• Posted March 28, 2025

Social Media Can Drag Down Troubled Young People

Is there a person in your life who just can’t stop scrolling social media, almost as if they’ve formed an emotional dependence on sites like Instagram and TikTok?

Such an attachment might be associated with worse mental health symptoms among young people being treated for depression, anxiety or suicidal thoughts, a new study says.

About 40% of troubled 8- to 20-year-olds reported social media use that could be problematic, saying that they feel discontented, disconnected and upset when they can’t log on to their favorite sites, researchers report in the April issue of Journal of Affective Disorders.

These young people also had higher levels of depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts, as well as poorer overall well-being, compared to peers in treatment who weren't overly attached to social media, researchers found.

“There has long been speculation that excessive social media use among young people may be a factor in increased rates of suicidal thoughts and behaviors, but the relationship is not fully understood,” lead researcher Betsy Kennard, a teaching professor of psychiatry at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, said in a news release.

“Our findings are instructive because they characterize the prevalence of problematic social media use in children and adolescents who are receiving care for depression, suicidal ideation and/or suicidal behaviors, which gives us insight into how they might intersect,” she added.

For the study, researchers reviewed responses from a social media questionnaire completed by 489 patients in the Texas Youth Depression and Suicide Registry. The registry tracks patients who are receiving care for depression or suicide risk at 12 academic hospitals across the state.

Young people with problematic social media use were more likely to report higher amounts of screen time, researchers found.

They also had more symptoms of depression, anxiety and suicidality, and those symptoms tended to be more severe, compared to young people in treatment who didn’t use social media as often.

Further, troubled young people hooked on social media had higher levels of substance abuse, results showed.

“The appropriate amount of social media activity isn’t a ‘one-size-fits-all’ issue, so what is fine for one individual may not be OK for someone else,” Kennard said. 

“But what we often see is that the characteristics of problematic use mirror those of addiction, with continued use even when wanting to stop, cravings, interference with daily tasks and activities, deceptive use, interpersonal disruptions and more,” she added.

Further study is needed to understand exactly why social media might have this detrimental effect on troubled young people, researchers said.

“Our hope is that we can use these findings, and data from future studies, to develop better screening methods to address problematic use earlier,” Kennard said.

More information

The University of California-Davis has more on the effect of social media on mental health.

SOURCE: UT Southwestern Medical Center, news release, March 24, 2025