Teens' Social Media Use Does Not Raise Risk For Depression

Question

The claim is that teens' social media usage doesn't raise a factor for depression. Due to the research I was looking into I found that in some cases, social media use can lead to depression. "The researchers analyzed survey data collected by Monitoring the Future, an ongoing study of the behaviors, attitudes, and values of Americans from adolescence through adulthood, representing 74,472 8th and 10th grade students between 2009 to 2017. They assessed depressive symptoms to establish underlying depression risk, which they controlled for in their analysis to understand how daily social media use might contribute to depression" (Columbia Mailman School of Public Health). 

Answer 1

the information I found shows that this claim is false. Childmind.org stated that smartphones where introduced in 2007. by 2015, 92 percent of  teens and young adult owned a smart phone. This rise in smartphones also came with a rise in depression. A study was also done on half a million kids in 8th-12th grade. these studies showed that from 2010-2015, the level of depression was raised by 33% and the suicide rate by girl in that same age group raised by 65%.

https://childmind.org/article/is-social-media-use-causing-depression/

Answer 2

According to the same study linked, throughout the testing done. They did find from their testing a positive correlation between social media use with higher levels of depression and suicidal thoughts. "The majority of studies found a positive correlation between time spent on SNS and higher levels of The majority of studies found a positive correlation between time spent on SNS and higher levels of depression" and "Higher frequency of SM use (≥2 h a day) was also found to be positively associated with suicidal ideation".