New Study: No, Social Media Does Not Hurt Offline Friendships For Kids

We keep pointing to research that suggests the narrative around “social media is bad for kids” is simply not supported by the data. Over and over again, we see studies that suggest that adults are overreacting to a few limited cases. Sometimes, problematic social media use seems to be due to a lack of systems in place to help with mental health issues, leading kids to spend more time on social media because they aren’t getting the support and help that they need.

One of the key points that came out of Jonathan Haidt’s problematic recent book was that he claimed one of the real downsides to social media was that it took kids away from spending time with other kids. And, this might feel reasonable. Lots of parents, certainly, have stories of kids staring at mobile device screens and seeming to have a less active social life from when the parents were kids.

But is it actually accurate?

A fascinating new study out of Norway suggests that Haidt (and the conventional wisdom many people believe about this) could be absolutely wrong.

Using five waves of biennially collected data from a birth cohort assessed throughout age 10–18 years (n = 812), we found that increased social media use predicted more time with friends offline but was unrelated to future changes in social skills. Age and sex did not moderate these associations but increased social media use predicted declined social skills among those high in social anxiety symptoms. The findings suggest that social media use may neither harm nor benefit the development of social skills and may promote, rather than displace, offline interaction with friends during adolescence. However, increased social media use may pose a risk for reduced social skills in socially anxious individuals.

Again, this seems to support much of the previous data we’ve seen suggesting that social media use is not inherently harmful for kids, and could actually be helpful in creating a new avenue for socializing with other kids in some cases.

But, the second part of the findings also confirms the other point we’ve raised here. For some adolescents, often those who are already struggling with mental health, they may end up turning to social media in response to a lack of other resources and help. This seems to be supported by the finding that social media could “pose a risk of reduced social skills in socially anxious individuals.”

Both of these findings support what we’ve been discussing all along: rather than focusing on outright bans for social media, the better focus should be on providing more mental health resources for kids (perhaps even inserting some of those resources and tools into social media apps) and working on better ways to determine that small cohort who are struggling.

Obviously, there may also be limits to this research as well. It’s based on an ongoing study in Trondheim, Norway, doing a long-term study on children born there in 2003 and 2004. It is entirely possible that young people in Trondheim are not representative of the wider world (or even just young people in Norway). But, at the very least, the depth and detail in the Trondheim Early Secure Study (TESS) suggests that they have pretty detailed data on this particular cohort.

Because the initial, overarching aim of TESS was to study mental health, we oversampled for children with emotional and behavioral problems, thus increasing variance and statistical power. More specifically, children were allocated to four strata according to their SDQ scores (cut-offs: 0–4, 5–8, 9–11, and 12–40), and the probability of selection increased with increasing SDQ scores (0.37, 0.48, 0.70, and 0.89 in the four strata, respectively (i.e., the higher SDQ scores, the higher odds for being drawn to the study)). This oversampling was corrected for in the analyses. In total, 1250 of those who consented were drawn to participate. From age 4 onwards (N = 1007) participants have been thoroughly assessed at the university clinic every second year, with 8 data waves completed, including information from the participant’s parents and teachers.

Also, the research on social media use was pretty in-depth as well and didn’t just rely on kids checking a box or something.

Social media use was assessed by semi-structured interviews conducted by the same trained personnel at all measurement points. Participants were asked about platforms used, overall frequency of use, and specific social media behavior. The main outcome constitutes the monthly sum of liking, commenting, and posting, which captured the participants’ responses to the following questions: 1)‘How often do you like other’s updates?‘; 2) ‘How often do you write comments to other’s updates or photos?‘; 3) ‘How often do you post (written) updates on your own social media sites?‘; 4) ‘How often do you post photos’? At ages 16 and 18, we also asked 5) ‘How often do you post selfies?‘. The questions were not specific to certain social media platforms, but as the participants were interviewed, the interviewers would provide examples of social media sites if needed, or in other ways facilitate a correct recall (e.g., ‘If you think about last week … ‘).

We also validated our main analysis and tested whether the results were replicated when using an alternative means of measuring the frequency of social media use, captured by interview at ages 10, 12, and 14 (total frequency of checking social media per day) and objectively measured at ages 16 and 18 (daily time spent on social media apps according to the phone’s screen time application).

They also closely measured time spent with friends through structured interviews. The data here appears to be pretty robust, whether or not the sample is representative of a wider set of young people.

While this particular research is the first of its kind, it seems to align with some other previous research:

To the best of our knowledge, the present study is the first to examine the relation between social media use and time spent with offline friends at the within-person level and capturing the years from late childhood to emerging adulthood. Importantly, during adolescence the boundaries between offline and online peer interactions are blurred, with offline friends also being online friends (van Zalk et al., 2020) being the new norm.

Our results align with studies showing that connecting with others and maintaining relationships are important motivations for adolescents’ use of social media (Ellison et al., 2007; Kircaburun et al., 2020; Park et al., 2009), connecting with people known from offline contexts being of particular importance (Reich et al., 2012). Use of online resources is found to reinforce already existing friendships (Desjarlais & Willoughby, 2010), which may explain why social media use promotes more time spent with friends face-to-face. Although one hypothesized mechanism for the association between social media use and time spent with friends is increased closeness with friends, potentially due to more self-disclosure, neither friendship closeness nor social anxiety moderated effects in the current study. However, it should be noted that we assessed closeness to best friend, whereas the outcome measure (i.e., time spent with friends face-to-face) did not differentiate between best friend and other friends, possibly contributing to the null finding.

Online interactions not only fuel existing relationships, but also enhance the initiation of new ones (Koutamanis et al., 2013), with more than half of US adolescents having made new friends online (Lenhart, 2015). Thus, it might also be that the relationship between increased social media use and time spent with friends is partly due to new friendships.

At the very least, this brings us back to where we were before, noting that the issue of kids and mental health, especially as it relates to social media use, is complicated. It does not appear to be as simple as “good” or “bad.” It’s good for some people. It’s bad for some people.

But, the idea that it somehow replaces in-person interactions does not appear to be supported by this particular study of this particular group of kids. Instead, it suggests the opposite.