New Study Alert: Social Media & Self-Esteem
A recent study provides a way that you can improve your or your child’s self-esteem
This newsletter is the first in a series that I will refer to as New Study Alert. These newsletters will come out sporadically as I find new research that I think has an important and clear takeaway message for your life as a parent. Please let me know in the poll at the end of this newsletter whether you like this new feature or would prefer I stick to one weekly newsletter.
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A recent study published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media examined whether reducing social media use might improve self-esteem related to weight and appearance in teenagers and young adults (Thai et al., 2023).
This randomized controlled trial (the highest quality research design) included 220 participants aged 17 to 24 years with emotional distress (translation: individuals who were experiencing symptoms of anxiety or depression). Half of the participants were randomly assigned to an intervention in which they were instructed to only use social media for one hour per day. They were asked to send the data on their social media use every day to the researchers and if they used social media for more than one hour per day they were sent an email reminder.
First, the researchers found that the intervention actually worked to help participants to reduce their social media by half (50%)— this finding represents a huge success given the addictive nature of social media use. Although not all participants stuck to the one hour per day rule, most participants significantly reduced their social media use. On average, participants in the intervention group used social media for 78 minutes per day while participants in the unrestricted group used social media for 188 minutes per day.
After three weeks of reduced social media use, the intervention group showed increased self-esteem related to weight and appearance, meaning that restricting social media use actually causes these improvements in self-esteem. This finding is notable since having low self-esteem related to weight appearance predicts the development of an eating disorder.
This is an important study since it is not just correlational like most of the research on social media, which doesn’t allow us to determine whether social media actually causes any negative impacts or is simply associated with negative impacts.
This study did have some limitations. First, it only lasted three weeks so it is unclear if long-term changes in social media use are possible and whether the positive changes would be sustained over a longer period of time. Second, the researchers only tracked social media use on smartphones and not on other devices. Finally, it only included individuals with emotional distress so it is unclear if it applies to all teenagers and young adults.
Translation (aka How Can You Apply This to Your Life)
You can apply this research either to yourself as the parent or to your children (if they are old enough to be using social media). If either you or your child struggles with self-esteem related to weight and body image, try reducing social media use to one hour per day. Set alerts on your phone that remind you when you go over this limit and for accountability find someone to send social media use data to every day. Try following this program for at least three weeks and then see if you see positive changes in your body image.
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Welcome to the Parenting Translator newsletter! I am Dr. Cara Goodwin, a licensed psychologist with a PhD in child psychology and mother to three children (currently an almost 3-year-old, 5-year-old, and 7-year-old). I specialize in taking all of the research that is out there related to parenting and child development and turning it into information that is accurate, relevant, and useful for parents! I recently turned these efforts into a non-profit organization since I believe that all parents deserve access to unbiased and free information. This means that I am only here to help YOU as a parent so please send along any feedback, topic suggestions, or questions that you have! You can also find me on Instagram @parentingtranslator, on TikTok @parentingtranslator, and my website (www.parentingtranslator.com).
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Thank you for sharing this important research. As a mom of a daughter with an eating disorder, I am so aware of the harm that social media and the images included of perfect bodies and perfect lives have on everyone but particularly teenage girls. We know so much more about the harm of social media than we know 5 years ago. I hope more research can be done on this important topic.
This is so helpful! Sometimes it is easy to feel alone in this sentiment even in a sea of people online, but this reminds me we are all human and it is more common than we think.