relationships as well. Survey research among Italian parents who use social media to communicate with teenage children suggests that platforms can be used for wider and more open communication among family members (Procentese et al., 2019). Of course, much of this effect depends on baseline functioning in the family unit. Longitudinal research has identified parental warmth as a protective influence that prevents teens from experiencing mental health difficulties and being involved in cyberbullying (Stockdale et al., 2018). Among children in foster care, for example, for whom the loss and separation from their natal families may be especially painful, some experts have proposed social media may help maintain positive relationships and emotional health (Castles, 2015). For this reason, guidance from the Administration for Children and Families encourages foster parents to help children use social media to maintain a sense of normalcy and important relationships, while at the same time discussing privacy and discretion with the young people to ensure their experience is productive (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2022).
Maintaining social connections is associated with better well-being (Jordan, 2023). Social media may contribute by building social capital, the tangible and intangible resources available to people through their social networks. Research among undergraduates has found that high levels of interaction on Facebook are associated with higher levels of bridging relationships between people who are not close friends, who can share new perspectives and information (Ellison et al., 2014). A cross-sectional study among undergraduates found that people who use social media to connect with a diverse friend group also tend to have higher social self-efficacy (a perceived capability to navigate social situations and make friends), though it is not clear if social media builds this self-efficacy or if more confident people simply have a larger online friend group (Kim et al., 2020). More recent pooled analyses have found that social networking can benefit its users through strengthening weak ties or transitioning an acquaintance into a friend (Ahmad et al., 2023; Liu et al., 2016).
Instrumental Support
The social connections that young people build online can translate into instrumental support, a type of assistance that helps people meet tangible needs (Schultz et al., 2022). By providing a means to network, for example, social media can help teens build social capital that can be leveraged to find jobs and other opportunities, something that can be useful to young people as they seek out internships and other work and to find a
place in their wider community (Garg and Pahuja, 2020; Steinfield et al., 2008). Employers may use social media to vet job candidates, for example (Grensing-Pophal, 2023).
Some research suggests the use of social media to signal academic or creative interests, ask for advice, and network can be useful skills for teenagers (Ching et al., 2018). Social media has been used in programs to link high-school seniors from underrepresented ethnic groups to academic and career mentors (Schwartz et al., 2016). A recent review found instrumental support to be relatively common among adolescents on social media (Odgers and Jensen, 2020). When facing challenges ranging from teen motherhood to becoming a first-generation college student, research finds informational support and helping behaviors (i.e., sharing advice and information) to be common in online social interactions (Odgers and Jensen, 2020; Sherman and Greenfield, 2013; Wohn et al., 2013).
Combating Isolation
Social media can be valuable to adolescents who otherwise may feel excluded or lack offline support, including patients with rare diseases or disabilities, and those who struggle with obesity or mental illness, or come from marginalized groups such as LGBTQ+ young people (Chassiakos et al., 2016). By offering a means to connect with people in the same position, social media can reduce stigma and be a venue for sharing coping strategies.
Social media can allow neurodiverse teens, for example, a way to connect socially with others that is manageable for them, thereby reducing feelings of loneliness (Sallafranque-St-Louis and Normand, 2017). Qualitative research among adolescents with autism spectrum disorder indicates that the removal of body language cues that can be difficult for people with autism to interpret make social media an enjoyable venue for them (Jedrzejewska and Dewey, 2022).
While the use of internet technology to ease loneliness has had mixed success more broadly (Bonsaksen et al., 2021; Gheorghe and Stănculescu, 2021), it can help ease loneliness in certain circumstances. In social media, LGBTQ+ adolescents living in rural areas sometimes find support that they may not have in their offline world (Escobar-Viera et al., 2022). LGBTQ+ youth also report benefits from connecting with other queer youth online and establishing support systems (Berger et al., 2022; Han et al., 2019; Selkie et al., 2020). A similar pattern may be at work among young people in foster care, for whom social media and gaming are a welcome tool to make and maintain relationships in the face of frequent disrupting changes to their living space (Gustavsson and MacEachron, 2015; Sage and Jackson, 2022).
Social media can help adolescents cope with grief and bereavement offering the opportunity to connect with people who have experienced a similar loss (Sofka, 2017). The same is true for young people navigating isolating illnesses. Social media groups for various health conditions including cancer, diabetes, and rare diseases provide a way for patients to come together and support each other (Chou and Moskowitz, 2016; Daniels et al., 2021; Househ et al., 2014; Malik et al., 2019). For people suffering from serious mental illness, the support of peers online is especially valuable, especially peers who can relate to the challenges of coping with mental health problems (Naslund et al., 2016).
Much of the concern about the harms of social media revolve around its capacity for displacement, including the displacement of in-person socializing (Twenge, 2020). Yet survey data suggest that this may vary by socioeconomic status. Teens from lower-income groups are less likely to interact with friends in their homes or outside of school and tend to put strong value on the friendships they make online, through gaming for example, even though these friends are not necessarily people whom they know offline (Lenhart et al., 2015).
Moreover, socializing in person is not always possible. Physical isolation is a source of loneliness that social media can counter. During the peak physical distancing requirements of the COVID-19 pandemic, social media became the only venue many young people had to connect with their friends (Kurz and Jahng, 2022). Even as pandemic-era distancing requirements ease, infrequent in-person time with friends is a fact of life for many adolescents. Driving and car ownership are relatively more expensive to young people today than they were in past generations, and most of the United States is poorly served by public transit, limiting young people’s mobility and ability to socialize in person with people who are not close neighbors (Kurz and Jahng, 2022).
At its most extreme end, isolation and related mental health problems can manifest in suicidal thoughts and self-harm. Some evidence indicates that supportive online communities can decrease risk of suicidal ideation and improve well-being (De Choudhury and Kıcıman, 2017). As social networking allows users an easy way to communicate with a large pool of people, the sites can provide someone in distress with valuable emotional support, especially to people who use the sites actively and frequently (De Choudhury and Kıcıman, 2017; Liu et al., 2016). Intervention studies have found that artificial intelligence can analyze social media data to predict some online behaviors that may indicate suicidical ideation (Lekkas et al., 2021).
Learning
Qualitative research indicates that adolescents value social media for its ability to expose them to the world and support their education (Shankleman et al., 2021). A 15-country cross-sectional survey of more than 100,000 15-year-olds found that, in western countries, social media use predicts a greater ability for reading and navigating information online (Chen et al., 2021). Social media can facilitate processes that have always been part of schooling such as studying together and sharing homework strategies (Hadjipanayis et al., 2019). Other processes are relatively new and more unique to teens.
The concept of a media ecology, referring to both the technology that facilitates media access and its influence on human culture, ideas, and politics, is important to understanding why learning on social media is important for adolescents (Milberry, 2012). The separation of formal and informal learning is not always clear in the new media ecology. Survey research among middle school students has found social media forums to be useful in collaboration on science and engineering projects, which may be part of an iterative, collaborative learning process (Won et al., 2015). A mixed methods study2 of 12 to 14 year olds in Spain found that the informal learning characteristic of social media empowers young people and increases self-motivation for learning (Gil Quintana and Osuna-Acedo, 2020).
An intense engagement with new media in the service of acquiring more expertise about a niche interest, sometimes described as geeking out, is an important dimension of learning for young people (Ito et al., 2010). The types of learning often characterized as geeking out tend toward parallel exploration of a topic with friends and mediated by technology, with knowledge-building becoming difficult to separate from broader youth culture (Ito et al., 2010).
Writing Skills
Adolescents tend to use social media for both classroom exercises and supplemental assignments (Galvin and Greenhow, 2020). A recent narrative review found that use of social media for academic writing has been associated with less writing anxiety and a great sense of agency for the students to write about topics important to them (Galvin and Greenhow, 2020).
This sense of agency may be most evident in fanfiction, the long-form writing genre wherein amateur writers imagine different story lines for
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2 Using participatory workshops, interviews, self-report in a diary, and observation.
characters known from other art forms. There are millions of registered users on the online hub fanfiction.net; they upload thousands of stories every day (Evans et al., 2017). Online fanfiction communities can be important for informal learning, a place for young people to build literacy skills and support the same skills in others, all while building supportive social connections (Shang et al., 2021). The more engaging topics can help draw in young people who may feel restricted by academic composition classes (Galvin and Greenhow, 2020). In the United States, speakers of other languages may also use fanfiction as a way to hone their English skills and socialize at the same time (Black, 2008).
Fanfiction can help cultivate writing skills and has also fostered the emergence of a type of coaching called distributed mentoring (see Box 3-1) (Evans et al., 2016; Froelich et al., 2021). Participants in fanfiction communities engage as both writers and coaches, learning about writing and about how to give and receive mentorship (Aragon and Davis, 2019; Evans et al., 2016). Qualitative research among fanfiction writers suggests that the experience of the fanfiction community, particularly the mentorship, gave them both the skills and the confidence needed for success in higher education (Aragon and Davis, 2019; Evans et al., 2016).
Online networks for shared hobbies, interests, or identities can also be important for young people. Affinity networks can provide coaching
and support for a range of interests including reading, music, crafts and creative arts, and games (Ito et al., 2019). No matter how niche the interest may be, the scope of the internet almost guarantees that people can connect, across distance and other barriers, with other people to support their skills and help them grow.
Self-Expression and Independence
Forming a coherent sense of self and identity are core tasks of adolescent development. In the second decade of life, adolescents define themselves and change their relationship with their parents and other adults. Social media can aid the task, affording young people a place to explore their identity and shape their sense of self (Spies Shapiro and Margolin, 2014).
Parents may attempt to monitor their children on social media. A 2016 Pew Research survey found that 60 percent of parents check their children’s social media profiles and about the same percentage check their browsing history (Anderson, 2016). A more recent Pew survey found that only 28 percent friend or follow their child on social media (Auxier et al., 2020). But young people can still seek out privacy and a separate space to experiment with identity online. The Instagram affordances such as photo filters and asynchronicity, for example, tend to encourage the presentation of a carefully curated, public persona (Kanchinadam et al., 2018). Teens may supplement this account with a secondary account for close friends, that presents far less performative content (Kanchinadam et al., 2018). Even within the same platform, teens can experiment with different identities and different levels of privacy.
Teens often report using social media to share information about oneself, one’s environment, and one’s social life and connections, with part of this experience involving feedback on this presentation from others (Márquez et al., 2022; Yau and Reich, 2019). A relatively long-standing body of research indicates that this self-presentation and exploring of identity is an important part of adolescence that social media can support (Moreno and Uhls, 2019; Subrahmanyam and Šmahel, 2011; Valkenburg et al., 2005). Qualitative research finds that many young people, especially cisgender girls, are meticulous in selecting which platform or account to post to, editing pictures, monitoring comments and likes, and removing posts when not viewed favorably by peers (Bell, 2019; Yau and Reich, 2019). A similarly developmentally appropriate interest in self-presentation is part of avatar personalization and one that gay, lesbian, and transgender teens may put more emphasis on (Morgan et al., 2020).
Encouraging Creativity
Social media can be a venue to exhibit different forms of expression, such as in fanfiction and affinity groups discussed earlier. Qualitative research also reveals that teens use different platforms for different ends, with some platforms being used only for watching videos and others only for communicating with close friends (Anderson et al., 2022). Some platforms are also important creative outlets. A 2022 survey found that seven out of ten teenagers see social media as a place where they can express their creative side (Anderson et al., 2022). For Black and Hispanic teens, this appears to be an even more valued feature of social media, with 75 and 73 percent of Black and Hispanic teens respectively citing the value of social media as a creative forum (Anderson et al., 2022).
Teens’ use of social media can support their creativity, especially when the platform has affordances for ownership, association, and visibility (Vilarinho-Pereira et al., 2021). As with many of the benefits and risks of social media, the value of a creative outlet may be more pronounced for different personality types. Teens who are more extraverted, open to experience, and lower in neuroticism reported more creative activity online (Pérez-Fuentes et al., 2019). Research among adults suggests that using social media for authentic self-expression, rather than for presenting a curated persona, predicts greater life satisfaction and well-being; the same may be true for adolescents (Bailey et al., 2020).
A 2016 study including teenagers in 8 countries found that creative expression on social media runs from casual to expert forms, with the highly skilled forms sometimes being marketable and a source of income (see Table 3-1). During the COVID-19 pandemic, social media helped some teens grow their creativity, expanding their circle of like-minded friends and providing interested young people with an outlet for personal growth (Zaeske et al., 2022).
Empowerment and Civic Engagement
Social media is a vehicle to harness the political and social power of young people and has facilitated some powerful social movements over the last two decades (Baskin-Sommers et al., 2021; Daiute, 2018). Social media provides a quick, convenient way to learn about and discuss current events. The social connectedness and community building discussed earlier in this chapter also have ramifications for offline civic activity. The Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, for example, has used social media to exponentially expand her reach, informing adolescents around the world about a school strike for climate change, which eventually grew into a global environmental movement (Kurz and Jahng, 2022). For Greta Thunberg and other young people at the center of social move-
TABLE 3-1 Types of Creative Production on Social Media
| Casual | Aspirational | Expert | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type of Production | Photos and videos | Writing, photos, videos, graphic design, and drawing | Writing, photos, videos, graphic design, and drawing |
| Planning | Spontaneous and simple | Moderately planned | Highly planned |
| Consideration and use of narrative and aesthetic values | Not important. Basic techniques and concepts are applied | Very important. Eagerness to learn and apply new techniques and concepts | Very important. Media encyclopedic knowledge and use of various techniques and concepts |
| Motivation | Entertainment and relationship with peers | Skill improvement and peer recognition | Skill improvement and originality |
SOURCE: Guerrero-Pico et al., 2019.
ments, social media is likely an enhancing factor for their activist work and not the explanation for it (Fullam, 2017).
The same capacity for mass dissemination of information that makes the internet useful for education also influences young people’s point of view. A 2018 Pew survey found that roughly two-thirds of teens aged 13 to 18 used social media to learn about different points of view or show their support for causes (Anderson and Jiang, 2018). At the same time, only a minority of youth (<10 percent) in both the Pew 2018 and 2022 samples reported using social media to post about politics (Anderson and Jiang, 2018; Anderson et al., 2022).
In qualitative studies, youth report being more aware of social and political events due to social media (Common Sense Media, 2019). Research among 11- to 15-year-old participants in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study found that 30 percent of respondents used social media to engage with the Black Lives Matter movement (Baskin-Sommers et al., 2021).
Some researchers have proposed that the increased access to news and information through social media leads to conversations offline and to feelings of civic involvement (Lenzi et al., 2015). This effect is not limited to the United States. UNICEF data suggest that between 43 and 64 percent of children and teens in 11 countries look for news online, and that young people who engage in political discussions online are more likely to participate in the political process offline (Cho et al., 2020). Like
the Pew reports, UNICEF data offer no evidence that young people participate in superficial or ostentatious political posting (so-called clicktivism or hashtag activism) (Cho et al., 2020). On the contrary, Pew investigators found that only 7 percent of sample teens used hashtags related to political or social issues, 10 percent used social media to encourage their friends to take part in political or social causes (Anderson et al., 2022).
Civic involvement and social cohesion can be meaningful ends related to social media use, valuable both to adolescents and to society. That said, increased political involvement is not always positive. Social media has been cited as a source of political polarization, rife with partisanship and incivility, though such climates vary among different platforms (Ferguson, 2021; Oden and Porter, 2023). It is difficult to say if a heightened hostility to opposing political views is a function of social media use or if social media is simply reflecting a broader cultural change. Some scholars have proposed that platforms built around offline friendship may have a mix of affordances that increase polarization, while groups built around shared interests may work counter to it (Literat and Kligler-Vilenchik, 2021). Political polarization and the normalization of fringe viewpoints, like many of the topics reviewed in this chapter, can be amorphous and hard to measure. Similar problems abound in measuring the direct health effects of social media use, as the next chapter will discuss.
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