Social Media and Negative Emotions
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JOE ROBERTS: All right. So this is like the kind of photo I posted.
PETER BANDA: Social media, teen depression, and suicide—there's mounting evidence there may be a link. The latest study out this week in Clinical Psychological Science finds that self-reported incidents of depression and suicide rates among teenagers spiked between 2010 and 2015, during the time social media surged in popularity.
JEAN TWENGE: By far, the biggest change in teens' lives between 2012 and 2015 was the huge increase in smartphone ownership and then the subsequent increase in time spent online and on social media.
PETER BANDA: Researchers have found the risks increase in teens who spend more than two hours a day on their smartphones.
JEAN TWENGE: You don't have to grab the phone out of your teen's hands, that it's small to moderate amounts of use that seem to be the sweet spot for better mental health.
PETER BANDA: And shaken by three suicides in their community in the past year, a group of teenagers in Littleton, Colorado took matters into their own hands. Starting with a website, Joe Roberts and two dozen teens organized a challenge for other teens to stay offline during October.
JOE ROBERTS: It's kind of ridiculous. People will compete with other people to see how many likes they get on a photo. And we're just like, let's just get off of it. It's become too much. Social media, it's just really become too much.
PETER BANDA: Their efforts garnered more than 1,600 pledges, as well as participation from 240 schools in 26 states and seven countries. It's the first year the high schoolers organized the event.
It's not the first time that some form of outside media has been blamed for teen depression and suicide. In the mid 1980s, British rock singer Ozzy Osbourne faced a lawsuit that alleged his song, "Suicide Solution," led to a teen suicide. The song was anti-suicide, Osborne argued, and he won his case.
But these teens, as well as researchers and psychologists, say there's more at play with social media.
CHLOE SCHILLING: You'll see your friends out doing fun stuff, and maybe you weren't invited. And I just know that that has a really big negative impact on some people.
EMILY LAUX: The more time they're spending on social media, the greater the risk of exposure to things like cyber bullying might be, which then does have a direct link to depression. So it's not as easy and as linear as just saying, social media has caused an increase or is even correlated with an increase in depression. But it's absolutely correlated with these other factors that we know lead to an increased risk of depression.
PETER BANDA: For the organizers of Offline October, staying off devices gave them a chance to watch this sunrise from Red Rocks Amphitheater and connect with friends in person. Peter Banda—Associated Press, Littleton, Colorado.
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