Why social media harms girls earlier than boys

The adverse effects of social media consumption affect girls earlier in life than boys, mental health researchers have established.

A study published by Nature Communications shows that tweens and teens experience negative effects of WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube use at disparate stages of their lives depending on their biological sex.

Researchers found that girls experience harmful mental effects of the use of such platforms which lowers their life satisfaction when they are 11 to 13 years old while similar effects catch with boys at the age of between 14 and 15 years.

Sensitivity to social media use might be linked to developmental differences, like changes in the brain’s structure or puberty, which occurs later in boys than in girls, the study indicates.

“Adolescence is a time of cognitive, biological and social change, all of which are intertwined, making it difficult to disentangle one factor from another,” says study author Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, a psychologist at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom (UK).

This is after the team of scientists that included psychologists, neuroscientists and modellers analysed UK datasets comprising some 17,000 tweens and teens.

Over the last decade, studies have shown that online threats, stalking, online sexual harassment, offensive name-calling, body shaming, bullying and impersonation have had a significant effect on the self-esteem and mental wellness of social media users aged under 18.

Dr Amy Orben, the research lead at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, who led the study said the link between social media use and mental well-being is very complex.

“Changes within our bodies, such as brain development and puberty, and our social circumstances make us vulnerable at particular times of our lives.”

The researchers also found that social media use predicts lower life satisfaction at 19 years old in both sexes. While the study authors aren’t sure why that’s the case, it could be that many people go through significant life transitions and may rely more heavily on social media around that age.

“With our findings, rather than debating whether or not the link exists, we can now focus on the periods of our adolescence where we now know we might be most at risk and use this as a springboard to explore some of the really interesting questions,” Dr Orben added.

A study conducted in 2018 by researchers from the University of Essex found a link between social media use in childhood and poorer psychological well-being in adolescence. And not surprisingly, it’s stronger for girls than boys.

The researchers looked at data from almost 10,000 families in the UK from 2009 to 2015. The children in the study were ten at the first time point and up to 15 years old at last.

Their mental health was assessed using two reliable surveys, which measured happiness and wellbeing across different parts of their lives and social and emotional challenges.

Girls used social media more than boys, and their mental health seemed to suffer from it. At age 10, 10 per cent of girls were on social media for an hour a day, versus seven per cent of boys.

But at age 15, the disparity grew: 43 per cent of girls were using it at least an hour per day, compared to 31 per cent of boys. At age 10, girls reported lower levels of happiness, and they reported more social and emotional difficulties as they aged than boys.

American psychological researcher Jean Twenge’s 2017 survey found that teens who spend more hours a day on social media had an increased risk for depression compared to those who spend less.

Here, too, the connection was stronger for girls than boys. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been tracking the rise in depression and suicide among young people in recent years, and its researchers believe strongly that social media is involved.

The study’s authors suggest that part of what may be behind the link is how girls use social media as they may be more likely to make comparisons between themselves and others —and earlier research has shown that it’s the comparison-making, in either direction, that seems to be a root cause of social media’s negative effects.

However, boys’ levels of unhappiness also rose with time, but not as much as girls’.  The authors say it may be that they’re online for different reasons, like gaming which may also affect their mental health.

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