--- title: Scientists Are Debating Whether Social Media is Addictive description: A new study attempts to resolve a divide in behavioral science over whether social media is addictive. canonical: https://time.com/6333257/social-media-addiction-study/ author: Haley Weiss article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-11-09T12:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-19T07:28:16.298Z article:section: Health og:title: Scientists Can't Decide if Social Media is Addictive og:description: A new study attempts to resolve a divide in behavioral science. og:url: https://time.com/6333257/social-media-addiction-study/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt03143d77256f138d/698a421eb21a9c6ec4507c64/GettyImages-1277432614.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5000 og:image:height: 2813 og:image:alt: Social media addiction is like a drug og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Scientists Can't Decide if Social Media is Addictive twitter:description: A new study attempts to resolve a divide in behavioral science. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt03143d77256f138d/698a421eb21a9c6ec4507c64/GettyImages-1277432614.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Scientists Can't Decide if Social Media Is Addictive > Sponsored content. 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Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=b4e9696f-b688-4aa6-b7da-ee248a70dabb&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Former Meta Engineer Testifies Before Congress on Social Media and Teen Mental Health [Watch (HLS stream): Former Meta Engineer Testifies Before Congress on Social Media and Teen Mental Health](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/IU5sLxe2.m3u8) (4:00)  _Published 2023-11-07. Arturo Béjar, who worked as an engineering director at Facebook from 2009 to 2015, outlined a “critical gap” between how the company approached harm and how the people who use its products — most notably young people — experience it._  by [Haley Weiss](https://time.com/author/haley-weiss/)  ## Haley Weiss Nov 9, 2023 12:00 PM UTC Arturo Béjar, who worked as an engineering director at Facebook from 2009 to 2015, outlined a “critical gap” between how the company approached harm and how the people who use its products — most notably young people — experience it.  by [Haley Weiss](https://time.com/author/haley-weiss/)  ## Haley Weiss Nov 9, 2023 12:00 PM UTC Social media can be harmful. That's something all behavioral researchers can agree on. There is much less consensus on how exactly its harmful use is defined, and whether or not there’s a corresponding beneficial way to use social media. And at the very center of this academic debate is the question: Can a person become addicted to social media? Settling on an answer to this question has a surprising number of implications: for the internet, for policy (most notably in a recent [lawsuit against Meta](https://www.reuters.com/legal/dozens-us-states-sue-meta-platforms-harming-mental-health-young-people-2023-10-24/)), and even for people who suffer from or treat more well-defined forms of addiction. Attempts to do so have resulted in fairly conflicting findings, explains Niklas Ihssen, an associate psychology professor at Durham University in the U.K. In particular, some studies suggest abstaining from social media can improve mood and well-being, while others seem to argue that stepping away from the screens can cause serious withdrawal effects that mirror those present in chemical addictions. “There’s tension between those two strands of research,” Ihssen says. ## Studying 'digital detox' A new study, led by Ihssen’s postgraduate student Michael Wadsley and published Nov. 8 in the journal [_PLOS ONE_](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0293467)_,_ attempts to reconcile this conflict. Using activity-tracking apps and surveys, Wadsley and Ihssen followed 51 students for 15 days, including a week during which they were instructed to avoid social networking sites including Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. The participants were then brought in for final surveys and exercises afterward. Around a third of the participants had existing social-media behaviors that qualified as problematic, or harmful to their functioning, on the most [widely-accepted scale](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/add.15709) of social media behavior. **Read More:** [_The ‘Dopamine Detox’ Is Having a Moment_](https://time.com/6284428/does-dopamine-detox-work/)[](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/GettyImages-136596098.jpg) Wadsley and Ihssen searched in the participants’ responses for symptoms of withdrawal in line with those found in substance-use disorders, such as relapses and increased consumption following abstinence. Though 87% of the participants weren’t able to stay off of social media entirely, their use time decreased to an average of 30 minutes, down from between three and four hours per day, and remained lower than before even after the week of abstinence had passed. “If there’s something like withdrawal, we would expect those cravings to go up after a while,” says Ihssen. But in both usage time and in the results of a test given to participants at the end of the week that recorded their reactions to seeing social media app icons, the sharp craving the chemical effects of withdrawal can cause just didn’t manifest as expected. Ultimately, however, this study can’t conclusively answer on its own whether social media is addictive. In order to reach a consensus on that question, independent study teams working with small sample sizes, like Wadsley and Ihssen, need to use a set of shared metrics, methodologies, and definitions, says David Zendle, a lecturer at the University of York in the U.K. One [2021 study](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306460320308297) found that across 55 papers on social media addiction, 25 distinct theories and models were used. When researchers can’t agree on the right place to dig, nobody gets very deep. This current gray zone is “extremely dangerous,” says Zendle. If social media is falsely framed as addictive, “individuals will be treated in a way that is inappropriate to their lives, causing detriment over the long term,” and it delegitimizes the severity of true addictions, he says. If it’s as addictive as illicit drugs, and science misses it, a huge corporate threat to public health could be running unchecked. “This is a nice small-scale study,” says Zendle. “What we need are radical, gigantic studies, to the point where when you see nothing going on, you are extremely confident that nothing really is going on.” Part of the challenge of determining whether or not problematic social media use is classified as an addiction is that behavioral addictions are newly defined, says Zendle, with [gambling addiction](https://www.ncpgambling.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/DSM-5-Diagnostic-Criteria-Gambling-Disorder.pdf) the only such disorder recognized by official diagnostic criteria. In gambling, researchers first noticed that a stimulus other than a chemical substance could create near-identical effects in the brain. “That transposition unlocked the world of behavioral addictions,” says Zendle. “But what we are now wondering as a community is where else it might be helpful to transpose this.” ## Parallels with video game resarch To see the long-term consequences of these sorts of [competing paradigms](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S026840121400098X) in research, just look to the debate surrounding the harms of video-game violence, says Zendle, where there’s “an enormously mixed evidence base.” Because of back-and-forth “bad faith” research, he says, scientists are unable to advise psychologists, lawmakers, and game designers in any meaningful way, so drowned out has any consistent truth become. Wadsley and Ihssen’s study feels more balanced not only because it marks another strike against the addiction theory, but also because it found none of the equivocally positive effects on mood that other studies have suggested comes from a social media break or “digital detox.” Instead, the results showed a varied mix of effects on mood, which most closely resembles the [actual variation](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20501579211028647) on findings across research on the topic, rather than sharply negative or positive effects that many individual studies show. This null finding isn’t inconsequential. Instead, it’s as strong an indicator as research has seen that current thinking about social media and addiction just might not line up with what’s actually happening inside the brain. Social media use is far too complicated and varied to tackle as an addictive substance, says Ihssen. “Even though it can cause issues with excessive use … I think we should not over-pathologize those behaviors.” ## Transcript We are. gather today to hear testimony from a whistleblower an engineer widely respected and admired in the industry. We've known for more than a decade that rates of teen suffering from suicides hospitalization for self harm and depression have skyrocketed. As he knows these numbers are more than statistics. They're real people and his daughter is one of them. Starting in 2009. I was the engineering and product leader for Facebook's efforts to reduce online threats to both children and adults. I met regularly including Mark Zuckerberg. And they were supportive of this work as a parent. I took the work personally and then work hard to help create a safer environment. By the time I left in 2015, I thought the work was going in the right direction. A few years later my fourteen-year-old daughter joint Instagram. She and her friends began having awful experiences including repeated unwanted sexual advances harassment. She reported this incident incidence to the company and it did nothing. In large part because of what I learned as a father in October of 20019. I returned to Facebook this time as a consultant with Instagram 12 p.m. Team. We tried to set goals based on the experiences of teens themselves instead the company wanted to focus on enforcing its own narrowly-defined policies regardless of whether that approach reduce the harm that teams were experiencing. I discovered that most of the tools for kids that we had put in place through. My earlier time at Facebook has been removed. Are you observing features being developed in response to public outcry which were in reality? Kind of a placebo a safety feature in name only to placate the place and Regulators as soon as I understood the scab. I did what I had always done. I researched the problem better than a and informed Mark Zuckerberg Sheryl Sandberg and other executives. I did this because for six years that was my job to let them know of critical issues that affect the company which owns Instagram is a company where all work is driven by data. But he has been unwilling to be transparent about data regarding the founder kids experience. And unwilling to reduce them social media companies must be required to become more transparent. So that parents and public can hold them accountable to the public and parents understand the true level of harm enabled by these products and it's time for Congress to act. Thank you for your time. This is such a vital hearing on a vital topic and to be honest with you this year and concerns. I think every parent's nightmare. Can I see you're not in the survey are your father that that subject composes that reality composes some of your testimony. I'm also a father of three and what you have brought to this committee today. It's something that every parent in America needs to hear. The numbers are really stunning that one in four teenagers minor children will experience sexual solicitation on meta's platforms that they are deliberately misleading parents about the safety of their children online that I just want to Echo something that Senator Blumenthal has said it is time for Congress to take action. 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