Since I began working in digital media (over 16 years ago…), the question parents have asked me the most is, “How does social media impact our teens – especially our girls?”
Yes, this question is asked even more than - “How can my kid become famous?” or “How can we get paid for my kid’s content?” The question of social media’s impact on teens looms over everything for anyone with children, so we need to talk about it continually and anytime we can. If we talk, discuss, and debate, we will not feel as powerless in the face of the ever-increasing and never-going-away consumption of social media and technology.1
Do you want the good news or the bad news first?
The good news is there is tons of awesome research on social media and teens!2 There is no reason we, including our kids, can’t all be informed. For instance, we know that social media use is prevalent among all youth of all backgrounds, and all over the world, with a very high concentration right here in the U.S. Currently, the most popular platforms are YouTube (95%), TikTok (67%), Instagram (62%), Snapchat (59%), and even good ol’, thumbs up Facebook (32%).3 Teenagers watch their screens (mostly YouTube and TikTok) an average of 8 hours and 39 minutes per day, a nice bump of 17% since 2019.4 For adolescent girls, social media use is higher than for boys, where they spend on average about 2 hours and 15 minutes per day on Instagram (59%), Facebook (30%), Snapchat (29%), Discord (17%), and Twitter (16%).
Are you ready for the bad news?
Overall, social media use harms adolescent girls. I see three major developmental issues for struggling teens today:
Mental health Issues: Social media contributes to a higher risk of self-harm, depression, and lower levels of self-esteem in adolescent girls but not boys.5
Body Disturbance Issues: greater social media use, such as posting and commenting on photos, is associated with body disturbances in girls, including eating disorders, objectification, and internalized body shame.6
Earlier Periods: social media may contribute to earlier period onset in teen girls.7 An earlier period is associated with both physical and mental health issues, including cardiovascular diseases, cancers, early pregnancy, depression, eating disorders, and lower self-esteem.8
I think the reason I have been asked this question so often is that everyone actually already knows the answer, but they are still worried. We can’t control social media, and we can’t control our kids' consumption of it, especially once they have access to it. All we can do is empower them to make informed decisions, help them interpret the confusing messages from peers and the media, and, as their family, give them encouragement, support, and a safe space to experiment, develop, and learn.
We all have a story (or a few) about a teen girl we know and love who struggles with body image, low self-esteem, depression, or disordered eating. In the nineties, as a wee little undergraduate in anthropology, I wrote my thesis on this very subject.9 Someone very close to me had anorexia nervosa, and since no one would talk about it with me or explain to me what was happening, I made it my thesis project. I was determined to know everything I could to understand why this was happening to someone I loved, and I also hoped I could help.
Am I allowed to quote my thesis?
My thesis is pretty funny to read today. It is like an ancient scroll on a three-ring binder from an entirely different world where, as girls, we received cultural messages about our bodies and beauty ideals from magazines, music, books, and movies that played in actual theaters. Morgan (1994), i.e., me, said:
In psychology, many believe that a woman trying to get control of her body is really trying to get control over her neediness – “that dreaded cost of femininity.”10 Some psychologists feel neediness is unique to women to want to conquer because, in our society, the woman is placed in a position of needing. She needs someone to take care of her. But through anorexia, she gains control and shows the world she is in charge. However, as she is consumed by the disease, she is really keeping herself powerless. Many call this the inevitable paradox of the illness.11
Even in 1994, I do seem to have a valid point there. Did anyone read my other substack post, “Anxious Technophilia Disorder”? Lots of studies show that raising children with what we have traditionally considered “masculine” traits is a better protector against anxiety, whereas teaching our children to embody more traditional “feminine” traits, such as neediness, dependence, and passivity, is not so great for them. Teen girls were struggling with many of the same issues in the nineties as they are today. However, there is some more bad news if you want to know - today may actually be worse today in some ways. Here is a chart that outlines depression in teen girls in the nineties as compared to 2024.
That is significantly different. Look at that sharp upward curve!?! So, let’s ask again, “Just how does social media impact our teen girls?”
Social media is a constant supply of culturally endorsed and hyper-idealized images of women as overly and overtly sexual objects. That is fine, whatever. I am not here to tell anyone what to do with their bodies or what photos to take, like, or subscribe to, or what to post – I mean, please, like I could anyway. If you want to know the answers about why social media negatively impacts girls, then you need to decipher the messages. To break it down more logically, more social media use among teen girls predicts more daily self-objectification. Body objectification increases depression among girls, especially between the ages of 12 and 15 years old.12 Social media can lead to increased depression in teen girls.
Choukas-Bradley, et al. (2022)13 calls the social media impact on teen girls - the perfect storm. The sheer number of social media images of women being objectified and sexualized combined with the overconsumption of social media by teens, and then intensified by the extra special negative cultural messages embedded in those images has created the perfect storm for girls' developing minds and bodies in a way that we have never seen before.14 As a result, the more adolescent girls engage in social media, the greater their likelihood of self-objectification, depression, anxiety and disordered eating.
As you can imagine, I have much more to say on this topic, but for now, remember that before social media, some teen girls were depressed, had anorexia nervosa, bulimia, and obesity, and were ashamed of their bodies. Before Facebook and Instagram, peers body-shamed other peers. Before TikTok, teens were sexualized. Social media and “screen time” are not the origin of teen girls’ problems, but it is part of a really bad storm. What happens in their homes and with their families is important for building their resilience against environmental stressors and toxic cultural messages. You can help educate and support your teens to grow up strong and empowered.
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For this blog post, when I refer to “teen girls,” “girls” or “women,” I am talking about any individual who identifies as female.
Vogels et al., 2022
Rates can vary by race and ethnicity. For instance, Black teens can spend a little more time daily on social media than their White peers (110 min vs. 83 min) (Rideout et al., 2021).
Common Sense Media Census, 2021
Twenge et al., 2017
Huang et al., 2021; Mingoia et al., 2017
This is mostly hypothetical since it is hard to actually test, but many researchers are seeing a connection.
Nakazawa, 2022; Wang et al., 2024
“Eating Disorders: Weighing the Meanings of Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia in American Culture” for The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (Morgan, 1994).
Orback, 1985
“Eating Disorders: Weighing the Meanings of Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia in American Culture” for The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (Morgan, 1994)
Please note: 52% White and 20% Latina in the study (Tolman et al., 2006).
Choukas-Bradley, S., Roberts, S. R., Maheux, A. J., & Nesi, J. (2022). The Perfect Storm: A Developmental–Sociocultural Framework for the Role of Social Media in Adolescent Girls’ Body Image Concerns and Mental Health. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 25(4), 681–701.
When looking at objectification, you must consider it within a cultural context, pretty please. Social media use/engagement increases self-sexualization among teens, which contributes to lower self-esteem. However, comparing across ethnic groups, self-esteem was a tad better for Asian American and Black girls than for White girls. The research and the differences are very nuanced, and there needs to be more research in this area.
It’s terrifying!! I am reading The Anxious Generation. We will be keeping our boys off cel phones and social media as long as possible- and agree that it is so important to talk about the issues.