Australia’s Online Safety Amendment Act provides the chance for researchers to analyse the complex relationship between social-media use and mental health in adolescents, but results should be interpreted with caution

Do social-media bans benefit young people? These data could offer clues

Australia’s Online Safety Amendment Act provides the chance for researchers to analyse the complex relationship between social-media use and mental health in adolescents, but results should be interpreted with caution

In December, the Australian government will bring the Online Safety Amendment Act into force. The law will prevent people under 16 years of age from having accounts for a range of social-media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube. The legislation, introduced in response to concerns over children’s online safety and well-being¹, provides a golden opportunity for researchers to investigate how social-media use might affect mental health among adolescents — a complex issue that has been the subject of heated debate.

There’s little time to plan and set up the ideal experiment. Assessing the mental-health status and Internet usage of tens of thousands of teenagers in Australia and comparator countries over time, before and after the legislation comes into force, is no mean feat. It would require substantial organization in schools, the recruitment of research staff, agreement about the research measures used and fast ethical review and parental consent, all of which takes many months. Nevertheless, there are more-feasible approaches that could provide valuable information if researchers act promptly.

An as-yet-unnamed advisory committee and research partner have been established by the government to review the effect of the act, but to our knowledge there have been no official announcements about the responsibilities, leadership or research strategies they will adopt. We urge the committee to consider implementing each of the following three approaches.

Track official records

Hospital admissions records and coroners’ reports can track the incidence of serious self-harm and suicides among adolescents before and after the introduction of legislation. The benefits of this approach are that it is possible to gather data for the whole country, rather than studying a subset of teens, and that many years of retrospective data are available. Data from other nations can also be used to help determine whether any changes to mental health in Australia can be ascribed to the bans or whether they simply reflect broader trends.

On the downside, it takes time for official data to become available. Figures on suicide are linked to time-consuming coroners’ investigations, so data sets are often not finalized for years. Routinely collected data do not reveal anything about individual mental-health trajectories and social-media use, making it hard to determine whether social media contributed to peoples’ actions. These records also do not allow investigation of the many instances of anxiety and depression that do not lead to self-harm or suicide. This is because these conditions often go untreated or are addressed through primary health-care services or private psychologists, from which data are not easily collated.

Launch national surveys

The government could commission surveys of the health and well-being of young people aged under 16 before and after the legislation is brought in. Two national surveys have been run in Australia in the past, the latest in 2013–14². Starting one survey in the coming months and another in four years’ time would enable comparisons with previous cohorts.

These surveys typically involve a representative sample of the population. To study the social-media ban, they might instead oversample at-risk subgroups — teens from sexual and gender minorities (LGBTQIA+) or those with pre-existing mental health conditions, for instance. The surveys could be used to probe risk factors for anxiety and depression, including online bullying, and could ask detailed questions about mental ill-health and social-media use on various platforms, going beyond generic measures such as screen time. They could also include measurements of lifestyle and any activities or hobbies taken up to fill the time previously spent on social media. Analyses would help to answer questions about which individuals are protected by social-media bans, and what online activities are associated with improved well-being.

Young people might adopt different lifestyle interests when Australia’s social-media ban begins — a trend that researchers could study.Credit: Vlad Sokhin/Panos Pictures

The drawback of these surveys is that the proposed first cohort (to be evaluated in the coming months) would have a different social-media environment and different stressors from the second group, which would be assessed in four years’ time. This would make any comparisons complex and challenging. A gap of four years between surveys would make the data coarse with respect to any trajectories of change — but narrowing that gap to, say, two years is probably both financially and politically unfeasible.

Piggyback existing studies

Researchers could take advantage of ongoing longitudinal studies of young people to recruit new cohorts and follow them up over time. These studies have the advantage of individual retrospective data. Australia has several such studies that include mental-health measures. The Future Proofing Study, for instance, began in 2019 and is examining the onset and trajectory of mental-health conditions in 6,000 adolescents from age 13 onwards³. It is scheduled to finish this year, but could be funded to include a new cohort running from now until 2030.

Trials evaluating public-health interventions could also be used, if their timespan encompasses the social-media ban (the control groups in such trials are essentially longitudinal observational studies). One example is the Health4Life trial⁴, which is investigating the effect of six lifestyle interventions on the mental health of 11- to 13-year-olds in three Australian states. It could continue its follow-up assessments for longer than the current limit of 36 months.

An audit of existing trials and longitudinal studies, both in Australia and in potential comparator countries such as the United Kingdom, New Zealand and the United States, should be high on the priority list for the ban’s advisory committee and researchers. But comparisons are likely to be complex, owing to probable differences in sample demographics, risk assessments, age in the cohorts and outcome measurements. It might also be tough to achieve safe and ethical access to these cohorts — teenagers and their parents might not have consented to have their data used beyond the original investigation.