Expert discusses how social media harms youth mental health

Medical Xpress August 4, 2023
By Peter Dizikes, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

It’s the height of summer break, and as students decompress from the school year, they also have more time for scrolling social media. What effect do these platforms have on the young people’s mental health?

In late May, the U.S. Surgeon General Vice Admiral Vivek H. Murthy published an advisory report on the subject, noting the “unprecedented” challenges faced by today’s youth in navigating social media, and emphasizing the “alarming” effects social media can have on many people.

The advisory cited the research of, among others, Alexey Makarin, an assistant professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Last fall, Makarin was co-author of a study published in the American Economic Review, “Social Media and Mental Health,” which used an...

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