Teenagers

'Class Divide' in Teen Social Media Habits Could Explain Differences Between Heavy and Light Users

A new survey finds most teens use social media moderately, though class divides persist.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown | 7.29.2026 11:30 AM

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Say it with me: Correlation does not equal causation. But once again, we've got someone spinning noncausal survey results as "social media is bad news for teenagers," despite the fact that most of the teens studied were only moderate users and problems among the heaviest users could cause social media overuse, rather than vice versa. The survey also found serious class differences in use that could help explain disparities in habits, happiness levels, and outlook between those who use these platforms a lot and those who don't.

Researcher Daniel Cox acknowledges that "not all" teens react the same way to social media and that not all social media use seems to be a problem. "I should note that at least in this study, only heavy social media use—spending at least four hours a day on these platforms—appeared to matter," he writes. "There were few differences between moderate and light users. And it was only among girls that social media seemed to be a problem." Cox, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), also notes that while some say "social media has made teens lonelier and more isolated," his group's research "does not show that heavy social media users are any less sociable" and "teenagers with few close friends do not report any higher (or lower) social media use than teens with lots of friends."

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Heavy Social Media Users Are in the Minority

Banning teenagers from social media is often predicated on the idea that these platforms are universally bad for young people. Proponents of teen bans and social media "addiction" lawsuits often compare social media to cigarettes or even cocaine and act as if platforms like Instagram and TikTok are simply too powerful for most teens to resist.

If that was the case, we should expect to see compulsive use among a majority of teenagers.

But in Cox's survey—conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago on behalf of AEI's Survey Center on American Life—60 percent of the 13- to 17-year-old girls surveyed said they spend two or fewer hours per day on social media, Cox reports. And 39 percent of these girls said they either didn't use social media at all or used it for less than one hour per day.

Among all the teens surveyed (not just girls), 10 percent said they spend no time on social media and 29 percent said they spend less than one hour per day on it. The largest portion of teens—34 percent—said they use social media for one to three hours per........

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