The rise of social media and smartphones has coincided with an accelerating decline in teenagers' mental health — and researchers are trying to figure out whether the technology is to blame.
"I just felt so scared to talk to my mum … I was just like, 'I don't want my mum to think I'm using social media the wrong way'," she said."It was like that fear of missing out, I guess. I think that's the addiction thing, right?" she said.Teen mental health has deteriorated at an accelerating rate in the last two decades
"What we don't know is about causation — so is young people's mental health leading them to spend more time on social media and screens, or is it actually the other way around?Dr Werner-Seidler is one of thousands of researchers around the world trying to solve that mystery. "When I started this work, TikTok wasn't even a thing … Snapchat, really has only taken off in the last decade or so," Dr Werner-Seidler said.
The National Mental Health Commission has been investigating the relationship between digital tech and teen mental health. One slide from an in-house presentation reportedly said: "We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls." She says there's a window for change with the federal government currently reviewing its key legislation, the Online Safety Act.
Dr Werner-Seidler said that for now, internal data was being used by big tech to keep users scrolling for as long as possible.