Social Media and Teenagers: Is there a "right age" for social media?
It doesn't matter if it's a gathering back home, a wedding, a party, a class of students, or public transport; one thing is for sure, you will see people bending over their screens. Husbands and wives, lovers, sit face-to-face at cafes and scroll their phones. Four friends sit at a table and all of them stare at the screen, smiling and laughing to themselves.
What has happened to us? What is making us do this? Social media. At the heart of the doom-scrolling pandemic is social media. If you see someone hunched over their phone, their right or left thumb flicking the screen up, most probably, they are using social media.
Social Media. Photo by Tracy Blanc: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-iphone-showing-social-networks-folder-607812/
And is this limited to an age group? Maybe a decade ago, it was limited to adults. But now, we are seeing children of all ages using these apps, and spending ages on them. On a personal note, when I pass by my 14 year old brother's room, I see through the ajar door, him laying on his bed, hunching his neck over the phone and scrolling it. Or the other way around, lying on his chest and smiling and laughing at the phone. 100 years ago, we would've thought this behavior of laughing at a non-living object as lunacy.
Most of these apps say you need to be at least 13 years old to use them. But is that the right call?
What Problems it Causing
Mobile phones alone take much of our time in some way or the other, and combined with the overuse of social media, they steal way too much from our lives.
Lack of productivity or laziness, time management issues, mental health problems or depression, and sleep deprivation have been gradually increasing due to this. A major survey by the Pew Research Center in 2025 reveals that 45% of teens think they spend too much time on social media, up from 36% in 2022, and about 48% of them think that those sites mostly have a negative effect on people their age, up from 32% in 2022. They also say that about 1 in 5 teens say social media hurt their mental health, and 4 in 10 or more teens say social media hurt the amount of sleep they get.
It is not shy of causing stress or pressure as well. About 40% say it makes them feel overwhelmed by the drama, and about 30% say it pressures them to post popular content to keep up with the others. This clearly induces problems like jealousy, low self-esteem, and ego.
But the problems don't stop at a mental level. An American Academy of Pediatrics study says that about 7% of more than 1,000 teens who disclosed sexual abuse at a California hospital revealed that social media was used to facilitate the assault.
The Other Side
On the other hand, a majority of teens from the Pew study credit social media with "forming connections and expressing creativity." About 75% of them say what they see on social media makes them feel more connected to their friend's lives, and about 63% say these platforms give them a chance to show their creative side.
About half of them say content from these sites makes them feel more accepted or as if they have support during tough times. About 30% of them say it helps friendships, versus the 7% who say it harms them, and 43% stay neutral, saying it does both.
The Other Side to the Other Side
Is this "connectivity" genuine? Are we really seeing what's going on in our friends' lives through social media? Do we really tell others what we would tell them if we spoke to them face-to-face?
Anyone who's posted on social media, me included, knows that they posted their best angles, their best haircuts, wore a dress that somebody else owned, stood in front of a luxurious car belonging to a stranger at a wedding, captioned it with a quote they themselves don't believe or follow, and on and on and on.
A simple call with someone would tell you more than what you observe through stories and statuses. Or a walk. Direct talking makes way for more honesty and comfort than words on the screen.
Photo by Sherwin Ker on Unsplash
So is it right that we allow teens who are just growing up in the world to learn how to "be fake" and pretend to be someone they are not? Or say stuff to others they wouldn't dream of saying to their faces?
About creativity. The Oxford Dictionary Word of the Year 2024 is "brainrot," which I'm sure a lot of us have heard. And what is this "brainrot"? Officially, it is a slang term that means the "supposed mental decline from overconsuming trivial, unchallenging online content, leading to short attention spans, fogginess, and reduced critical thinking." The stuff people post in the name of creativity have for long belonged to this category of brainrot-inducing content.
Conclusion
The world isn't completely avoiding this question anymore. Governments around the world have started to take action. The Australian Government, for example, has banned social media for children under the age of 16, and placed a hefty fine on companies who don't comply, or take strict measures to identify and remove the under-age users. The United Kingdom has established the Online Safety Act, which imposes huge fines on companies that don't take steps to protect minors from harmful content and add age-verification systems. Some other countries in Europe have announced plans to ban it under a certain age, and are increasingly testing age-verification apps to make the ban more effective.
So, what is the right age to use social media?
Children mature at different ages. It is impossible for us to designate a certain age and say that from that age onwards, the kid will definitely behave responsibly and protect themselves from any danger, on platforms that even adults aren't entirely safe.
What would be most suitable, although more tedious, is enforcing regulations. Making age-verification systems stronger and more reliable is a good first step, but is entirely banning something effective? When people want something dearly, is it the right move to completely take it away from them? What will that cause? Won't teens try to find other, illegal methods to log in? And doesn't that make it worse, now that we don't even know what they are using?
It would be better for us to force these social media companies to, after verifying the age of the person: ensure no harmful content goes to young users, build firm time limit systems within the app to avoid excessive use(the time limits right now can easily be skipped by pressing "remind me in 10 minutes" again and again), and take strict actions against people using these platforms for criminal purposes. The governments mentioned earlier proved that imposing hefty fines is possible; then, isn't it possible to impose such large fines for regulations?
Photo by Chang Duong on Unsplash
The life we live is a short one. Let's not make it shorter by selling our time for somebody else's financial benefit. Regardless of age, reducing time and exposure to social media in this age is a necessary step towards a better life. We are the examples to the next generation, and let's show them what it means to live outside screens.
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Works cited: “Teens, Social Media and Mental Health.” Pew Research Center, 22 Apr. 2025, https://pewrsr.ch/4lI0k4x
American Academy of Pediatrics. “Social Media Used to Facilitate Sexual Assault in Children, Study Finds.” American Academy of Pediatrics, 27 Sept. 2024,
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