Somewhere soon a teenager will post a photo of herself online. Invariably, she'll get negative feedback from other youth: Too fat, too skinny, too this, too that. The internet can be both a wondrous and cruel place (not unlike high school), and teens sometimes experience negative social interactions online. Does this represent an unprecedented crisis for them, as some claim, or is the internet a new space, where normal but sometimes aversive teen (and adult, for that matter) behavior occurs?

Recently, the UK's Royal Society for Public Heath (RSPH) released a report, based on a survey of more than 1400 adolescents, concluding that the use of social media can cause mental health problems for youth. The report makes surprisingly alarming claims about the impact of social media on mental health, ranging across everything from body dissatisfaction to depression, with possible implications for public policy.

But are such concerns well-grounded in data, or are they yet another moral panic targeting new technology?

Historical moral panics, when people look for something to blame for a perceived social problem, are nothing new. The Greeks worried about the effects of plays on youth. We have expressed concern over everything from Elvis Presley to comic books to '80s musicians such as Prince and Twisted Sister. Often, scholars or scholarly groups contributed to these panics, peddling junk science that sounded scary.

But we look back on most of these moral panics and laugh: Few today really think that Cyndi Lauper or Harry Potter are the root of most teen problems. Violent video games have proved not to be a cause of youth violence. Even for issues such as body dissatisfaction, it appears that peers, rather than television, promote it among girls and women.

Granted, there could be reasons to believe social media may be different from fictional media. After all, social media involves a lot more peer interactions. Therefore, social media could be more like peer effects than traditional media effects.

ALSO BY CHRIS FERGUSON: Could '13 Reasons Why' cause teen suicide?

However, the RSPH does readers a disservice by not being honest about its inconsistent data. The RSPH claims that depression and anxiety rates have increased by 70 percent in recent years. We are left to insinuate that this increase could be attributed (without providing evidence) to social media. However, the citation used to support this 70 percent increase claim dates back to 2004 — before social media became as widespread as today.

And evidence from other sources does not support this claim. On most behavioral indices, such as violence, drug use or pregnancy, teens are actually at historic lows, indicating that teens seem to be doing rather well.

To bolster their claims, the RSPH cite a discredited 2011 report from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) on "Facebook Depression." The report was slammed at the time for its shoddy scholarship. One author of the studies the AAP used disavowed their claims, noting the AAP cited news reports of her studies which were incorrect and were not her original studies — something that would earn an undergraduate student low marks on a report. That the "Facebook Depression" report wasn't retracted is, frankly, scandalous.

Even the RSPH's own survey provides little compelling evidence for alarmism. The survey is rather crude and the study's hypotheses would have been obvious to the teens, which could have influenced their responses. The weighted effects for each form of social media suggests that, in the aggregate, social media effects were minimal. Nevertheless, such a crudely done study provides little useful scientific data.

As with most areas of media effects, current research indicates three things: Internet use effects tend to be small, vary quite a bit from one user to the next and include both benefits as well as a few risks. And the biggest risks involve privacy rather than mental health.

In fact, research suggests that internet use also has considerable benefits for youth. For example, one study with low-income youth found that those who used the internet more had higher academic performance on standardized tests.

Other research has indicated that the internet can be a productive way to provide good-quality health prevention information to youth. And the internet can be effective in providing socialization opportunities for socially isolated youth.

None of this is to suggest we should not be alert for some concerns — privacy concerns in particular — but also negative social interactions, bullying or poor influences. People sometimes are bad, and that's true on the internet, as in real life. Most teens learn to navigate this safely, and parents and teachers can help. But "crisis" talk does parents a disservice, particularly when data is more nuanced than that. And irresponsible alarmism does little to advance our understanding of social media and more to create yet another moral panic.

Dr. Chris Ferguson (@CJFerguson1111) is a professor of psychology at Stetson University and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. He is coauthor of the book Moral Combat: Why the War on Violent Video Games is Wrong and author of the mystery novel Suicide Kings.





Bookmark Gray Matters. It can be effective in providing socialization opportunities.

