Longstanding concerns exist about excessive social media use causing mental health problems. The best evidence for this view comes from longitudinal studies showing that earlier social media use leads to later mental health problems, and from experimental studies in which reductions in social media use lead to improved wellbeing. However, recent articles have criticised the strength of this evidence1,2,3. Given the pressing importance of understanding whether social media is psychologically damaging, these criticisms deserve consideration.

Vast numbers of people use social media daily, if not hourly. If such usage has the potential for impacting mental health negatively, then this is a major concern for already overstretched clinical services. If it does not have this potential, then effort is better focused elsewhere. Given this, examination of causal claims about social media use is to be welcomed. However, this examination must understand not only the components of valid science, such as study design and statistical tools, but also what such research can illuminate for clinical purposes. It may be that these critiques of the evidence have merit scientifically, but are still wide of the mark clinically.

Leaving aside cross-sectional investigations showing correlations between social media use and poor mental health, two sets of studies are causally important. Some studies document temporal relationships between social media use and mental health. They show high level social media use at time one is associated with worse mental health at time two. Other studies experimentally manipulate social media use. These show that groups who reduce their social media use subsequently display better mental health than groups not reducing usage. These data cannot easily be ignored, but their evidential strength in support of a causal claim can be analysed.

At least three recent papers1,2,3 suggest this causal evidence is weaker than people may imagine. They suggest that: the observed relationship........

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