How Can Media Use Affect Wellbeing?

“We define digital wellness for young people as an intentional state of physical, mental and social health achieved through mindful engagement with the digital and natural environment.” Dr. Michael Rich, Digital Wellness Lab, Boston Children’s Hospital[1]

How screen use can affect mental wellness

Any attempt to draw a simple line between media use and mental wellbeing is complicated by the example of Finland, which often ranks #1 in the Global Happiness Index[2] despite near-universal use of social media by teens[3] (and one of the highest rates of digital media literacy in the world).[4] Worldwide, internet access is associated with higher levels of life satisfaction, sense of purpose, positive experiences, and community and social well-being.[5]

Very high levels of media use, and of specific media activities such as social media, are connected to poor mental well-being.[6],[7] Very low levels  are as well, and there is a large range of time where there’s no direct connection to well-being.[8],[9],[10],[11] For example, one study found that using social media was associated with lower rates of anxiety, but heavy or problematic use was associated with higher rates of both anxiety and depression, suggesting that “some forms of [social media] use ‒ such as communication with friends, listening to music, and/or accessing positive content ‒ could serve as a positive safeguard against anxiety.”[12] While tweens and teens who own a smartphone are more likely to say they feel good about themselves than those who don’t, those who use social media once a day or more are more likely to say media has a negative effect on their daily lives, that they don’t get enough sleep, and that they get into a bad mood if they can’t check their phones.[13]

Most research, though, has found that screen time is less important than screen use and that “digital technology can have both positive and negative effects on child well-being, depending on the activity and how much time is spent.”[14] Youth whose use is “near-constant… with social media occupying a central role in social connection, identity exploration, and emotional support” are likely to have poor mental health and wellbeing. However, those who “used social media to connect with friends and explore identity, with strong self-regulation” have better mental health and wellbeing than those who use social media less often. This group is “embedded in more supportive emotional and social contexts… [which] enable youth to use social media as a resource rather than a refuge, extending existing strengths rather than compensating for acute or chronic deficits.”[15] Media use can also have a positive impact if it allows youth to pursue their interests: “young people seem to develop an especially sturdy form of self-esteem when they refine a skill or a craft that they choose to pursue on their own and not, as often happens, because they are told or expect to do so.”[16] This may explain why interventions aimed at reducing overall screen time frequently have no effect at all, either positive or negative.[17]

Different screen activities can have both positive or negative impacts. In one study, heavy TikTok users reported more body image issues, while heavy Snapchat users were more likely to say they often felt tired. The heaviest Instagram users didn’t report either issue, and none of the platforms were associated with anxiety.[18] Similarly, TikTok users are most likely to say they spend too much time on the app and that it has a negative impact on their sleep, while Snapchat users are more likely to say it has a positive impact on their friendships.[19] Another study found that TikTok, YouTube and Instagram were associated with negative mental health impacts, while Snapchat and WhatsApp had either positive or no association.[20] Gaming and watching video streaming are also associated with better well-being,[21] while one study of Canadian teens found that making voice calls was most strongly associated with depression and anxiety.[22]

Virtual experiences with nature[23],[24]or inspiring content[25] have positive effects on mental wellness, as do virtual encounters with therapy dogs.[26] Because most social networks and video sites recommend or deliver content algorithmically, though, it’s easy to encounter both supportive and harmful content within the same session:

Young people described increased needs to regulate their emotions, particularly when they felt compelled to intervene to support vulnerable groups. This support could sometimes be validating to young people’s sense of self. However, such interventions often required liking, sharing or commenting on the content, actions that signalled engagement to the platform and increased the likelihood of further similar recommendations. In this way, efforts to advocate for or support others could inadvertently signal interest to the platform, increasing exposure to similar content and contributing to ongoing emotional burden.[27]

Media can have different effects on different people: smartphone use has little relationship to mental wellness among children whose parents are “very happy” or “pretty happy,” but a much larger one for those whose parents are “not too happy.”[28] Similarly, less use of social media was associated with decreases in depression symptoms among poor children, but among wealthy children more social media use had the same association.[29] Youth who feel a stronger reaction when peers are rejected show a connection between online social interaction and depressive symptoms, while those who react less strongly do not.[30]

The same person may even be affected differently at different ages. Some research has found that boys are most likely to experience harm from social media at ages 14-15 and girls most likely at 11-13 years old, with all genders having a second “window” of vulnerability at age 19. Different circumstances can have an effect as well: social media use was associated with worse mental health among university students who were lonely, but not among those who weren’t lonely.[31]

The content of the media we consume can also affect our mental wellness. News, particularly relating to upsetting events like wars, crime, the economy and the climate crisis, may trigger anxiety, as may misinformation or polarizing content.[32]

Social media, in particular, can also affect our mental wellness by making us focus too much on our mental wellness: “having high expectations for one’s happiness can be detrimental because it makes it more difficult to achieve the level of happiness that we are expecting from a positive event.”[33] Being exposed to “mental health or anxiety-related content” is associated with higher levels of anxiety and a broader concept of “mental disorder,”[34] and social media often promotes misinformation about mental health topics.[35] On the other hand, authentic media portrayals of mental health challenges, such as the panic attacks portrayed in the series Ted Lasso or the film Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, can allow “audiences [to] see themselves in these main characters, and, as a result, create content referencing their own mental health symptoms, share resources, and provide guidance for others.”[36]

Online creators who produce mental-health related content are also pushed to focus on negative impacts and experiences because recommendation algorithms are more likely to promote that content, “creating pressures to sustain vulnerability over time.”[37] The mental wellness industry – which was valued at $131 billion dollars US in 2024, a third more than the global entertainment industry – has also promoted the “message that mental health means feeling good [which] has led many parents and teenagers to its logical corollary, that feeling bad is grounds for serious concern.”[38]

Displacement

The clearest way that media use can harm mental wellness is by displacing things that have a positive impact, such as sleep, exercise, free play and time in nature. But while more screen time generally means less of each of these, reducing screen time doesn’t increase them. Almost half of Canadian children frequently use a screen device after they’ve gone to bed most nights,[39] and each hour spent using screens after bedtime starts is associated with 59 percent more risk of having insomnia and 24 fewer minutes’ sleep.[40] The effect media use has on sleep may be falling, though, according to Tanner Bommersbach, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the University of Wisconsin. While his research found that the number of teens who aren’t getting enough sleep has risen, "teens who have very little screen time are actually seeing a greater rise in insufficient sleep than teens with heavy screen use.”[41] This may explain why a recent Statistics Canada study found that youth who followed screen time guidelines were no more or less likely to get the recommended amount of sleep. Those who didn’t use screens before bed were more likely to get enough sleep, though, suggesting it is specifically media use right before bed and after bedtime that has an impact rather than total screen use.[42]

The relationship between media use and exercise is similarly unclear. For example, a 2025 Statistics Canada study found that young women were the most likely to meet screen time recommendations but the least likely to meet physical activity recommendations. Among teens, boys and girls were equally likely to meet screen time recommendations, but girls were much less likely than boys to meet physical activity recommendations. [43] Another Canadian study found a relationship between digital media use and connection to nature in girls but not in boys, suggesting that the purposes and contexts of media use matter more than the technology itself.[44]

While screens may be displacing physical activity, reducing screen time doesn’t necessarily increase it. In fact, numerous studies have found no association between screen time and outdoor play in children,[45] and kids whose parents restrict their screen time actually spend less time playing outside.[46],[47] Research looking specifically at the question of displacement has found that mobile phone use actually doesn’t displace sleep or physical activity in young teens: instead, time spent with phones seems to come mostly at the expense of other media such as watching TV or movies.[48]

When it comes to other important activities, media use can be a double-edged sword. Hobbies, interests and creative play are all important to children’s well-being, and media can either displace or enable them.[49] Screen use is most likely to cause problems when it meets a need that we aren’t getting elsewhere, or one that is easier to get through digital devices. One of the more common problems associated with smartphones, for example, is anxiety caused by not wanting to miss what your friends might be doing or talking about on social media. What these teens really want, though, is the connection to their friends and the sense of being a part of their lives that social media delivers.[50] Some research has found that social media use[51] and owning a smartphone[52] are actually associated with spending more time with friends offline, while another study found no association between loneliness and time spent on social media – unless the person was in a romantic relationship, in which case up to three hours’ daily use led to significantly less loneliness.[53] Online friendships also “can fulfill the same wants and needs that are traditionally ascribed to in-person friendships… challenging the idea that online relationships are limited by context and channels to be solely surface-level connections”: half of teens have friends they only know online, and two-thirds feel these are “just as important as the friends who they know in person.”[54] A 2026 review of research on social media and social isolation found that “interactive and motivated engagement, such as maintaining relationships or fulfilling companionship needs, was linked to lower social isolation,” while “problematic use may deepen disconnection, particularly among young adults who are digitally active yet socially vulnerable.”[55]

In some cases, of course, media use may displace activities or experiences we don’t want kids to have. For example, some research suggests that time spent on smartphones and social media is responsible for a drop in teenage pregnancy.[56] Using media to displace negative experiences can have a negative impact, though. Although some media use can be an effective coping strategy, using social media to avoid or escape from problems is associated with more symptoms of anxiety and depression, as well as reduced resilience and general wellbeing, while using it for entertainment or socialization is associated with better mental health. (It is, of course, possible that youth with worse mental health are more likely to use social media to avoid or cope with their problems.)[57]

Interference

Using media devices – especially portable ones like smartphones – can also interfere with important things in our lives. This is the likely explanation for the impacts of screen use on very young children, such as “lower levels of vocabulary, communication, writing, numeracy and letter fluency,”[58] as media activities take the place of interacting with caregivers. In the earliest years, screens provide little or no benefit and only displacement. As kids get older, though, they are able to get more from some screen activities. As a result, while minimal screen time at age two yielded the highest language and education scores two and a half years later, moderate-low screen use at age four-and-a-half led to better outcomes at age eight.[59] At age 15, moderate use (one to two hours a day of using screens for leisure) is associated with the highest rates of both life satisfaction and the highest scores in mathematics.[60]

Notifications and other media experiences can also distract us and disrupt our concentration, with the number of notifications we get having a bigger impact than the amount of media time.[61],[62] Similarly, a study of high school students found that the “frequency of phone pickups—but not total screen time—was associated with poorer cognitive control,” even though students’ screen time varied by more than five hours per day.[63]

Almost eight in ten teens say social media distracts them from their work or other responsibilities “often” or “very often.”[64] However, there’s little evidence that smartphones or social media have a long-term effect on teens’ attention span or their ability to carry out complex tasks. In fact, a little distraction can actually help us focus. Still, digital devices do create an environment with more to distract us and encourage habits like multitasking that lead to spending less time and concentration on any particular task. Short-form videos such as TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts are particularly associated with weaker cognition, attention span[65] and concentration in the short term, but this effect is not found with longer videos.,[66]

Media can also distract us when we’re spending time with other people. While we generally recognize when someone else’s media use is drawing their attention away from us,  “people significantly underappreciate the negative impact that their own phone use may have on others’ experiences.”[67]

When parents’ media use interferes with their interactions with their children, it can lead to increased media use by kids and behavioural issues.[68] There’s also some evidence that screen use can make it harder for kids to manage their emotions, partly because digital communication doesn’t deliver emotional cues and partly because teens sometimes use digital media to escape emotionally uncomfortable situations.[69] Research has also found, though, that media-related stress in families is connected not to how much time kids are actually spending on screens, but instead to how guilty parents feel about their kids’ media use.[70] In other words, some of the negative impacts don’t come from the interference itself, but from parents worrying about it.

Agency

There’s increasing evidence that how we think about our screen use is important, too. Taking an “agentic” view – seeing digital technology as something that is under control and which we use at specific times for specific purposes – has been linked to lower rates of anxiety, stress and depression than thinking of screen use in terms of addiction,[71] and youth often report frustration at media use as “something that took up more time than they wanted.”[72] Here, again, we see the “Goldilocks” pattern: teens with moderate social media use are more likely to feel in control of their lives than those who use it less than one hour or more than three hours per day.[73] Overall, “adolescent social media use both supports and thwarts relatedness, autonomy and competence.”[74]

People whose use of smartphones is more automatic and habitual, with a higher number of apps used per session, are more likely to have symptoms of depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).[75] Overall, people who think of themselves as being in control of their social media use spend less time on social media and report better well-being. This association is stronger when looking at people’s self-reported media use than when it was measured accurately, reinforcing the finding that “users’ sense of control is more important for well-being than [social media use] duration or perceptions of its effects.”[76]

A sense of “increasing control and choice” is important to the wellbeing of children and teens,[77] and media may either enable that (by providing them with more independence and agency in either the online or offline worlds) or interfere with it (if they don’t feel in control of their media use or if it is used to reduce, rather than increase, their independence). “Holding a more agentic mindset not only changes how people use social media, but also how they remember and understand its role in their lives.”[78]

This may explain one of the paradoxes of screen use: people feel happier, more energetic and more connected when they cut back on screens—but when we look at the population as a whole, a person's average screen time doesn't predict any of those things.[79] When we look at this through the lens of agency, though, it suggests that it is the act of reducing screen time – of claiming agency over the role that screens play in our lives – that leads to better well-being, rather than the simple amount of time. In the same way, many studies find that active media use (such as making and posting content) is associated with lower levels of loneliness and depression and with better reported quality of life, compared to passive use like simply scrolling feeds or viewing other people’s posts.[80]

Another clue that our sense of agency matters comes from a study of parents’ smartphone use. Their actual use had no impact on their children, but on days when parents thought they’d used their phones more than usual, they were more likely to worry their child’s basic needs weren’t being met.[81]

Agency is an essential element in forming our sense of self and identity,[82] as well as our sense of coherence – our sense of ourselves, our lives, and (in this case) our media use as mindful, meaningful and manageable.[83] When kids use media to help cope with their feelings in constructive ways, such as by listening to music[84] or venting their feelings, it gives them a greater sense of agency. But groups of teens on social media are likely to fall into co-rumination, in which the problem is endlessly discussed and dissected – “It’s the psychological equivalent of picking at a wound” – which makes them feel less in control because they’re unable to move past it.[85]

If kids have a bad day, they generally pick up their phones more often the next day, likely as a way of coping with their feelings,[86] but this can also increase displacement and distraction and can reduce their sense of agency if it leads to habitual use.[87] Those who had higher mindfulness skills, however – in other words, those who were using media more consciously, with more agency – didn’t pick up their phones more often after a bad day.[88]

One of the biggest impacts on our sense of agency is framing media use as an “addiction” or certain media as “addictive.” When these labels are applied people feel more guilty and are less confident in their ability to change.[89] As psychologist Nir Eyal puts it,

When people constantly encounter messages saying, “This is damaging you,” those expectations can influence how they interpret normal emotions or fluctuations … But there’s a difference between saying “This tool is powerful. You need skills to use it well,” and saying “This tool is addictive. You are powerless to resist.” The first framing preserves agency. The second undermines it.[90]

This is an example of what’s called the influence of presumed media influence: “the impact digital technology has on us isn’t just a product of how we use it, but comes in part as a result of the effects that we assume it has on us.”[91] In this case, “the addiction label does not empower users to regain control over their use. Instead, it hinders users by reducing feelings of control, increasing self-blame, and making the experience slightly less positive.”[92]

Media use and vulnerable children

The negative effects of screen use are more powerful on vulnerable children – but so are the positive ones. Vulnerable youth identify both risks and benefits of social media, seeing them as “important avenues for help-seeking, especially when offline support [is] inaccessible,”[93] while people with neuroticism are more likely to experience negative mental health effects from using social media[94] and users with depression are more sensitive to the impact of social media reactions such as “Likes.”[95]

Teens who report having low mental well-being are more likely to say that they feel bad if nobody likes or comments on their posts, to say they’ve felt left out after seeing friends’ posts and to say they’ve had negative experiences on social media, in general. These same teens, though, are more likely to say that social media has an overall positive impact on them, that it makes them feel better about themselves and that it makes them less lonely.[96]

Young people often use media as a way of dealing with difficult circumstances. An analysis of data from the US Centers for Disease Control found that among girls whose parents abused drugs and/or alcohol, those who use social media frequently are about a third less likely to have attempted suicide in the past year (22.6%, compared to 33% among those who rarely use social media) and just over half as likely to have harmed themselves in the past year (6.4% compared to 11.5%).[97] Another study found that levels of media use were strongly associated with adverse childhood experiences such as parents’ divorce, death, or incarceration; violence, mental health issues, or substance abuse in the home; poverty, racial or ethnic mistreatment, and experiencing discrimination on the basis of gender or sex. Since it’s extremely unlikely that any of these experiences were caused by the media use, this strongly suggests that many of the heavy media users were turning to media as a way of dealing with the challenges in their lives.[98] 2SLGTQ+ youth are also more likely to use digital media to find support and community, leading to “higher feelings of social capital.”[99]

This is borne out by evidence that taking access to media away from vulnerable youth seems to put them at increased risk. While some research has found that banning smartphones in schools has a small positive effect on youth mental health overall,[100] one study found that girls in schools where smartphones had been banned were more likely to report some symptoms of depression and to plan suicide.[101] In Canada, Kids Help Phone reports that over a third (34%) of the calls they receive come during school hours, with kids “calling us from the bathroom stall or from the principal’s office, or from their cellphone outside.”[102] Similarly, an Australian mental health group reported that one in 10 teens who reached out to them in the months leading up to that country’s ban on social media were worried about the impact that losing access to it would have on their mental health.[103]

What youth say about media use

Studies that have asked young people how they feel about screen use have generally found it has more positive than negative impacts on them. Some of these benefits include making them feel less lonely,[104] helping them make new friends and/or keep in touch with friends and family[105] and letting them connect with support and health services.[106]

However, teens often say that screen use can have negative effects, as well – especially on other teens[107] and on their parents.[108] Kids see interference as negative for families whether it’s the children or the parents who are being distracted, while parents generally only see interference from kids’ media use as having a negative effect.[109] More than three-quarters (78 percent) of young people worry about the impact of media use on their mental health.[110] Many teens have taken at least some steps to manage their screen use, such as trying to limit how much time they spend on social media or playing video games.[111]

Young Canadians have conflicting views when it comes to their device use. Just under half sometimes worry that they spend too much time online; however, youth who worry they spend too much time online report essentially the same levels of media use as those who don’t, suggesting that this worry doesn’t spur meaningful changes in behaviour.[112] It may be, however, that these worries are related not to how much time youth are spending online but to what they are experiencing during that time. For instance, youth who had engaged in or experienced meanness and cruelty online were more likely to worry they spend too much time online,[113] as were those who had sent sexts.[114]

While young people often recognize that they have problems managing their screen use, many are receiving conflicting messages from their parents. Around 60 percent of parents say they spend too much time on their smartphones and 68 percent report being distracted by their phone while spending time with their children.[115] When kids were asked what media use rules parents should follow, they said: “Put down the phone when your child is trying to say something important,” “Don’t spend all your free time on this stuff” and “Practice what you preach.”[116]

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