Higher Social Media Use Tied to Subsequent Depressive Symptoms in Youth

FRIDAY, May 23, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Higher social media use is associated with greater subsequent depressive symptoms in children and adolescents, according to a study published online May 21 in JAMA Network Open.

Jason M. Nagata, M.D., from the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues evaluated longitudinal associations between social media use and depressive symptoms in a prospective cohort study. The analysis included data from 11,876 participants (aged 9 to 10 years) in four annual waves of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (October 2016 to October 2018), with time spent on social media self-reported at three-year follow-up.

The researchers found that when 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 percent confidence interval [CI], 0.01 to 0.12; P = 0.01) and from year 2 to year 3 (β, 0.09; 95 percent CI, 0.04 to 0.14; P < 0.001). There were no associations between depressive symptoms and subsequent social media use at any interval. When accounting for demographic and family-level factors, between-person differences in social media use were not associated with depressive symptoms (β, −0.01; 95 percent CI, −0.04 to 0.02; P = 0.46).

“The findings suggest that clinicians should provide anticipatory guidance regarding social media use for young adolescents and their parents,” the authors write.

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