Social media and digital technology are now woven into the daily lives of children and adolescents. What was once an occasional activity has become an almost constant presence for many young people.
According to Pew Research Center, 90% of U.S. teens ages 13-7 use YouTube, 63% use TikTok, 61% use Instagram and 55% use Snapchat. Nearly half of teens say they are online almost constantly, compared with just 24% a decade earlier. One-third report using at least one of five major social media platforms almost constantly.
Screen use begins well before adolescence. The 2025 Common Sense Census found that children ages 8 and younger average approximately 2.5 hours of screen media per day, and nearly one in four children has a personal cellphone by age 8. Older children spend considerably more time with screens. The most recent comprehensive Common Sense Census of tweens and teens found that 8- to 12-year-olds averaged 5 hours and 33 minutes of entertainment screen media per day, while 13- to 18-year-olds averaged 8 hours and 39 minutes – not including screen use for school or homework.
For today’s children, a significant amount of social and emotional development therefore occurs alongside smartphones, social media, gaming, messaging and other digital communication. The important question is no longer simply whether children use technology, but how they use it, how much they use it and what experiences screen time may be replacing.
Risks of Social Media Use
While social media can provide meaningful opportunities for connection, creativity, learning and community, the benefits coexist with genuine concerns.
One of the most significant is cyberbullying. According to the CDC’s 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 16% of U.S. high school students reported being electronically bullied during the previous year. The percentage was higher among female students (21%) and LGBTQ+ students (25%).
More recent Pew data also show that roughly 75% of teen users of TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat view harassment and bullying on these platforms as a problem for people their age. Approximately three in ten teen Snapchat users reported personally experiencing at least one of three forms of harassment measured (i.e., being called an offensive name, having a rumor spread about them or being physically threatened). About one in five Instagram and TikTok users reported at least one of these experiences.
There are also concerns about excessive use and mental health. The U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory on social media and youth mental health reported that adolescents who spend more than three hours per day on social media face double the risk of poor mental-health outcomes, including symptoms of depression and anxiety. The advisory also noted that 46% of adolescents ages 13-17 surveyed about body image said social media made them feel worse about their bodies. Importantly, associations like these do not prove that social media alone causes mental-health problems; individual vulnerability, the type of content encountered and the way social media is used all matter.
Sleep is another concern. The American Psychological Association recommends that social media use not interfere with adolescents’ sleep or physical activity and notes that technology use, particularly close to bedtime, is associated with sleep disruption.
Social Media Use and Social Skills
One of the less obvious questions surrounding children’s digital lives is what happens when online interaction begins replacing face-to-face communication.
In-person communication is extraordinarily complex. We don’t communicate only through words. Non-verbal communication is an important part of communicating and it includes facial expressions, eye contact, tone of voice as well as posture, space between individuals, etc. (Knapp & Hall, 2010). Children gradually become better at reading these cues through repeated real-world interactions with parents, siblings, teachers, friends and peers.
Moreover, children who understand emotional cues in social settings can develop superior social skills and more positive peer relationships (Blakemore, 2003). These non-verbal, affective cues are much stronger when it comes to communicating in person vs. digitally (Sherman, Michikyan, & Greenfeld, 2013). So when children use digital communication extensively, it can curtail the face-to-face experiences necessary for them to develop and master important social skills (Giedd, 2012).
Research has long demonstrated that the ability to interpret emotional and nonverbal cues is associated with social competence and positive peer relationships. Digital communication and social media frequently remove or alter many of them. A child texting a friend does not have to interpret the friend’s facial expression after making a joke. A teenager posting a comment does not necessarily see the immediate emotional reaction of the person reading it.
This doesn’t mean digital communication prevents children from developing social skills. Rather, the concern is one of displacement. If large amounts of time spent communicating through screens replace opportunities for face-to-face interaction, children may have fewer opportunities to practice certain interpersonal skills.
One study demonstrated how quickly increased face-to-face interaction may matter (Uhls et al. 2014).Researchers studied preteens attending a five-day outdoor education camp where they had no access to televisions, computers or mobile phones. After five days, the children became significantly better at recognizing nonverbal emotional cues compared with a control group that continued its normal media use. The study does not prove that screens permanently damage social skills. But it supports an important principle – children need repeated, real-world opportunities to practice reading other people.
Why Face-To-Face Communication Wins
Technology has changed dramatically, but children’s developmental needs have not. Young children learn through responsive interactions with caregivers. Older children learn how to negotiate, compromise, recognize emotions, resolve conflicts and tolerate awkwardness through interactions with siblings and peers. Teenagers develop increasingly sophisticated relationship skills through conversations in which they must respond to another person’s reactions in real time.
Face-to-face social interactions can be uncomfortable. A child has to figure out what to say when there is a lull in conversation. A teenager has to see someone’s face when they have hurt their feelings. Friends have to resolve disagreements without simply leaving a group chat or ignoring a message. These moments are not failures of social interaction. They are the practice through which social skills develop.
The goal for parents does not need to be eliminating screens or social media. For most families, that is neither realistic nor necessary. Instead, parents can focus on protecting the experiences children still need – family conversations, meals without phones, unstructured play, extracurricular activities, time with friends in person, adequate sleep and opportunities to solve interpersonal problems without immediately turning to a screen.
Parents should also pay attention to what children are doing online rather than focusing exclusively on minutes spent online. Video chatting with a grandparent, collaborating with friends on a project and endlessly scrolling appearance-focused content are all “screen time,” but they are very different developmental experiences.
The latest research reinforces this more nuanced approach. In Pew’s 2026 study, roughly seven in ten teen users of TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat described their overall experience on each platform as mostly positive, even as many also recognized problems involving excessive screen time, sleep, harassment and cyberbullying.
Technology is not going away, nor should it. Digital communication can strengthen relationships, expand children’s worlds and provide opportunities previous generations never had. But it should supplement rather than replace the messy, complicated and essential work of learning how to interact with other human beings face-to-face.
References
American Psychological Association. (2023). Health advisory on social media use in adolescence.
Blakemore, S. J. (2003). How does the brain deal with the social world? Neuro Report, 14, 1–10.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2024). Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary & Trends Report: 2013–2023.
Common Sense Media. (2022). The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens, 2021.
Common Sense Media. (2025). The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Kids Zero to Eight.
Giedd, J. N. (2012). The digital revolution and adolescent brain evolution. Journal of Adolescent Health, 51, 101–105.
Knapp, M. L, & Hall, J. A (2010). Nonverbal communication in human interaction (Seventh.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2024). Social Media and Adolescent Health.
Pew Research Center. (2024). Teens, Social Media and Technology 2024.
Pew Research Center. (2026). Teens’ Experiences on TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat.
Sherman, L. E., Michikyan, M., & Greenfeld, P. M. (2013). The effects of text, audio, video, and in-person communication on bonding between friends. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 7. Article 3.
U.S. Surgeon General. (2023). Social Media and Youth Mental Health: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory.
Uhls, Y. T., Michikyan, M., Morris, J., Garcia, D., Small, G. W., Zgourou, E., & Greenfield, P. M. (2014). Five days at outdoor education camp without screens improves preteen skills with nonverbal emotion cues. Computers in Human Behavior, 39, 387–392.