Social media and social anxiety

The short answer

• Is social anxiety rising among young people? Symptom scores have risen in some countries, especially among girls. Whether the disorder itself has become more common is not known.
• Does social media cause it? Not proven. A strong long-term study found no effect in either direction.
• Is there any link? Yes. People with social anxiety are more likely to use social media in a problematic way, and online life can become a way to avoid face-to-face contact.

The honest picture sits between “phones broke a generation” and “it’s all fine”.

What has changed

• In Finland, a survey of about 450,000 people aged 13 to 20 found that high social anxiety scores rose markedly between 2013–15 and 2021. Among girls the share roughly doubled: in 2021, 47% of girls scored above a questionnaire cut-off.
• Across many countries, anxiety, distress and self-harm are rising among teenagers, most of all in girls.
• During the COVID-19 pandemic, studies of more than 80,000 young people found high anxiety symptoms in 20.5%, about double the figure before the pandemic.

These are real rises in distress. But they are questionnaire scores, not diagnoses. A score above a cut-off does not mean someone has social anxiety disorder. See how common is it?.

What the evidence shows about social media

The public debate

The psychologist Jonathan Haidt argued in a popular 2024 book that the move to phone-based childhood since about 2012 caused the rise in teenage anxiety and depression. Other researchers, including Candice Odgers in a review of the book in Nature, argued that the science does not support that strong a claim. The debate is still open.

Studies that follow the same children over time

These are the best way to test cause and effect. They check whether a change in one child’s social media use is followed by a change in that same child’s symptoms.

A Norwegian study followed 810 children from age 10 to 16, with symptoms checked by interview. When a child posted, liked or commented more, it did not predict more anxiety symptoms later, including social anxiety. More symptoms did not predict more use either.

One study is not the last word. But it is a strong one, and it does not fit a simple story of phones causing social anxiety.

Studies that look at one moment in time

A study combining 53 studies with nearly 60,000 people found a strong link between social anxiety and problematic social media use: using it compulsively, feeling unable to stop, or using it to escape. A link like this does not show which comes first. Social anxiety may lead to problematic use, or the other way round, or both.

What we don’t know

• Whether the rise in symptom scores means more people have the disorder.
• Why the rise is steeper in girls.
• Whether specific kinds of use, such as comparing yourself with others, matter more than time spent.
• Whether a change that hits a whole generation would shift the age when social anxiety starts. So far, the usual age it starts is still the early teens.

How online life can help and harm

For people with social anxiety, being online is mixed.

It can help:

• Finding others like you. In a study of teenagers’ posts on Reddit, young people described forums as a place they could ask for help anonymously when other routes felt impossible.
• Lower-pressure contact. Text, games and chat can be easier first steps than face to face.

It can harm:

• Avoidance. If online contact replaces all offline contact, the fear of face-to-face situations can grow. It becomes a safety behaviour. See what keeps it going.
• Comparison. Seeing polished lives can feed the belief that everyone else is more confident.
• Mixed effects. Back in 2004, a study of people with social anxiety online found that heavy online interaction was linked to both good and bad effects.

What this means for you

• You do not need to quit social media to recover from social anxiety.
• Watch how you use it. Is it a bridge to people, or a wall between you and them?
• If online life is easier, use it as a first step. Then move gradually towards meeting people offline.

Parents can find more in teens and social media.