Quick summary: A 2025 study of 1,066 emerging adults found that more than six hours a day on social media was linked with 2.63 times higher odds of anxiety and 3.23 times higher odds of past year suicidal ideation than less than one hour a day, though this is an association not proof of cause. Many young people stay online because they have nowhere to go, no familiar group, and starting a friendship in person feels intimidating, so the feed becomes the easiest social space available. Mental health practice and public policy should therefore pair less compulsive use with easier access to repeated real world contact, since 72% of connections deepened when people met twice within ten days and friendship was typically named after the third meeting.
Recent research gives us a good reason to stop talking about social media use purely in terms of screen time. A 2025 study of 1,066 American emerging adults found that those who spent more than six hours a day on social media had 2.63 times higher odds of anxiety and 3.23 times higher odds of reporting suicidal ideation in the past year compared with those who spent less than an hour a day on social media. The study and its findings The authors also point to an important limitation. The study shows an association, but it cannot tell us whether heavy social media use contributes to poorer mental health or whether young people who are already struggling are more likely to turn to social media.
I studied human behavior and the way people form social connections for many years at Harvard and Oxford, so what interests me in this discussion is a slightly different question like what is a young person actually getting online and what are they missing offline?
We often assume that a teenager or young adult is on their phone because the phone is simply too appealing, but sometimes the reason is much more basic. They may have nowhere to go or they may not know where to start. Trying to make a friend offline can feel stressful and intimidating so opening an Instagram or TikTok can seem like the easier option and it offers a way to look for a real conversation, for a friend, a partner, entertainment or simply something to do this evening. There may be no established friend group with no familiar place to go, and no community built around a shared interest. There may also be a fear that other people will not want them there. In that situation, an endless feed becomes the most accessible social space available.
That’s why I don’t believe telling a young person to simply spend less time on their phones is enough. If we remove the digital environment without creating an alternative, we are addressing the symptom without addressing the social problem. This is where the way friendships actually form becomes important. Friendships rarely come from one perfect night or one great first meeting. They grow through repeated contact. We see the same person again, get to know them then become more comfortable around them, and eventually develop a shared history. A stranger becomes familiar and familiarity can turn into real-world friendship.
Our research of 26,000 communities across the US and UK and close to 1 million friendships supports the idea, we found that 72% of connections moved deeper into friendship when people saw each other twice within 10 days. On average, people began describing someone as a friend after their third in-person meeting. Another interesting point is that 88% of participants were more likely to keep attending a community when they felt they were getting something meaningful out of their time there, whether that was running, learning a language, making something or pursuing another shared interest.
This matters when we talk about mental health. We don’t have to choose between banning social media and doing nothing, a more useful approach is to reduce compulsive patterns of use while also making real social life easier to access. The goal shouldn’t simply be for a young person to spend less time looking at a screen, but give them something meaningful enough in real life that they would actually want to put the screen down.
Alyx van der Vorm is founder and CEO of Clyx, an AI platform for real-world friendships that now reaches over 1 million users across 26,000 communities. She studied computational neuroscience at Harvard and Oxford and built Clyx from research on human connection after feeling lonely on existing digital platforms.
