Ito, Mizuko, Candice Odgers, Stephen Schueller, Jennifer Cabrera, Evan Conaway, Remy Cross, and Maya Hernandez. 2020. Social Media and Youth Wellbeing: What We Know and Where We Could Go. Irvine, CA: Connected Learning Alliance.

Adolescents have been early and enthusiastic users of social media. These high levels of engagement have sparked growing concerns about the relationship between technology use and adolescent wellbeing, with heightened concerns around mental health in particular. The focus of this paper and our review was on social media, though we see related patterns and concerns with other forms of technology use, particularly gaming. We reviewed an interdisciplinary body of research and the technology ecosystem for wellbeing support and mental health, as well as conducting interviews with various stakeholders and experts. We found that in many cases misplaced fears are deflecting attention away from other real concerns, resulting in missed opportunities for leveraging technology and online communication to address adolescent mental health problems. We found that youth are actively seeking support for mental wellbeing online, but very few were connecting with digital mental health apps and expertise.

This paper summarizes our current knowledge and redirects the conversation about adolescent social media use and wellbeing in three ways that are particularly relevant in our current moment.