January 16, 2026

expert comments on evidence on benefits and harms of social media and social media bans on young people

Scientists comment on the evidence around the benefits and harms of social media and social media bans on young people. 

Prof Amy Orben, Research Professor and Programme Leader at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, said:

“There is broad scientific agreement that we need to do more to keep children safe online and to ensure that the digital platforms they use are designed to support their wellbeing and development. What we currently lack is strong scientific evidence on whether banning social media for certain ages is an effective way of achieving this. To my knowledge, there has been no high-quality scientific study that has removed or substantially reduced social media use among healthy under-18s and systematically examined the consequences.

“Within a year, we should know much more about how effective the Australian social media ban has been and whether it led to any unintended consequences. In addition, by summer next year we expect results from a large Randomised Controlled Trial in Bradford schools testing the impact of a social media curfew and one-hour-per-day limit in teenagers. Decision-makers need to judge whether to announce a UK ban before such key evidence is available, due to fears of harms accumulating in the meantime.”

Prof Victoria Goodyear, Professor of Physical Activity, Health, and Wellbeing, University of Birmingham, said:

“There is uncertainty in the current evidence on the benefits and harms of social media use in adolescents, with limited evidence of causal relationships. While some adolescents may experience harm from social media use, others may be unaffected or incur positive benefits.  

“There is currently no robust peer-reviewed and published evidence on the impact of ‘banning’ social media access for U16s.  

“Blanket restrictions are “stop gap” solutions that do little to support children’s longer term healthy engagement with digital spaces across school, home, and other contexts and their successful transition into adolescence and adulthood in a technology filled world.  

“We currently lack an evidence-based best policy and practice approach to addressing social media use in adolescents. All new approaches and policies need to be accompanied by robust evaluation.”  

Reference:

Goodyear et al. (2025). Approaches to children’s smartphone and social media use must go beyond bans. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2024-082569  

Prof Dennis Ougrin, Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Global Mental Health, Queen Mary University of London, said:

“Secondary analysis of a randomised clinical trial published in the JAMA Network Open (Schmidt- Persson et al., 2024) provides the strongest evidence to date that reducing children’s screen time can lead to meaningful improvements in mental health. In the study, families assigned to a structured screen media reduction intervention significantly decreased children’s recreational screen use and saw measurable reductions in emotional and behavioural difficulties, particularly symptoms of anxiety, low mood, and inattention, alongside improvements in prosocial behaviour. Importantly, the benefits were observed across a broad age range and without evidence of harm, suggesting that practical, family-based approaches to moderating screen use can support children’s emotional well-being. This study wasn’t banning the use of screen time or explicitly looking at social media use. Even so, the findings offer policymakers, clinicians, and parents preliminary but clear, evidence-based reassurance that reducing screen exposure can be a positive and achievable step toward healthier childhood development. What we need are larger studies of a similar randomised trial design to further validate these findings, to understand longer term impacts of reduced screen use, and to assess whether there are specific impacts of reducing (or potentially banning) social media use in young people.”

Reference:

Schmidt- Persson et al. (2024). Screen Media Use and Mental Health of Children and Adolescents -A Secondary Analysis of a Randomized Clinical Trial doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.19881

Prof David Ellis, Chair of Behavioural Science, University of Bath, said:

“Online harms are of course very real – there is naturally risk for everyone when they go online. Misinformation, bullying, unsuitable content has always been a part of the internet. Online benefits are also very real – social media allows people to communicate with each other, share information and lets be honest, it is generally an enjoyable activity (hence why people young and old use these platforms regularly). 

“Perhaps because of that balance and because many other factors are known to have a much larger impact on childhood, current evidence suggests very small effects at a population level when it comes to associations between social media/smartphone use on wellbeing e.g., McCrae et al., 2017; Vahedi & Zannella, 2021; Yoon et al.,2019). Note that not all the above reviews involve children. Also, that these are all reporting associations, not cause and effect. 

“When it comes to the general use of social media and smartphones, the effects on mood or wellbeing are so small ‘that they require implausibly large behavioral changes to produce even minor mood shifts.’ (Winbush et al., 2025; p6)

“Also worth remembering that the small effects identified are heavily reliant on estimates of time spent on platforms, which we know don’t reflect reality (Ellis et al., 2019). More work is ongoing to better understand what children are actually engaging with online day-to-day.

“Therefore, it remains difficult to square what a ban might actually accomplish, and that’s before we get to how difficult those bans are to enforce and how it can lead to new risky online behaviours. We have yet to unpack the impacts of what has taken place in Australia, but all the same issues apply as outlined above. It makes complete sense that parents want governments to act, but the science does not currently support the view that a ban of social media for young people will significantly improve wellbeing.”

References:

Ellis, D. A., Davidson, B. I., Shaw, H., & Geyer, K. (2019). Do smartphone usage scales predict behavior?. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 130, 86-92.

McCrae, N., Gettings, S., & Purssell, E. (2017). Social media and depressive symptoms in childhood and adolescence: A systematic review. Adolescent

Research Review, 2(4), 315–330. 

Vahedi, Z., & Zannella, L. (2021). The association between self-reported depressive symptoms and the use of social networking sites (SNS): A meta-analysis. Current Psychology, 40(5), 2174–2189. 

Winbush, A., McDuff, D., Hernandez, J., Barakat, A., Jiang, A., Heneghan, C., … & Allen, N. B. (2025). Smartphone use in a large US adult population: Temporal associations between objective measures of usage and mental well-being. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(43), e2427311122.

Yoon, S., Kleinman, M., Mertz, J., & Brannick, M. (2019). Is social network site usage related to depression? A meta-analysis of Facebook–depression relations. Journal of Affective Disorders, 248, 65–72.

Declared interests

Prof Amy Orben: Co-principal investigator of the Wellcome funded social media reduction trial in Bradford; member of the Austraian eSafety Commissioner’s Social Media Minimum Age Evaluation Academic Advisory Group; Director of the DSIT research commission “Feasibility Study of Methods and Data to Understand the Impact of Smartphones and Social Media on Children and Young People”; Member of DfE Science Advisory Council and DSIT/DCMS College of Experts; ESRC Smart Data Research UK Programme Board member, Digital Futures for Children Advisory Board member; In 2023 I gave paid talks to SWGfL and Apple University; I have received funding or consultancy payments from UKRI, Wellcome Trust, Jacobs Foundation, Huo Family Foundation, UK Department of Innovation Science and Technology, Prudence Trust, National Institute of Health, Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge and Barnardo’s.

Prof Victoria Goodyear: VG is funded by the NIHR and Birmingham Alumni for research on smartphones and wellbeing and school smartphone policies, and the ESRC related to behavioural research. VG was a consortium member for a UK Department for Science Innovation and Technology funded project focused on children’s smartphone and social media use. VG was the principal investigator responsible for leading the programme focused on digital literacy education for teachers funded by Google in 2019

Prof Dennis Ougrin: No declarations of interest

Prof David Ellis: I am a member of a government-commissioned research project led by Cambridge – more details here https://www.bath.ac.uk/announcements/university-of-bath-research-to-examine-impact-of-smartphones-and-social-media-on-young-people/