Dr Lucia Magis-Weinberg Well, hello, my  name is Dr Lucia Magis-Weinberg, and today   I’m going to talk to you about social media and  mental health in adolescence. I always like to   start by saying that “adolescence is a window of  opportunity.” Adolescence is a time of remarkable   opportunity and growth. It is now defined “from  ten to 25,” and it’s the stage in our lives in   which we discover, we learn from, and adapt to the  world around us. It is a key period of our lives,   where we forge our sense of who we are and who we  aspire to be, where we learn to make decisions,   manage our emotions, create deeper connections  with peers and others in our communities. Where   we also build resilience, as the pandemic has so  starkly shown us, where we develop our interests,   passions, and meaningful goals that will shape  our adult lives. And it’s a time of unique brain   development, of accelerated remodelling of  our brains, and these brains are well suited   to the many tasks that I described, but  too often, the systems around us are not. So, this unfortunately means that adolescence,  although it’s a time of remarkable opportunity,   it’s also a time of vulnerability, in terms  of mental health. And here I show a list of   common mental health disorders, and on  the Y axis, we see ages from five to 50,   and in that orange box around there,  you can see how many of the mental   health disorders that I – that a person can  manifest through their lives will usually   first manifest in the age of adolescence. So,  I’m thinking about social anxiety disorder,   eating disorder, mood disorders, many of  them first show when we are in adolescence. And there is many reasons why this is  the case. This vulnerability to mental   health is associated with the enormous bodily  changes that we’re going through, as I said,   our brains are drastically being remodelled.  There’s also a lot of psychological transitions   that young people go through, right? So,  in terms of developing their autonomy,   their many identities, it is a time where  we have more sophisticated thinking,   more cognitive capacities. It’s a time  of profound social transition. So,   in early adolescence, many of us will go  from elementary school to secondary school,   and that’s very challenging, and it’s a key period  where we reorient from our families to our peers. There is important developmental milestones,  right? So, it’s a time of many firsts,   it’s a time where friendships profoundly  transform, a time where we break-up with   our first romantic relationships, where we get  in fights with our friends, and that is very,   very challenging for young people. And it’s a  time where we experience graduations, our first   parties, our first trips with friends, right? And  all of these things have always happened, even   before digital devices and social media, but since  the last perhaps 15, ten years, a lot of these big   milestones of adolescence are also happening  in online environments, right? So, it is not   surprising that we tend to associate social media  and the digital world with a lot of these concerns   that we have for mental health. And one of my main  messages today is that social media, although we   love to put it – to single it as a scapegoat,  it is definitely not the full story, right? I do want to be very balanced in my message  today. I do believe, and the data shows,   that the digital world has profound opportunities  for young people, as well as risks. I want to   start with the opportunities today. So, we  know – Dr Livingstone talks about the “ladder   of children’s online participation,” and we know  that for most young people in the world, at the   bottom of a – of the ladder, a lot of young people  are using their devices for entertainment. Recent   data has shown how for young people streaming,  especially YouTube is the platform they wouldn’t   live without, and it’s great that young people  can turn to the digital world for entertainment. Of course, digital media is key today for  socialisation and communication. It helps   us foster our in-person relationships. We also now  have online only friends, right? Young people have   friends that they have never met in person, they  might never meet them in person, but they’re still   very real relationships for them, and young people  turn to the online world for profound social   support and connection with others. As the  pandemic shown – has shown us very starkly,   the digital world has enormous opportunity in  terms of education and information, right? We   use digital devices when we’re at school. In  the pandemic, we were also learning remotely,   connecting to schools, to our Teachers, using  these devices, and young people are consuming   lots of information, and they’re consuming  a lot of information about their own mental   health. When they have issues, when they have  questions, they’re going to the online world. And lastly, as young people get more skills and  more comfortable with the online world, we would   like for all young people to climb through all  the steps in the ladder of online participation,   and really get to the last step of this ladder,  which is really exerting your community and your   citizenship. I think of Greta Thunberg, this  adolescent who has shown you how – shown us   how you can actually change the world for the  better when you use social media to organise   young people around the world in the fight  against global warming, for example. Or I   think of young people in the United States who  have mobilised for gun control and gun reform.   Young people have a lot of power when they know  and they can use these tools for change, right? On the other hand, of course, I do not want to  minimise the risks that very much exist. Again,   Sonia Livingstone and colleagues talk about  the “4Cs of Risk,” I think this framework is   very useful for us to understand them. So, on  the one hand, there is the risk of content,   right? Young people are consuming violent  content, content that has – that is sexual,   that is age inappropriate, they’re consuming  mis and disinformation, they’re consuming all   this marketing, right? There’s another risk  in terms of content with ill-intended adults,   right? Where the digital world can open  the door to harassment, to surveillance,   to glo – grooming, exploitation or  radicalisation, for example. There’s   also a risk for conduct problems with peers,  right? So, there’s bullying and digital drama   that exists in our online relationships, there’s  sexual harassment and pressures from our peers,   and digital world also gives young people  access to harmful user communities, right? And, lastly, the four – the fourth C of risk  is that risk of contract, and the commercial   risks that young people and adults experience  when they’re online. There’s risk for fraud,   for security, for trafficking. We are contending  with this persuasive, very engaging design,   data profiling, these algorithms who are  deciding what we want to consume, right? So,   I do want to paint a very nuanced picture  of both the opportunities and the risks. And something that’s very important for me  to highlight is that these opportunities and   risks do not exist on a vacuum, right? The  digital world is both reflecting the real,   the physical, world, and it’s also  impacting the physical world. So,   it is important that we consider the digital world  in concert with the physical world and the micro,   meso, exo and microsystems that  are surrounding young people. And the last thing that I really want  to highlight is this idea of potential,   right? Even though today, youth are very familiar  with technology, they won’t magically extract all   the positives, all the opportunities, without  scaffolding and support, and at the same time,   we can also prevent online harms from happening,  right? It is important that we support youth,   that we regulate online environments to  promote the positives and reduce the negatives.