Say it with me: Correlation does not equal causation. But once again, we've got someone spinning noncausal survey results as "social media is bad news for teenagers," despite the fact that most of the teens studied were only moderate users and problems among the heaviest users could cause social media overuse, rather than vice versa. The survey also found serious class differences in use that could help explain disparities in habits, happiness levels, and outlook between those who use these platforms a lot and those who don't.
Researcher Daniel Cox acknowledges that "not all" teens react the same way to social media and that not all social media use seems to be a problem. "I should note that at least in this study, only heavy social media use—spending at least four hours a day on these platforms—appeared to matter," he writes. "There were few differences between moderate and light users. And it was only among girls that social media seemed to be a problem." Cox, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), also notes that while some say "social media has made teens lonelier and more isolated," his group's research "does not show that heavy social media users are any less sociable" and "teenagers with few close friends do not report any higher (or lower) social media use than teens with lots of friends."
