Do social networks mass the mental health of adolescents? Yes, but no

Social networks are supposed to be a kind of “cryptonite” for the mental health of the youngest, but not all the content hosted on platforms 2.0 is necessarily harmful to adolescents. According to A recent study carried out in the United States by Pew Research Center, Although social networks are prodigal in potentially fatal traps for adolescents, they sometimes exert a balsamic influence on the mental health of the youngest.

74% of adolescents between 13 and 17 confesses that social networks reinforce their connection with their friendswhile 63% ensure that platforms 2.0 provide them with a space to express their creativity.

And not just that. 52% of adolescents believe that social networks help them feel more accepted and to receive adequate support at particularly difficult times. This proportion is, however, substantially lower than in 2022, when this figure reached 67%.

Of the report it is collided that Parents are more predisposed than adolescents themselves to contemplating social networks as a threat to the mental health of the youngest. Platforms 2.0 are contemplated by 44% of parents as the most negative influence on the mental health of their teenage children. In the eyes of parents, social networks are more corrosive to the mental health of their children than technology in general and “bullying.”

Teenagers are more concerned with the negative effect of social networks on their contemporaries than in themselves

Instead, Only 22% of adolescents coincide with their parents’ opinion and consider that a whole factors converge in their mental health problemsfrom the “bullying” to the pressure to fulfill what their relatives and society expect from them as a whole (which is not just precisely).

So much, Social networks are contemplated as the most negative influence on mental health both by adolescents and parents. And many young people between 13 and 17 regret that the main cause of depression that plagues so many adolescents are precisely social networks, where the opinions of others massacre very often the well -being of adolescents.

Curiously, adolescents cause the potentially harmful effect of social networks in their contemporaries than in themselves. 48% admit that platforms 2.0 have in general terms a very negative impact on young people of their age (compared to 32% of 2022), but only 14% believe that social networks negatively affect them on a personal level.

Simultaneously the proportion of adolescents who consider that social networks have a positive effect on young people of their age has fallen from 24% in 2022 to just 11% in 2025.

Consequently, and aware of the multiple dangers that lurk on social networks, 44% of adolescents have already cut the time enshrined to platforms 2.0 and smartphones in general.