Is It Bad for Kids to Use Social Media?

Can you break down the studies about social media use for kids between 8 and 12 years old, please?
—Melissa

It will be a fast breakdown! There are very few, if any, and they are bad. The main problem with any studies of this, as with much in this space, is that the studies are small, and the characteristics of kids who use social media are different in other ways. This is especially true when we are talking about younger kids — Instagram is not supposed to be accessible to this age group. That doesn’t mean it isn’t, but it makes it hard to study.

On top of that, because this is all new, it is very difficult to imagine studying any long-term outcomes. We can’t really ask about the impact of social media on high-school graduation, since the kids who’ve had access to social media at this young age are mostly not old enough!

kids using mobile — Katerina Holmes / Pexels

Perhaps the best we can do is simply comment on how common this is. Common Sense Media does the best reporting on this, in my view, and it has a report based on nationally representative survey data from 2021. The report is helpful in separating out tweens (8 to 12) from teens (13 to 18). Among the tweens, they find 38% use social media, with 18% using it every day (this is up from 31% and 13% in 2019). These numbers are fairly high, although social media takes up significantly less time than television or gaming for this age group.

We have reasons to be concerned about social media (see here on Facebook and mental health) in older kids and certainly in this younger group. We just do not have a lot of details and data on which to hang our hats. If you want a bit more guidance, though, I did an interview with Jacqueline Nesi about these questions and how to craft policies for your family.