Research has confirmed the link between social media use and anxiety among teenagers. More work is ongoing. Experts at Oxford University are beginning a 10 year study into teenage mental health. It's called BrainWaves. Their initial research suggests that the more time youngsters spend on social media the more likely they are to suffer from anxiety and depression.
Currently, the study has involved information collected from 7,200 students in the UK. The study's objective is to find good evidence about this much-discuss link. There has been a lot of discussion both by politicians in the UK and I believe elsewhere about the detrimental effects of being addicted to smart phones through which social media is constantly accessed.
There was a recent report in The Time yesterday which provided evidence that the administrators of TikTok know that their platform is addictive and they desire it to be addictive. This is the objective. They deliberately target young people and hook them in. They present to the world a different picture. A picture in which they state that they are doing their best to make it less addictive but behind the scenes, in truth, they are doing the opposite it appears to me.
Some schools in the UK are banning smart phones from the school grounds in the interests of students' health and welfare and I presume to make them more productive while they attend classes.
It has been found that some teenagers spend eight hours a day on their smart phones bouncing around social media posts.
Some of the data is astonishing. NHS information shows that more than 1 million children and teenagers under 18 are in contact with NHS mental health services. Girls are more likely than boys to have problems. One in five girls aged 16 are in contact with NHS mental health services and these problems have increased significantly over the past five years.
This study by a team at Oxford and I understand Swansea University and The Day newspaper will conduct research involving 50,000 adolescents. The objective is to build evidence on a link between social media use and mental health.
The study is being led by John Gallacher, a professor of cognitive health and Oxford. He told the Financial Times that initial results "found a linear relationship between higher rates of anxiety and depression and time spent networking on social media sites. In the most extreme cases, we have young people reporting they were spending up to 8 hours a day using these sites."
In the UK, a private members bill will be introduced tomorrow in the House of Commons to tackle addictive phone use in children.. The bill proposes a legal requirement that schools are phone-free.
It is called the Safer Phones Bill. It has cross-party support. It's being tabled by Labour MP Josh McAlister. He said: "The evidence is mounting that children doom-scrolling for hours a day is causing widespread harm. We need the equivalent of the "seatbelt" legislation for social media use for children. Adults find it hard enough to manage screen time, so why are we expecting children to manage this addictive content without some shared rules?"
In Australia, last month, plans were announced for a social media ban for under 16's. In the UK, charities are calling for the UK to follow suit.
Anne Longfield founder of the Centre for Young Lives (a think tank) said: "This bill opens the door to a crucial national debate about the negative impact smart phones can have on children, and the urgent need to address those problems. Parliament now has an opportunity to reset children's relationship with smart phones, and marginalise their impact and influence on developing young minds."
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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins. Also, sources for news articles are carefully selected but the news is often not independently verified. And, I rely on scientific studies but they are not 100% reliable. Finally, (!) I often express an OPINION on the news. Please share yours in a comment.
