Meta’s $17 billion multistate legal settlement ushers in mandatory changes for Instagram and Facebook aimed at reducing social media addiction and, ultimately, protecting teenagers’ mental health. These steps follow widespread school bans on cellphones in recent years, implemented across the United States in the hope that such measures would be a cure-all for our youth mental health crisis.
Public concern about child mental health issues surged during Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns, along with the belief that exposure to social media was the leading cause. At least 13% of school-age U.S. children have a diagnosed mental health condition, and many more are presumed undiagnosed.
But as more countries restrict youths’ social media access and Meta implements limits, we should be realistic about the scope of the youth mental health crisis and what cellphone and other restrictions can accomplish.
While a variety of programs to ban phones in schools are being evaluated, results so far suggest only modest effects. A National Bureau of Economic Research study published this summer looked at schools that use locking magnetic pouches to restrict student cellphone use during the day. The short-term effects on discipline and well-being were actually negative, it found, including a 16% increase in suspensions. Such effects faded out over time, but after three years, there was no evidence that phone bans significantly improved mental health.
The fact that phone bans have so little impact on child mental health shouldn’t be surprising — because the mental health crisis among U.S. children predates the use of cellphones and social media.
In 1970, the Joint Commission on the Mental Health of Children warned — in a report to Congress titled “Crisis in Child Mental Health: Challenge for the 1970s” — that an estimated 12% of U.S. children had a serious mental health condition. By 1990, suicide had become the third-leading cause of death among American adolescents, after unintentional injuries and homicide. In 2000, Surgeon General David Satcher called for action while warning that 11% of American children were affected by serious mental health conditions.
In other words, the child mental health crisis has been with us for decades. For the most part, we just didn’t talk about it — until the pandemic.
The good news is that several measures that could make a bigger difference are already known, though they’re not as simple as locking a phone in a pouch. One is providing mental health services at school. Two decades ago, Minneapolis began rolling out school-based mental health services: placing licensed mental health clinicians in schools in addition to the school counselors and social workers already there. A study looking at the schools before and after they received a counselor found increased use of mental health services and a 15% decline in suicide attempts.
The child mental health crisis has been with us for decades. For the most part, we just didn’t talk about it — until the pandemic.
Another promising model involves inviting community mental health centers to send counselors into schools. In ongoing work in Colorado, this intervention has reduced emergency department visits and hospitalizations for mental health crises. But schools often rely on Medicaid to pay for these services, a funding stream that may dry up when the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s Medicaid cuts take effect next year.
Beyond making services more easily accessible, more could be done to improve the quality of mental health services. Too many children receive powerful psychiatric medications without a thorough evaluation of their condition or careful follow-up. It’s also not uncommon for pediatric patients to receive medications that are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration for any indication in children.
But the most powerful intervention would be increasing efforts to prevent serious childhood mental health problems from developing in the first place.
Social programs, including Medicaid coverage of pregnant women and young children and the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, have been shown to help prevent some cases of mental illness. Early childhood education programs such as Head Start detect emerging symptoms, which can be treated. Reducing traumatic experiences such as evictions and exposure to gun violence would also reduce the toll of mental illness among children.
Whenever I speak about the child mental health crisis, people tell me about members of their extended families who have suffered from mental illness, often starting in childhood. They seem relieved to be able to talk about it because the stigma is still strong. Greater recognition of crisis and reduction in stigma over time as mental illness is discussed more openly would strengthen schools’ efforts to combat it more effectively.
Cellphones and the apps that children spend countless hours on may contribute to the mental health crisis, so measures to institute limits should be commended. But let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that locking up phones or altering platforms will solve a problem that’s many decades old. Instead, as students head back to school, let’s focus on the steps already proven to work.
The post Why Meta’s social media restrictions aren’t a cure-all for the youth mental health crisis appeared first on MS NOW.
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