When the four MH scores were analysed together there was a significant difference (p = 0.037) between being a user or non-user, with SDBA users having significantly higher mean scores for distress (p = 0.001), anxiety (p = 0.015) and depression (p = 0.005). Increased frequency of use and longer duration of use were both associated with greater psychological distress and depression (p < 0.05).
Category: ScreenRot
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2025 – A link between problematic social media use and mental health in Greece: Sex and generation differences
Our findings revealed a positive correlation between problematic social media use and anxiety, which was unaffected by sex or generation. Additionally, a positive link was found between problematic social media use and depression, with a stronger association observed in Generation Z and Millennials.
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2026 – The World Happiness Report, published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, found that excessive use of social media negatively impacts personal wellbeing.
“If you use social media for an hour a day, that’s great, you’re being connected,” says Michael Plant, Research Fellow at the Wellbeing Research Centre. “But the report did show a correlation between, the more time you spend on social media the greater loss of wellbeing.”
Though the report does not know why the Western world is more impacted, it found that under 25s wellbeing in countries like United States, Canada, Australia and UK has dropped dramatically over the past decade – the same time social media has grown.
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2021 – Social media damages teenagers’ mental health, report says
Heavy social media use was linked to negative wellbeing and self-esteem, regardless of a young person’s mental state, with more girls experiencing feelings of depression and hopelessness.
One in three girls was unhappy with their personal appearance by the age of 14, compared with one in seven at the end of primary school. The number of young people with probable mental illness has risen to one in six, up from one in nine in 2017.
Boys in the bottom set at primary school had lower self-esteem at 14 than their peers.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55826238
https://epi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/EPI-PT_Young-people%E2%80%99s-wellbeing_Jan2021.pdf
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2025 – Three in four teens have used AI companions, and half use them regularly.
A third of teens have chosen AI companions over humans for serious conversations, and a quarter have shared personal information with these platforms.
One third of teens surveyed say they have discussed serious matters with AI companions instead of real people at least once. About the same percentage describe AI chats as just as satisfying — or more satisfying — than talking to humans.
https://www.npr.org/2025/07/20/nx-s1-5471268/teens-ai-friends-chat-risks
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2025 – Almost everywhere in America, students are performing worse than their peers were 10 years ago.
Compared with a decade earlier, reading scores were down last year in 83 percent of school districts where data was available. Math scores were down in 70 percent. The declines have affected both rich and poor districts, and crossed racial and geographic divides.
Students’ test scores had been increasing since 1990 — then abruptly stopped in the mid-2010s. That coincided with two events: an easing of federal school accountability under No Child Left Behind, which was replaced in 2015, and the rise of smartphones, social media and personalized school laptops.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/upshot/test-scores-school-districts-us.html
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2025 – The average American spends approximately 7 hours and 4 minutes per day looking at screens.
Gen Z stands out, averaging around 9 hours per day on screens.
https://www.magnetaba.com/blog/average-screen-time-statistics
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2020 – Study finds that social media usage increases memory failures across all age groups.
The concurrent model revealed that on days when social media use was high, individuals reported more memory failures. The lagged model further revealed that higher previous-day social media use was associated with more memory failures on the subsequent day, controlling for previous-day memory failures. These effects were not moderated by age.
https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology/article/75/3/540/5280719?login=false