Social Comparison Predicts Teen Distress, Not Screen Time

What teenagers do on social media predicts their distress better than how long they're on it, a study of 4,011 Norwegian adolescents finds. [Teen social media use linked to depression, anxiety and cyberbullying: study — About Lawsuits, reporting Brunborg et al.] [Does time on social media make teens anxious and depressed? The evidence is not so clear — The Conversation, via Medical Xpress]

Led by Geir Scott Brunborg and published in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health, the study surveyed students at 21 schools in fall 2025. Social comparison was the strongest predictor of depression and anxiety symptoms, at roughly 20 to 26 percent of variation. [Teen social media use linked to depression, anxiety and cyberbullying: study — About Lawsuits, reporting Brunborg et al.] [Does time on social media make teens anxious and depressed? The evidence is not so clear — The Conversation, via Medical Xpress]

The study separated five kinds of experience — comparison, negative interactions and others — and tested them against symptoms of five conditions: depression, generalized anxiety, social anxiety, ADHD and oppositional defiant disorder. Negative interactions, including cyberbullying, harassment and hostility, came second, at roughly 3 to 6 percent of variation. A separate synthesis of 37 studies covering nearly 80,000 young people in 15 countries points the same way: total time on social media accounted for less than 1 percent of how much symptoms varied. [Teen social media use linked to depression, anxiety and cyberbullying: study — About Lawsuits, reporting Brunborg et al.] [Does time on social media make teens anxious and depressed? The evidence is not so clear — The Conversation, via Medical Xpress]

The limits are the researchers' own. The Norwegian data is a survey snapshot — associations at one moment, not proof that comparison causes the symptoms rather than distressed teenagers comparing more. The one experiment inside the wider synthesis, 182 young people capped at an hour a day, helped only participants who were already highly depressed. Read together, the two bodies of work don't say social media is harmless; they say the harm, where it registers, travels through what the experience does to a teenager, not through the minutes it consumes. [Teen social media use linked to depression, anxiety and cyberbullying: study — About Lawsuits, reporting Brunborg et al.] [Does time on social media make teens anxious and depressed? The evidence is not so clear — The Conversation, via Medical Xpress]