A special chapter in the 2026 World Happiness Report released last week looked into evidence to answer the question “Is social media use unreasonably safe for children and adolescents?” and the answer, according to authors Jonathan Haidt and Zachary Rausch of the Stern School of Business of New York University, is no.
“We show there is now overwhelming evidence of severe and widespread direct harms (such as sextortion and cyberbullying), and compelling evidence of troubling indirect harms (such as depression and anxiety),” they wrote in the report.
“Furthermore, we show that the harms and risks to individual users are so diverse and vast in scope that they justify the view that social media is causing harm at a population level,” they added.
The findings were based on various evidence laid down in the report, including surveys of young people, parents, teachers, and clinicians; content from corporate documents, and findings from cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, and social media reduction and natural experiments.
The evidence, the researchers said, is sufficient to justify the action of the Australian government last year when it raised the age requirement for opening or maintaining a social media account to 16.
“Just as the recent international trend of removing smartphones from schools is beginning to produce educational benefits, the research we have reviewed suggests that removing social media from early adolescence is likely to produce mental health benefits,” wrote Haidt and Rausch.
“Countries around the world ran a giant uncontrolled experiment on their own children in the 2010s by giving them smartphones and social media accounts. The available evidence suggests that the experiment has harmed them. It is time to call it off,” they added.
Key evidence in the report involved information showing that social media executives and some employees were allegedly aware that “they are causing widespread harm to adolescents on their platforms.”
The report also outlined direct and indirect harms to users, including addiction and problematic use, sleep deprivation, sextortion, sexual harassment, and issues related to mental health and well-being.
“If carried out at scale, we predict that the widespread reduction of social media use by adolescents would cause substantial improvements in population-level measures of well-being and mental health,” the researchers said.
As countries like Australia have already banned social media for teenagers, others are also considering following suit. It is something that the Philippine government certainly needs to consider and seriously discuss, including all sectors, stakeholders, and experts, so the evidence and counter arguments can be weighed and an informed decision can be made, hopefully with the protection of the country’s youth as the priority.
Regardless of the outcome, what we should do about social media and teenagers is a conversation that Filipinos cannot delay any further.*
