March 13, 2025
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The amount of time teens spend on social media has less impact on their mental health than the strength of their friendships, new research shows.
Teenagers who have strong friendships tend to have better mental health, regardless of their social media use, a new study finds.
Social media has become omnipresent in the lives of teens. A 2023 Gallup poll found the average U.S. teen spends nearly five hours a day on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and other platforms.
Research has explored the dangers of such high levels of social media use among teens. A 2019 study found adolescents who spent more than three hours a day on social media had a heightened risk for anxiety and depression. Another recent study identified a link between social media use and lower mood, body image dissatisfaction, cyberbullying and loneliness. Two years ago, the U.S. surgeon general issued an advisory saying there is not enough evidence to determine if social media use is safe for children and especially adolescents.
The new study, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, seems to counter some of these worries. It found healthy peer relationships to be the most powerful predictor of positive mental health among teens and that the type of social media use — like browsing or posting — had "little influence." The link between strong friendships and positive mental health was nearly three times larger than the association between social media use and poor mental health.
"As peer relationship quality increased, there was a higher probability of having high well-being and low psychopathology, even at extreme levels of social media use," the researchers wrote.
"These results suggest peer relationship quality had more of an influence on mental health than social media indicators – a critical finding, considering recent research, policies, and popular press that focus on the 'psychological harm' of social media without contextualizing social media use within the broader adolescent ecosystem," the researchers said.
The study used data from nearly 1,000 teens ages 13-18 who had participated in previous study funded by the National Institutes of Health. The data was collected between 2019 and 2023.
The teenagers detailed the social media platforms they used and how often they browsed and posted, measuring on a scale ranging between "never" and "almost constantly." On average, the teens spent about 3.5 hours a day on social media – less than the 4.8 hours measured in the 2023 Gallup poll.
The researchers used two questionnaires to measure levels of depression, psychological well-being and other aspects of mental health and to analyze feelings of connectedness, social acceptance and support.
