Teens, Social Media and Mental Health
Parents are more worried than teens about teen mental health. Both groups – especially parents – partly blame social media. But teens also see benefits.
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Parents are more worried than teens about teen mental health. Both groups – especially parents – partly blame social media. But teens also see benefits.
Similar shares of adults say there’s too little emphasis on encouraging boys and girls to be leaders.
Teen girls and boys in the U.S. face different pressures and report different experiences at school, though they have many of the same goals in life.
85% of U.S. teens say they play video games. They see both positive and negative sides, from making friends to harassment and sleep loss.
Most teens at least sometimes feel happy and peaceful when they don’t have their phone, but 44% say this makes them anxious. Half of parents say they have looked through their teen’s phone.
YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram remain the most widely used online platforms among U.S. teens. And teens are less likely to be using Facebook and Twitter (recently renamed X) than they were a decade ago.
More than half of U.S. teens say it would be difficult for them to give up social media. 36% say they spend too much time on social media.
In 2021, there were 2,590 gun deaths among U.S. children and teens under the age of 18, up from 1,732 in 2019.
Here’s a look at what surveys by Pew Research Center and other organizations have found about Americans’ mental health during the pandemic.
A majority of U.S. parents are keeping a watchful eye on what their teens do on social media; some are also imposing screen time restrictions.
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