Early Social Media Start Tied to Teen Anxiety and Depression, Australian Study Finds

The age at which young people first encounter social media may matter more to their mental health than whether they hold an account at all, according to new research from UNSW Sydney published in JAMA Network Open. In a survey of 365 Australian adolescents aged 10 to 15, together with one of their parents, the researchers found that those who began using social media at a younger age reported more symptoms of anxiety and depression. By contrast, simply having a social media account showed a weaker relationship with those symptoms. The finding arrives at a pivotal moment, having been collected in the six weeks leading up to Australia’s world-first social media ban for children under 16, which came into effect in December 2025, and it offers one of the earliest empirical windows into how young people were positioned, psychologically and behaviorally, on the eve of that landmark policy.

The survey asked participants whether they had ever used social media, how old they were when they first used it, and whether they currently held a social media account. Alongside these questions about access and timing, the adolescents answered standardized questions designed to measure symptoms of anxiety and depression. The resulting picture was striking: 70 percent of the youngsters had used social media at some point, roughly half already had an account of their own, and the average age at first use was just 11 years old. Those numbers alone illustrate how deeply embedded social media already is in the lives of Australian children well before they reach the minimum age threshold set by the new legislation.

What distinguished this study from much of the existing literature was its focus on the timing of first exposure rather than the binary question of access. Chief investigator Associate Professor Susanne Schweizer said the team was surprised that the age at which children first started using social media appeared to matter more for their mental health than simply whether they had an account. In her view, the result suggests that delaying children’s first exposure may be a promising policy direction, especially if the delay is paired with training in good digital hygiene and digital citizenship. That framing reframes the debate: rather than asking only whether children should be on social media, it asks when they should begin, and what skills they should carry with them when they do.

Lead author Anna Bilston, a UNSW PhD candidate, argued that governments may need to think beyond access restrictions if they genuinely want to protect young people’s mental health. If the goal is protection, she said, the relevant questions concern not only whether young people can access social media but also how young they are when they first start using it. This distinction carries technical weight for policy design. An age-based ban, such as Australia’s under-16 restriction, targets access directly, but the study’s findings imply that the developmental timing of first use is an independent variable, one that a pure access restriction may not fully capture if children continue to encounter social media informally or through peers at younger ages.

The behavioral intentions reported by the adolescents add a sobering dimension to the policy picture. Only a quarter of the 10-to-15-year-olds said they intended to stop using social media following the ban. Just over a third, 34 percent, said they still intended to use it without an account, while a similar proportion, 35 percent, said they intended to find a way around the restrictions in order to continue using their existing accounts. Taken together, more than three quarters of the surveyed young people planned to continue using social media in some form despite the new law, a compliance challenge that the researchers themselves did not shy away from describing.

Schweizer noted that most young people who intend to keep using social media expect to find ways around the restrictions rather than simply waiting until they turn 16. This expectation of circumvention is a well-recognized problem in behavioral policy: restrictions that are easy to evade, whether through borrowed accounts, false age declarations, or alternative platforms, can shift behavior underground without reducing exposure. Yet the researchers were careful not to conclude that the ban has failed. Schweizer suggested that for some families the ban likely helped start conversations about the mental health risks of social media between parents and children, between teachers and students, and among young people themselves. In behavioral science, she observed, attitudes often change before behavior, so it remains too early to judge whether the policy has been successful.

The researchers argue that protecting young people’s mental health will require more than restricting access alone. Parents and educators, they contend, have an equally important role in helping young people develop healthy digital habits and in delaying their first use of social media. This positions the Australian ban not as a complete solution but as one instrument within a broader preventive framework, one in which families and schools actively shape the developmental trajectory of digital engagement. The emphasis on delaying first use, rather than merely blocking platforms, aligns with a growing interest in prevention science, where early developmental windows are treated as critical intervention points for later mental health outcomes.

A companion study by the same research group adds nuance to the question of what kinds of social interaction actually serve young people well. That study followed older teenagers and young adults over time, asking them to record whether their social interactions took place online or in person, and how those interactions made them feel. The results showed that face-to-face interactions generally left young people feeling more positive and more included than online interactions. However, socially sensitive young people appeared to find online interactions easier. Schweizer offered a possible explanation: these young people may experience a short-term benefit from online interactions because they have more time to think about their responses. Over time, though, it is face-to-face interactions that appear to sustain positive relationships, although she emphasized that this interpretation remains speculative at this stage.

The companion findings resist a simple helpful-or-harmful framing of adolescent online activity. As Schweizer put it, young people’s online activity is more complex than that binary suggests. Some online interactions may play an important role, particularly for socially sensitive young people, even though face-to-face interactions remain important overall. For policy makers, this complexity matters. A blanket restriction that eliminates online social contact could remove a genuinely useful channel for some adolescents, even as the main study’s results point to the risks of early first exposure. The combined message is that interventions should be calibrated to developmental stage and individual differences rather than applied as a single blunt instrument.

The results published today represent the first stage of a larger Australian study, registered with a protocol published in BMJ Open, that will follow young people before and after the social media ban. The researchers will continue tracking participants over the next year to see whether the policy changes behavior, attitudes, mental health, and exposure to online harms. Schweizer described the situation as one of the first opportunities anywhere in the world to understand what happens when a policy of this kind is introduced, noting that the team now needs to follow these young people over time to see whether teenagers benefit from the new restrictions and what could be improved. With the ban already in force and the cohort assembled, the study stands to generate some of the most direct evidence yet on whether delaying and restricting social media can meaningfully shift adolescent mental health outcomes, and whether the attitudes recorded on the eve of the ban translate into lasting behavioral change.

Subject of Research: The relationship between age of first social media use and anxiety and depression symptoms in Australian adolescents surveyed before the national under-16 social media ban.

Article Title: Starting social media younger linked to anxiety, depression in teens

Article References: Starting social media younger linked to anxiety, depression in teens. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: social media, adolescent mental health, anxiety, depression, Australia social media ban, UNSW Sydney, JAMA Network Open, digital hygiene, age of first use, survey research, policy evaluation, face-to-face interaction