The Unintended Consequences of Banning Social Media by Sarah M. Coyne SOURCE: Psychology Today

The link between social media and mental health is not as big as you think. In fact, many studies show that it might even be negligible. For example, meta-analyses bringing together all the studies on this topic tend to bring back correlations of around .10, depending on the study, like the difference in height between a 15 and a 16-year-old girl. This is really quite small considering the attention we have been giving this question. Indeed, our research examined the time spent on social media, depression, and anxiety across the entire course of adolescence. We did not find a noticeable effect of social media on mental health when examined at the individual level.