Reacción a "A study claims that social media bans for teenagers lack evidence and may carry risks"

"To begin with, as the article itself acknowledges, the authors have direct financial ties to companies that would be harmed by the ban: Candice Odgers, the study's supervisor, is a member of YouTube's Youth and Families Advisory Committee, an entity that, along with Meta, was convicted by a jury in Los Angeles in March 2026 for the addictive design of its platforms to generate addiction in minors. Stephen Schueller, for his part, advises Headspace, a digital mental health company with a commercial interest in a technological, rather than regulatory, solution to youth distress. And Monika Lind, as she herself admits, has a stake in Ksana Health, also in the same sector.

Furthermore, this article is a perspective, not a study in itself; it merely reviews what has already been published, incorporating recommendations that, in my opinion, are entirely self-serving. It compiles other studies such as Ferguson (2024), which concludes that the effects are indistinguishable from zero, and Burnell et al. (2025) which find a small but positive effect (g = 0.17), concluding that the restriction "will probably not be the most effective method." It is quite clear that the data are not overwhelming. In the realm of data interpretation, the same evidence that does not serve to justify the measure does, curiously, serve to question it: it dismisses existing clinical trials as insufficient evidence to support the bans (because they do not include minors), but immediately uses them to conclude that the effects of the restriction are small or inconsistent. Personally, I find a ruling in a trial where sufficient evidence has been presented to determine harm and a design for addiction, such as the one I mentioned above, more convincing.”

How does this fit with the evidence that was already known, and what are the implications? Are bans advisable?

“There is nothing new in the article: it was already known that clinical trials on social media restriction were scarce, brief, and used adult university students as their study population, not adolescents.” That said, what it omits is more important, such as this year's ruling against Meta and YouTube, in which it was determined that they intentionally designed (not as an unintended consequence) their platforms to generate addiction in minors, with features like infinite scrolling, autoplay, and 'like' counters with the clear intention of fostering compulsive consumption. It also fails to cite the report by the U.S. Surgeon General, which has for years identified this design as a public health problem, or the extensive literature on the attention economy, which precisely documents the mechanisms by which platforms exploit the cognitive vulnerability inherent in adolescent development.

Regarding whether bans are advisable, I would say that, on their own, no. No complex problem is solved with simple or one-dimensional solutions and requires a plethora of measures, but that is no reason not to adopt those that are known to have a positive impact, however small. Using a supposed lack of scientific evidence as a pretext for simply doing nothing is a mistake and a fallacy. In public health, precautionary measures do not require absolute certainty, but rather reasonable indications of harm, proportionality, and the absence of proven effective alternatives. In my opinion, all three elements are more than sufficiently present, and the courts have consistently recognized this.