José César Perales
Professor in the department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Granada
With regard to the proposal to ban access to social media before the age of 16 in Spain, this would be somewhat in line with what Australia has already implemented and what France wants to implement, although in France the age limit has been set at 15. In the United Kingdom, they are considering doing something similar, and it is possible that other European Union countries will also take similar measures.
In my view, this is a largely arbitrary measure, firstly in terms of age, because setting 14, 15 or 16 years old is a decision. Of course, a limit has to be set somewhere, but it seems that this is probably a considerably high age and that, at present, the available evidence regarding the damage that access to and use of social media can do to the mental health of adolescents does not justify setting any threshold, let alone a fairly conservative threshold such as 16 years of age.
In reality, the quality of the evidence on the impact of social media use on mental health is quite low. In other words, there is no unanimous agreement that such an impact exists. The studies that do exist are, for the most part, correlational, and there is fairly widespread agreement that these correlations are modest in magnitude. But more importantly, when the possible contribution of third variables or the possibility that the direction is not unidirectional from social media to mental health but rather in the opposite direction, i.e., from mental health to social media use, or bidirectional, is adequately controlled for, the magnitude of these relationships is further reduced.
At best, what we do know is that the impact of social media use on adolescent mental health, if causal, would be very modest and comparatively much smaller than the impact of other factors. For example, there is fairly solid research on the impact of academic pressure on adolescent mental health, and we know that the size of that effect is probably an order of magnitude greater than the size of the effect attributable to social media. So, on the one hand, a drastic measure is being taken on a fairly weak evidence base, and to a large extent, that is because it is a popular measure.
It is a measure that I believe most of the population, today believes to be positive and, therefore, relatively easy to take, with few political costs, because it is a decision with which the majority of the population would agree, and relatively easy in the sense that it is easier to take a decision regarding the prohibition of access than decisions that would probably be much more effective and that have more to do with the regulation of social media itself. Today, the large companies that offer these services have few limitations when it comes to the design of social networks or devices.
Probably, if we understood well the mechanisms through which mental health and social media use are linked, regulating issues related to the design of devices and social media, increasing algorithmic transparency or influencing the way these algorithms are designed would be much more effective than what is currently being attempted.
Will this have any kind of positive impact on mental health? I don't think so. If we then seriously evaluate the effect of these measures, we will see that the impact is very modest. Furthermore, there are possible negative effects on specific communities or groups, for whom a large part of their social capital resources are channelled through social media. I am thinking, for example, of minorities based on sexual orientation, gender identity, people with disabilities, etc., who find social support and important resources on social media.
I think it is a hasty measure, taken with little quality evidence, whose effects we do not yet fully understand, but which is relatively easy to take in political and popular terms.