Higher Social Media Use Tied to Subsequent Depressive Symptoms in Youth
FRIDAY, May 23, 2025 -- 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.
Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.
© 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Read this next
Evidence Insufficient to Determine Benefits of Multicancer Screening Tests
THURSDAY, Sept. 18, 2025 -- No controlled studies report benefits of screening with multicancer detection (MCD) tests, according to a study published online Sept. 16 in the Annals...
Nonadherence to Cervical Cancer Screening Increased After COVID-19 Pandemic
THURSDAY, Sept. 18, 2025 -- Nonadherence to cervical cancer screening in the United States increased after the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a study published online Sept. 10...
Guidance Issued for Creation of pAVFs for Hemodialysis Access
THURSDAY, Sept. 18, 2025 -- In a guidance document issued by the Society of Interventional Radiology Practice and published online Sept. 9 in the Journal of Vascular and...
More news resources
- FDA Medwatch Drug Alerts
- Daily MedNews
- News for Health Professionals
- New Drug Approvals
- New Drug Applications
- Drug Shortages
- Clinical Trial Results
- Generic Drug Approvals
Subscribe to our newsletter
Whatever your topic of interest, subscribe to our newsletters to get the best of Drugs.com in your inbox.