Social media can make you happy

Many parents will be all too familiar with this scenario—their teenager comes home, says a quick "Hi!", then disappears to their room and closes the door. When their father calls them to tell them that dinner is ready, they're lying on their bed with their eyes glued to their phone, mumbling that they'll come in a minute. Which they then don't do.

Since the 2010s, social media has played a significant role in the everyday lives of young people. TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, Pinterest and Snapchat often occupy so much of their lives that it makes their parents anxious.

They ask themselves: Can a young person who is exposed to so much social media actually grow up to be a happy, content individual? How justified are the concerns of these people who often grew up "offline" and for whom platforms like Snapchat and TikTok seem alien and hard to get to grips with? Or to put it in a positive light: how can social media help ensure that adolescents grow into happy young adults?

The answers to these questions are provided by the media research associate Sandra Cortesi and the media psychologist Daniel Süss. They've been researching how adolescents use social media for many years and actively involve the young people in their studies and workshops.

Actively shaping things and getting involved

Sandra Cortesi, who was born in 1983, enjoyed technology from a young age. "I was very fortunate to be one of the first people to get internet access, which allowed me to communicate with the world from eastern Switzerland."

She is a globally renowned researcher, Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and a senior research and teaching associate at the Department of Communication and Media Research at UZH. Her research interests include the ways in which 12- to 18-year-olds access media—in Switzerland, the U.S., South America, Africa and Asia.

Cortesi says that social media are so prevalent among young people in Switzerland because daily life is so heavily digitized. About 95% of young people in Switzerland have access to the internet and own a smartphone. But despite the impact of digitization on every aspect of life, parents shouldn't get the impression that their influence is dwindling.

"If parents want their child to be friendly, considerate and reliable, for example, they should continue to teach them these values," says Cortesi. Values are not just important in the analog world, they also provide vital safeguards in the digital sphere.

Cortesi is convinced that even young people who spend many hours online can be happy. The researcher believes that a good attitude to life is not primarily dependent on a person's screen time, but is much more down to consciously embracing an active lifestyle. "Both offline and on social media, it's important to make an active contribution, for example by commenting on posts, being creative, learning new things or engaging in a community."

Exploring divergent thinking

Cortesi says that if parents think their children's consumption of social media is threatening to get out of hand, they can take action by addressing the topic openly. For example, they can encourage their children to use social media as a platform for creative projects, instead of just consuming content passively.

Many young people are interested in specific topics or want to participate in social debates. Parents can encourage young people to use social media specifically as a platform for learning and discussion. But they can also raise critical points and talk to their children about the business models and the algorithms developed by Meta, Alphabet, etc.

If young people understand that platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube are designed to hold their attention for as long as possible, they're more likely to develop strategies to create boundaries for themselves. According to Cortesi, acting as a role model yourself, using social media and discussing the topics openly is the best way to enable young people to be responsible for the way they use social media over the long term.

For many young people, what makes social media and other digital technologies so appealing and important is that they provide an ideal arena in which they can simply try out different ideas. This is also a place where they can easily explore complex concepts like divergent thinking—for example by using ChatGPT to combine two terms that ostensibly have nothing to do with each other, such as order and chaos. This can be fun and can surprise people with new stimuli, says Sandra Cortesi.

The media psychologist Daniel Süss also says that online platforms allow young people to do what they most love doing: communicating with friends, networking, finding answers to their questions, gaming, getting creative with photos and videos, and listening to music. Social media provide young people with endless alternative worlds to their home environment—"this makes it harder for parents to teach their children their own sets of values," says Süss.

But they don't need to just resign themselves to the situation. In the Swiss long-term study JAMES, which Süss is co-leading at the ZHAW, the adolescents indicated that their immediate social sphere—friends, family, community—is still very important to them. Adolescents also primarily connect on their social networks with people that they also meet in their daily lives.

Like Cortesi, Süss is innately a psychologist; as a professor at UZH, he's specialized in media socialization and media literacy. What's his answer to the question of what level of social media use helps young people to become content and happy young adults?

"Adolescents need to detach themselves from their parents and find their own identity and a community that they choose outside of their family—these are important developmental tasks," says Süss. Social media can offer a great deal.

Who am I?

Süss says that, as girls and boys undergo significant physical changes during puberty, body self-image and different role models are key issues for adolescents. The young people are confronted with many challenges that they no longer want to discuss with their parents.

This is where social media come in. There are many posts addressing key issues for young people: who am I, what qualities do I want to emphasize, what's everyone else doing, what do I find silly, where do I belong, what gender role do I want to perform, what kind of intimate relationship do I want?

Social media also offer lots of opportunities for "social comparison and learning from a model," says Süss. Adolescents often mimic successful influencers, who usually portray Western, American ideas of what constitutes attractiveness. This is why young girls like to look sexy and raunchy, and boys want to be as muscular and sporty as possible. They may even crave status symbols like a motorbike or want to look brave in challenges. To create a positive self-image, Süss thinks it's vital for young people to learn how to scrutinize the various posts on social media with a critical eye.

But social media also feature lots of countermovements, such as body positivity, that portray diversity and difference as a beautiful thing. "Although these aren't mainstream influencers, if young people are looking for something, they'll find it easier to locate on social media than they did with previous alternatives," says Süss.

The fact that parents disapprove of revealing poses in a crop top with a cutout and get agitated by this is all part of the game: "When parents make a fuss, this makes it easier for the young person to create their own boundary," says Süss. His recommendation is that parents should accept this phase of their child searching for and experimenting with their own identity with a certain calmness and goodwill and refrain from making any derogatory comments.

Finding a 'digital life balance'

To create awareness of the power that images can have, Süss and his team of researchers at the ZHAW have developed a set of exercises for 10- to 12-year-olds. Using photos from popular influencers, the boys and girls are shown the different ways in which they can be manipulated to transform an ordinary subject into an impressive image.

This training on how to handle images sensibly is designed to enable the teenagers to share appropriate images of themselves or their friends on social media. At the same time, it's all about making them think about which images will benefit them and how they can steer clear of disturbing images and content. The set of exercises is currently being trialed in school classes in the German-speaking part of Switzerland and in Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

When teenagers reach mid-adolescence, they face the question of whether they should do an apprenticeship or continue with their academic education. Süss says that, during this phase of upheaval, young people also often turn to social media to look for tips, support and inspiration to guide them in their next steps. But whatever issues are currently on their mind, it's vital for the young people to find a positive way of engaging with digital media, a good "digital life balance."

And this is what they're trying to do, as the interviews conducted as part of the "Generation Smartphone" research project have shown. "Young people often decide themselves that they're consuming too much social media and need to do something to stop," says Süss.

He says the fact that young people are seeking to regulate their consumption themselves and disabling certain profiles before they sit examinations, for example, is ideal. Young people are developing a resilient way to consume digital media as they gain increasing experience of how to get back to a healthy level of social media use following occasional "excesses."

They're discovering how they personally can change their daily lives to regain more self-control. And if this doesn't work on occasion, they're learning how to be tolerant in dealing with failures or mistakes. "This ability to bounce back and know that there are options and actions you can take to overcome crises is a vital resource for being happy," says Süss.

Here to stay

Cortesi also believes that social media can benefit young people's lives. She's identified skills in seventeen areas that young people develop when they use social media. Then there's also critical thinking, collaboration, communication and creativity—skills that are highly prized in both the digital and the analog world of work. The media research associate is certain that social media will evolve, but they won't just suddenly disappear.

This is why adults should actively involve young people in developing guidelines for using social media. "We need to involve young people in our digitized society by adopting an honest, sophisticated and serious approach," stresses Cortesi.

Provided by University of Zurich