Christian Montag, Centre for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Institute of Collaborative Innovation, University of Macau, Macao, China

Worldwide it is debated if social media should be banned in childhood and adolescence. Recently, the government of Australia even proposed to ban social media until the age of 16. In other countries the age barrier for social media use is often 13. But these age barriers are mostly not enforced.
In the present article, problems around social media use are discussed and it is reflected upon how to best protect young minds from harm on the platforms. Reflections on the appropriate age to use social media are also provided.
Keywords: social media, age, harm, children, adolescence, addiction, eating disorders, cyberbullying, learning

1.     Background

At the moment more than five billion people use a social media service (Dixon, 2024) with many of its users being minors. Getting exact numbers on minor-aged users is difficult, because use of social media often is not allowed before the age of 13. Recent data from the US suggest that 49% of 10-12-year-olds from the US use social media (as assessed via self-report of their caretakers).[1] Aside from these numbers, many readers will likely know someone of a younger age navigating platforms such as TikTok, YouTube or Instagram.

In 2024 the book Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt stimulated a debate on the adverse effects of social media use (Haidt, 2024). In this book, Haidt proposed that underprotection in the online world and overprotection in the offline world might be the cause for the mental health crisis in adolescence in the US (Haidt, 2024). Many years of psychiatric research make it very unlikely that it is that simple, because it is well known that psychopathologies share both a nature and a nurture component (Polderman et al., 2015), whereas it has also been put forward that many environmental influences shape our well-being (Biglan et al., 2012).

This said, the literature shows that several problems around social media platforms exist and might also contribute to mental illness. Therefore, it is clear that vulnerable groups such as children need to be protected from harm while being on the platforms and also from harm being a consequence of using these platforms (Montag, Demetrovics, et al., 2024).

Should such protection measures be as radical as proposed by the Australian government aiming to ban social media before the age of 16?[2] Or are there other better approaches? The present short article provides an overview on the current state of affairs regarding social media use and well-being, and then also reflects upon best policies around regulation of social media in childhood and adolescence.

2.     Artificial intelligence and the data business model behind social media

Most social media platforms operate with a surveillance capitalism model (Zuboff, 2015). In short, users leave digital footprints while interacting with the platforms. The digital footprints are studied to better understand what users’ interests are and to infer further psychological characteristics of the users. This information can be used for showing personalized ads, which have been mentioned to increase click and buy rates (Matz et al., 2017) and might even change voting intentions (Zarouali et al., 2020). Against the background of this business model, it becomes clear that the industry has a keen interest in prolonging online time mainly for two reasons: First, longer online time means more digital footprints from the users, which can be exploited. Second, longer online time also means that people see more ads on the platforms (“attention economy”). And the social media industry is being paid for providing enterprises with the chance to show their ads on the platforms.

It comes not as a surprise that artificial intelligence (AI) plays an important role on social media platforms (Montag, Yang, et al., 2025): On the one hand, AI supports the study of digital footprints to understand what users are interested in. On the other hand, AI is at the heart of social media’s recommendation engine (Guha, 2021), hence supporting the personalization process of the social media feed. Aside from design features such as “Likes” and endless scrolling, the personalization of content can also be seen as a design feature, because “personalization” likely also prolongs online time. Otherwise users would often see non-interesting information in their feeds, which would clearly result in lower online time (Montag et al., 2019). But it is a fine line between filtering content for users according to their (estimated) interests – and by this reducing the cognitive burden of choosing from millions of content pieces – and glueing users to the screens of their smartphones.

3.     Can a data business model aiming at prolonging online time be healthy?

In general, the question arises if a business model aiming at prolongation of online time can be healthy. In particular this question is valid, as the current business model also bases on the surveillance of users, hence reducing privacy (Montag & Elhai, 2023b; Montag & Hegelich, 2020). Loss of privacy and prolongation of online time need to be seen very critical in general, but in particular when we discuss use of these products in children and adolescents. Children and adolescents represent very vulnerable user groups with unique psychodevelopmental tasks to fulfill (Montag, Demetrovics, et al., 2025): The classic works of Erik Erikson (Erikson & Erikson, 1998) but also from the neurosciences such as by Jaak Panksepp (Panksepp, 1998) stressed that young kids need sufficient play time to foster motoric skills and social competencies. In elementary school children more and more learn to be part of social groups (outside from the core family) and they start to learn how to regulate their behaviors to focus on school lessons. In adolescence and with the upcoming of puberty, the development of one’s own identity and sexuality become focal points of psychodevelopment. If an industry aims at taking every minute of its users, how can this work in favor of the successful fulfillment of psychodevelopmental tasks of children (Montag, Demetrovics, et al., 2025)? Although social media represents a highly attractive idea allowing users to interact with each other, to establish social capital and to reach out from one to many, the current prevailing business case needs to be seen as problematic in terms of fostering healthy use behavior. Hence, protection of minors also means to rethink the business model behind social media products. In a recent paper we thought about alternatives, which will not be further discussed here (Dhawan et al., 2022).

Complicating matters, it should be mentioned that the debate centering solely around screen time to understand users’ well-being is too constricted. In the meanwhile, it is well-known that associations between screen time and well-being are very small, but these meta-analytical findings had no focus on children and adolescents (Huang, 2017). In order to shed light on the well-being of users, we need to include information about age, gender, personality, use motives and also on how people are using social media (Montag, Yang, et al., 2021). And for sure younger age is robustly associated with more excessive use of social media (Cheng et al., 2021), likely due to higher self-regulation problems due to the still ongoing neurodevelopmental processes. Therefore, I repeat again that for me an industry maximizing time on the platforms stands in stark contrast with the needed time for the fulfillment of relevant psychodevelopmental tasks of young minds. Unfortunately, to my knowledge empirical research on associations between social media use and fulfillment of such psychodevelopmental tasks in young age is scant.

4.     Is excessive social media use of addictive nature?

A highly relevant research question focuses on understanding if excessive social media use is best characterized by addictive behaviors. This is also mirrored in the EU’s regulatory Digital Services Act speaking, in its preamble 81, of online platforms, “which may cause addictive behaviours.”[3] Of note, it is important to say that not everyone spending much time on social media is “addicted”, but for sure those who are addicted spend much time on the platforms.

Considering the International Classification of Diseases’ 11th edition from the World Health Organization, social media addiction is currently not an officially recognized disorder. Since 2019 Gaming Disorder – including the category of “predominantly online” – has been officially recognized in the manual as a distinct diagnosis (Montag, Schivinski, et al., 2021). At the moment it is discussed if the framework to diagnose Gaming Disorder can be transferred to excessive social media use (Montag & Markett, 2024; Müller et al., 2022). Within this framework, one would speak of disordered social media use, if (1) the users center their everyday life completely around social media (and other formerly important areas of life are neglected), (2) loss of control over one’s own social media use is happening and (3) the users of social media keep on with their excessive behaviors although problems arise. For instance, someone scrolls through the feed of social media until late at night, sleeps over in the morning and misses an important exam. After this episode the person does not learn from the bad experience and keeps on with the unhealthy behavior.

Aside from the three described symptoms, functional impairments need to be observed. In other words, the excessive social media behavior must be so grave that it results in significant consequences such as job loss or break up of a romantic relationship. Considering functional impairments is very important because scientists and clinical psychologists should not overpatholozige everyday life and need to ensure that diagnosis such as “addiction” are not lightheartedly provided (Billieux et al., 2015).

The reason why we have no diagnosis of social media addiction yet, has to do with the fact that research takes time and several things still need to be answered before such a diagnosis might be valid. Among these questions are: Is the excessive behavior investigated really best captured by an addiction framework, or is it compulsive behavior, or perhaps simply a habit? In particular, empirical evidence from the psychological, psychiatric sciences and neurosciences will be important to finally answer this question (Brand et al., 2022). Of interest, in particular, neuroscientific evidence is surprisingly scarce (Montag et al., 2023) and this is especially true for the investigation of this topic in children and adolescence (but see a recent interesting work: Maza et al., 2023). Aside from finding answers to this study complex, the clinical relevance of the topic also needs to be considered: Do patients reporting addictive behaviors with social media turn up in psychotherapeutical settings? Of note, recent evidence suggests that this is the case (Basenach et al., 2024). Finally, new numbers should be mentioned from the HBSC study (Boniel-Nissim et al., 2024) reporting an increase of problematic (addictive) social media use from 7% (2018) to 11% (2022) in young users. This provides a rough estimate on how common addictive behaviors are in young users – but it needs to be mentioned here that this study relied not on the WHO framework, but a DSM-5 research framework, which in the field of disordered gaming might be associated with inflated prevalences (Pontes et al., 2022).

5.     Beyond the addiction debate

Although the debate around the addictive nature of social media is prominent, there are many other topics which need to be discussed when trying to grasp the negative aspects of current use of social media platforms in childhood and adolescence. It is well recognized that social media platforms can scale up the bullying problem (Giumetti & Kowalski, 2022). Hence, when being cyberbullied, many peers will see this, and this can cause additional psychological distress. Social media use has also been reported to go along with body dissatisfaction and eating disorders (Marks et al., 2020), whereas young female users seem to be stronger afflicted with following thin ideals than young male users (Dane & Bhatia, 2023). Current design of social media platforms can further result in social upward comparison processes (comparing other lives with one’s own; and also comparing number of received “Likes”) reducing self-esteem (Vogel et al., 2014). And as a recent media report mentioned, gruesome content finds its way into social media feeds, such as the Reels page of Instagram.[4] A report from 2024 mentioned that 70% of teens have seen real-life violent content on social media.[5] Another critical area to be mentioned in this section is also poorer sleep, which has been reported to be associated with problematic social media use (Chen et al., 2024); and sleep is critical for healthy development. Such negative aspects for sure led the European Commission in their Digital Services Act to have a strong focus on the protection of minors from harm on so-called VLOPs (very large online platforms) in Europe.[6]

6.     A reflection on age barriers

Although much open research questions exist, there is ample evidence that social media use brings problems in adolescents and, in particular, for children. And with the current existing age barriers, children should not be on social media at all.

Further: The age barrier of 13 is often seen as an entry age for social media services but is not based on sufficient empirical evidence. To my knowledge, this age barrier goes back to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act,[7] which was put into action to protect children’s privacy in the online world before social media existed. So, of course, this age barrier will need to be revisited when we have insights from well-conducted longitudinal studies on well-being and social media use across adolescence. This said, the industry tries to lower the age entry barriers to their services (initiatives such as Instagram Kids, aimed to start at age ten).[8] Given the clear problems around social media such as body dissatisfaction, social upward comparison processes, confrontation with non-age appropriate content and a business model aiming at the prolongation of online time, from my point of view current social media products do not belong in the hands of children.

Is then the initiative of Australia banning social media until the age of 16 the correct response to the many challenges? I am honestly not sure. Again, no empirical evidence suggests that 16 represents the perfect age barrier, and from my point of view we likely will never have this clear evidence, because the developmental trajectories of young minds are different. The largest problem I see with the age barrier of 16 years has to do with the idea of treating all platforms in the same way (to be seen if Australia handles it this way). Although most social media platforms rely on the data business model, platforms differ in their design, in what they offer users and also their addictive potential (Montag, Wegmann, et al., 2024; Rozgonjuk et al., 2020). Just think of contrasting LinkedIn with TikTok (with this I have no intention of saying that one of the platforms is better).

I am convinced that we need to investigate the platforms separately regarding age entry barriers. Further, 16 might be a bit too late to onboard, as social media is also a relevant communication channel allowing young people to express and discover different views on life and cultures. So what to do?

7.     Call for action

In light of the problems around social media, I propose to ensure that children have NO access to social media. This needs to be enforced by clear ID checks when onboarding. Opening up online bank accounts could guide such onboarding processes, and it would not be sufficient if the young users present their IDs, but the caretakers’ IDs would also be needed. A third-party data broker could be responsible for the ID checking process, so that social media companies do not get access to sensitive IDdata.

Given that childhood (arguably) ends around age 12-13 with the onset of puberty, one could think of allowing some platforms to operate from the age of 13, but again, platforms need to be independently investigated regarding platform design and provided content.

Of importance, parents should test and visit together with their kids the social media product of interest. This is important, because older users often do not understand platforms such as TikTok, when they spent their whole life only on Facebook.

Social media use should be accompanied by the chance to speak about experiences on the platforms both in school and families. In particular, this is relevant if young users have bad experiences such as cyberbullying. For further insights into thorny topics such as sexting and grooming, see the book Behind their screens (Weinstein & James, 2022).

One further regulation approach could be the ban of smartphones (and the access to social media) in education contexts (Montag & Elhai, 2023a) – perhaps this makes sense even until the 11th grade in schools, in order to create a good social and learning environment. But discussions in this area are also heated around the globe – both in academia and among lay persons. I explicitly mention that a smartphone ban, of course, does not mean that no access to digital content will be provided in schools, but such access to the online world should only happen if interaction with digital content or digital learning methods really support the achievement of a desired learning goal. In the context of the so-called “digital school uniform” we argued recently that schools should establish – aside from smartphone bans – a curriculum preparing young students for a successful digital life (Maas et al., 2024; Montag & Elhai, 2023a). This includes knowledge ABOUT the digital world and the coming AI wave, but this also means ensuring that learning methods in educational settings can be supplemented by digital aspects, if the learning outcomes improve by such an intervention. Of note, this has not been proven everywhere. For instance: A meta-analysis suggests that reading comprehension is achieved in better ways when studying from books versus tablets (Delgado et al., 2018).

Finally, researchers need to be better supported to be able to come up with answers to the pressing questions of our time regarding technology use. Unfortunately, the application programming interfaces that are critical to study the online behavior of users (and also to study what people see in the newsfeeds) are largely closed (Bruns, 2019; Montag, Hall, et al., 2024). Therefore, academics have great problems understanding what is actually happening on social media. Regulation bodies such as the European Commission with their Digital Services Act should enable academics to do their job (Montag, Schulz, et al., 2024). They should also provide researchers with sufficient funds, which could be taken from fines being paid by the industry if not conforming to regulations such as the Digital Services Act (Montag & Becker, 2024).

8.     Conclusion

Although no official diagnosis of social media addiction exists at the moment, empirical evidence points to several areas, making social media not a safe product for children to use at the moment. With adolescence, questions on the right age-entry are getting more complicated to be answered, and at the moment I opt for strict age checks starting with the age of 13 for using platforms, but also for the independent investigation of distinct platforms to understand what products might be used at what age level. It should not be forgotten in the discussions that social media represent critical communication/information platforms and adolescents should, at a to-be-defined time point, be allowed to use safe platforms in order to be prepared for their futures as informed citizens of societies.

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[1] https://mottpoll.org/sites/default/files/documents/101821_SocialMedia.pdf

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c89vjj0lxx9o

[3] https://www.eu-digital-services-act.com/Digital_Services_Act_Preamble_81_to_90.html

[4] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/27/meta-apologizes-after-instagram-users-see-graphic-and-violent-content.html

[5] https://youthendowmentfund.org.uk/news/70-of-teens-see-real-life-violence-on-social-media-reveals-new-research/

[6] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-gathers-good-practices-combat-online-harm-minors

[7] https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/rules/childrens-online-privacy-protection-rule-coppa

[8] https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/pausing-instagram-kids