New tech, new panic: Don't blame Social media for depression in youngsters

There are hints of moral panic in the notion of a mental health epidemic in young people

For all we hear about an escalation in mental health problems in adolescence, there is no persuasive evidence that the internet is to blame. My colleagues and I recently conducted a systematic review of the evidence and found only a weak correlation between teenagers’ use of social media and depression.

After its launch in 2004, the social networking website Facebook rapidly expanded to global coverage. Since the advent of smartphones, instant messaging sites such as WhatsApp have become the most popular means of communication for younger people, who spend much of their lives fixated on digital devices,