The digital environment has rapidly become a key feature of young people’s lives. While digital engagement can bring connection, support and information, links have been made to increased risks in mental health difficulties, and this is an area of significant public and policy concern.
However, there is a lack of understanding about how young people’s digital engagement interacts with their mental health outcomes, and limited causal evidence, which several of the teams have sought to address.
Understanding more about young people’s digital lives
Digital Youth’s Dynamic Interplay of Online Risk and Resilience in Adolescence (DIORA) project has developed new models and tools to move beyond simplistic screen time metrics and offer a richer understanding of young people’s digital activities and emotional reactions.
The programme has identified that what young people do online and how it makes them feel matters for their mental health, much more than the time they spend online. Most online experiences are positive, but social comparisons such as comparing appearance or popularity are frequent and strongly associated with increased depression and lower wellbeing. Negative feelings about the self (for example, feeling judged, insecure, rejected) and feeling stressed are common, and strongly linked to poorer mental health. Conversely, positive feelings (for example feeling calm, supported, or loved) are also frequent and associated with lower depression and higher wellbeing.
Importantly, the team have found that young people show agency in managing their digital risks, such as seeking positive content and avoiding harmful interactions, and are not passive to their online experiences.
The Digital Youth team have also identified twelve possible ways to bolster young people’s mental health resilience in the face of cyberbullying, which could complement efforts to prevent cyberbullying entirely. Happiness with friends and life in general were particularly strong buffers.
One of the barriers to understanding the relationship between social media use and mental health has been a lack of robust and relevant measures. The #So.Me team explored young people’s experiences, motivations and perceptions of their social media use relating to mental health and wellbeing, which helped inform eight domains included in their new measure, currently being tested.
Digital risk among young people with pre-existing mental health difficulties
While life online provides opportunities for social connection and support, and allows distraction from mental health problems, Digital Youth’s review of the evidence also found some clinically vulnerable young people find it difficult to self-regulate their digital engagement, and their experiences online can exacerbate psychological difficulties or lead to the normalisation of pathological behaviour.
For example, young people in the EDIFY study with experience of disordered eating or an eating disorder described how the personalised nature of the TikTok algorithm could interact with and exacerbate some eating disorder-related thoughts and behaviours, leading some into what they described as negative echo-chambers of content.
The #BeSeen engagement award explored young people’s views about others’ motivations for sharing images of self-harm online, finding a mixture of attitudes, with some perceiving this as attention-seeking, while others thought of it as help-seeking or sharing of pain. Participants discussed the potential impacts on others and how this content should be signalled.
Supporting digital literacy
Several of the programmes have highlighted the role of digital literacy in supporting young people’s agency in managing digital risks, including in policy consultation responses and evidence submissions.
They have also produced resources to help with this, including
- A short animation for young people from the Digital Youth team explaining the importance of digital balance.
- Guidance on consuming and producing social media content from the EDIFY team, co-produced with young people with lived experience of disordered eating and colleagues from BEAT.
- Free PSHE materials for years 7 to 9 focused on developing digital literacy skills, created by the #So.Me team with additional funding, in response to the challenges that parents, carers and teachers face in supporting young people’s social media use, summarised in this webinar.
- Good practice indicators from the Digital Dialogues engagement award to support mental health practitioners incorporate helpful discussions about digital activities in consultations with young people, along with prompts. This includes resources to suggest to young people, such as online safety mechanisms and roadmaps for managing common scenarios such as doom-scrolling and engaging with content about disordered eating.
- Films of the creative practices explored by young people in the #BeSeen engagement award as alternatives to photographic images of self-harm.