It’s all fun and games until your child develops depression, am I right? Another study just confirmed pre-teens who spend a lot of time on social media are more likely to develop depressive symptoms in the future — and this massive study found the same results apply across “a racially and economically diverse sample of children.”
Researchers at the University of California at San Francisco conducted a three-year study of nearly 12,000 pre-teens beginning at age 9 and 10, which was published in the American Medical Journal’s association journal JAMA in May 2025. They found that an increase in social media use predicted a future rise in symptoms of depression.
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Social Media Use Predicted Depressive Symptoms
During the study, researchers found that kids aged 9 spent about 7 minutes per day on social media apps, but this number went up by 10 by age 13, with an average of 74 minutes per day spent on social media. During the same timeframe, reported depression symptoms jumped 35 percent.
“Social media does seem to be a risk factor for future depression, or worsening depressive symptoms,” lead author of the study Jason Nagata, who is an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of California at San Francisco, told Washington Post. “But kids who were already depressed didn’t necessarily report using social media more in subsequent years.” This pattern is “a new finding,” he added.
We have known that social media and declining mental health is linked. In May 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General at the time, Dr. Vivek Murthy, issued an advisory on youth mental health and social media. “The most common question parents ask me is, ‘is social media safe for my kids?’. The answer is that we don’t have enough evidence to say it’s safe, and in fact, there is growing evidence that social media use is associated with harm to young people’s mental health,” he said in a statement.
“Children are exposed to harmful content on social media, ranging from violent and sexual content, to bullying and harassment,” Dr. Murthy continued. “And for too many children, social media use is compromising their sleep and valuable in-person time with family and friends. We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis — one that we must urgently address.”
Nagata’s new study is helping to prove this statement and understand why. It’s the largest long-term study of brain development and child health ever conducted in the US, Nagata explained, adding that this study followed the same children year after to year to track their different behaviors and symptoms of depression.
Obviously, other factors can cause depression in children, such as the state of the world, their economic situation, and genetic factors. But social media use is a link that is actually under a parent’s control. The study found that 20 percent of 9- and 10-year-olds already had social media accounts, despite the minimum age requirement being 13. By age 11-12, two-thirds of them had social media accounts, with TikTok being the most prevalent followed by Instagram and Snapchat.
“To me, this study shows that age verification does not work currently,” Nagata told the outlet. “Even though we have rules and laws, it does seem like most kids are tech savvy enough that they can get around them.”
Cyberbullying
Social media use in and of itself isn’t necessarily the problem. It could be that the more kids are on social media apps, the more they will experience cyberbullying.
From data gathered from the same study, Nagata and the researchers published an additional study in the Lancet Regional Health – Americas journal that found children ages 11-12 who experienced cyberbullying were more than twice as likely to report experiencing suicidal ideation or a suicide attempt within the following year. They were also more likely to experience with substance use, including marijuana, alcohol, and tobacco.
Time Waster
Another potential link between social media use and depressive symptoms are the things kids are giving up in order to be on their screens more.
“We only have 24 hours in the day, and the more time that kids are spending on screens and on social media, even if content is fine and they’re not being bullied — that’s still time that they’re not spending doing other things that could be good for their health, like sleep or physical activity,” Nagata told Washington Post.
On the other hand, a study of 1,500 kids ages 11-13 by the University of South Florida in March 2025, found that children with smartphones did better on nearly every measure or wellbeing assessed than kids without. Tweens with smartphones reported meeting up with friends more frequently during the week and were less likely to report feeling depressed or cyberbullied compared to kids without phones.
However, they did discover that kids who publicly posted or shared images online were more likely to experience adverse outcomes “more than any other single measure.” These frequent posters were more likely to report having moderate or severe symptoms of depression, as well as severe symptoms of anxiety. The ones who didn’t post as much were also getting more sleep on school nights.
What Can Parents Do?
The best thing parents can do is take a bigger break from their own screens. Nagata said, “One of the biggest predictors of preteen screen use is adult screen use.”
Another thing parents can do is get their kids help with mental health. Especially because many teens are turning to social media for tips on dealing with mental health issues. A Pew Research Center study found that over a third of US teens seek out mental health content on social media, with nearly two-thirds of those who do saying it’s important to them.
Everett, 14, part of SheKnows Teen Council, previously told us that they turn to influencers when they don’t want to talk to their parents. “If it’s something that you don’t feel like your parents could either understand, relate to, or just simply don’t want to know, then it’s necessary to go on social media and talk to friends or look through relatable videos,” he said.
In summary, avoiding getting your pre-teen a phone, monitoring their usage, keeping it out of their rooms at night, and modeling healthy phone-life balance are all great ways parents can help their kids stay on the right track. And if they do develop symptoms of anxiety or depression, getting them the mental health they need is vital.
Before you go, check out these celebrities who have shared their technology rules for their kids.
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