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.

The authors of the paper recently published in Frontiers in Developmental Psychology present conclusions based on a review of various experimental studies investigating the effect of restricting access to social media on well-being or mental health. Although they indicate that most of the reviewed studies demonstrated beneficial effects after restricting access, the authors argue that methodological shortcomings call these apparent benefits into question. This leads them to contend that some countries are prohibiting minors' access to social media without knowing what effects this measure will have on their health.

Is limiting minors' access to social media truly unfounded? In their literature review, the authors of this new study do not indicate that they followed the rigorous methodological requirements of a systematic review: they do not adequately explain, for example, the criteria used to select the reviewed studies, the populations studied, how many studies were excluded and why, or exactly which interventions and effects were evaluated. Furthermore, the authors indicate that they chose to select only randomized experimental studies, a very restrictive criterion that disregards evidence from other studies that may have used less conclusive methodologies, but ones more common in real-life settings, where assessments are often based on pre-experimental and quasi-experimental designs, or observational studies.

Should we then restrict minors' access to social media? There is evidence that time spent on social media interferes with healthier behaviors, reducing time spent on physical activity, sleep, and personal interaction. In addition, social media frequently exposes minors to content that promotes risky behaviors, including the use of tobacco products, alcohol, and strategies for achieving extreme thinness. There is also some evidence that time spent on social media could, at least in some cases, be associated with certain mental disorders. However, proposing a ban on minors' access to social media can be a difficult measure to implement and overlooks the need to promote other more effective, necessary, and ethical actions, such as limiting harmful content (such as the spread of false content or the promotion of violence, the use of addictive substances, unhealthy diets, etc.), or the use of addictive design strategies by platforms that base their profits on the connection time of their users.

This article is written by a team led by Candice L. Odgers, one of the most skeptical authors regarding the usefulness of social media bans and, in general, regarding the evidence on the impact of social media on adolescent mental health.

The article is neither a systematic review nor a meta-analysis. Instead, it draws on two previous meta-analyses of experimental studies—randomized controlled trials on restricting access to social media—that have measured the impact on different aspects of mental health. They start from the premise that almost all the evidence on the relationship between mental health or social media use and mental health is correlational research, and that from this research it is practically impossible to conclude that social media has a causal impact on mental health, both adolescent and adult, and that, obviously, this implies the need for experimental studies. Hence the motivation for conducting the review specifically on studies with this methodology.

In other words, they don't delve too deeply into purely correlational studies, because they understand that these studies have inherent limitations that are very difficult to overcome, and therefore they focus solely on experimental studies.

A significant limitation of this article is that it could essentially be considered an interpretive or narrative review. They also don't perform a quantitative synthesis or a quality analysis of each of these studies. That is, all they do is identify and count the studies that have been conducted, both those included in previous meta-analyses and those they have found new, and briefly summarize the characteristics and conclusions of each, along with the overall conclusion, which is something we already knew: that the evidence is mixed, that the effects found are generally modest, and that the methodology is highly variable.

Another important element is that these types of interventions, unfortunately, cannot be subjected to a double-blind procedure, because obviously the participants in these studies know that they are participating in a study intended to see whether or not limiting access to social media has an impact on their mental health, and therefore, this generates expectancy effects.

And the most important limitation that this team describes for justifying regulations on the use of social media in adolescents is that none of these studies were conducted with adolescents. They are studies generally carried out with an adult population. In some studies, there are participants under the age of 18; the youngest participants they have identified are 16 years old. Therefore, any findings in these studies could hardly be generalized in one way or another to the adolescent population.

In practical terms, what this means is that the scientific evidence available at this time does not support the usefulness of the measures being taken in countries like Australia and those planned for countries like Great Britain or Spain. Regulators are rushing to ban social media up to a certain age, in most cases up to 16, believing this can have a positive impact on adolescents' mental health. However, we currently lack evidence to support the effectiveness of this measure. Above all, there is no evidence to support its effectiveness compared to other options, such as regulating how social media operates without resorting to a total ban. They also argue that, aside from the lack of evidence regarding the potential positive impacts of social media bans, the potential negative impacts and practical difficulties of implementing such a ban have not yet been adequately assessed. Furthermore, they point out that limiting or completely prohibiting adolescents' access to social media could restrict rights, such as access to support networks or certain social, psychological, or emotional resources that might be important for these young people.

Finally, they emphasize the importance of evaluating the impacts of these measures in a methodologically sound and systematic way. Why? Because by definition, when legislation is applied in a jurisdiction, there is no control group. That is, all we can observe is how certain aspects of mental health or adolescent functioning change from before to after, but a simple change without a control group is not a powerful methodology for establishing the causal impact of a policy.

There are methodologies that do allow us to approach making a causal inference, but they are complex and require that these policies be implemented with the intention of conducting an impact assessment. Typically, in the minds of legislators, or of the governments and institutions that implement these policies, impact assessment is not a priority, or perhaps there is a lack of awareness regarding the importance of implementing these policies in a particular way so that solid inferences can later be drawn from the observed changes.

Therefore, in summary, I believe that the article provides a fairly objective and comprehensive overview of the available evidence on what we know (which is actually quite limited) about the impact that measures prohibiting or limiting the use of social media might have on adolescent mental health, which currently places us in a position of great uncertainty. In that sense, I agree with the study's conclusions, but at the same time, I acknowledge that it is not particularly strong from a methodological standpoint. Ultimately, what it presents is a specific position from a very specific group of academic authors, with whom I tend to agree, but it doesn't offer much new information beyond what was already known because it doesn't use a rigorous review methodology.

Therefore, it remains an informed opinion piece that warns us of the need to be much more systematic and careful than we have been to date, and that offers some recommendations that I find very sound on how to implement regulations regarding the use of social media in adolescence and how to measure their impact. Beyond that, I don't think it's an article whose novelty would have justified its publication in a more prestigious journal, and that's probably why it's published in a Frontiers journal and not in a public health journal with greater scientific prestige.

This is a novel article that concludes there is no scientific evidence to justify banning social media for minors under 16, as has already been done in Australia and is planned for many other countries such as Denmark, France, and Spain.

The lack of evidence doesn't necessarily mean something is ineffective; therefore, I believe we should be cautious with the study's conclusions. It is a comprehensive but not systematic review. Furthermore, to determine whether the effect of the ban is null, harmful, or protective, a meta-analysis would be necessary.

The quasi-experiments reviewed lasted approximately one month, during which it may be true that young people only experience the negative effects of non-use; it is possible that the positive consequences appear in the long term. However, the limitations of the study are not addressed.

Young people already exhibit higher rates of loneliness than any other population group; perhaps social media is behind these results. Finally, the reasoning that something prohibited can provoke or increase the behavior that one is trying to reduce is appropriate, hence the great importance of accompaniment and communication with adolescents.