BBC: Social media and teenage health

Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I'm Neil...Beth? What are you doing? Gef off your phone!

Oh, sorry.  And I'm Beth. 

Are you addicted to social media? It wouldn't be a surprise. With so many different apps out there, Snapchat, TikTok, and the latest. Threads, it's easy to spend a lot more time on your phone than ever before. 

Yes. I don't think I'm addicted, but I definitely spend more time on social media than I would like to. However, there are plenty of studies out there looking at how social media affects mental health with some saying it can be as addictive as gambling. 

Research in the US has found that adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media have double the risk of developing depression and anxiety. And adolescent is someone aged 10 to 19, between childhood and adulthood. With that in mind, it's no wonder parents are worried. To help with this, the US is curretly in the process of regulating social media apps for teenagers. Some scientists think the UK should do the same. 

There has been growing agreement among health experts about the negative, chronic health effects of social media  use on teenagers. They have revealed in surveys  that social media makes them feel owrse about their body image, and 64% of teens  have said they are regularly exposed to hate-based content. In this programme, we'll be discussing how social media effects teenagers, and, as usual, we'll be learning some useful new vocabulary as well. 

But first I have a quesiton for you, Beth. The app Snapchat is a very common way that teenagers communicate these days. This is partly because messages and photos disappear after a certain time period. But, what percentage of 13 to 24-year-olds use Snapchat? Is it:

a) 70%       b) 80%      or    c) 90%

I'll guess 80%.

OK, Beth, I'll reveal the answer later in the programme. Now, a lot of social media platforms, such as TikTok, work by showing and suggesting similar accounts and contents to those someoen has already searched for. Professor Devi Srichar, the chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, thinks this can be concerning, as she told BBC World Service programme, Inside Science:

And this is worrying for example, with young girls and eating disorders, that they're being fed that in an addictive way and the algorithm is saying 'oh they like that content. We want to keep going it to them because it keeps them on their phones', and I think that's the really vital  message here, of any of these apps, is that their revenue comes from advertising. 

Teenagers are being fed content in a way that is addictive. If you are fed something, it means you are given something. In this case, it refers to content, not food. The content is addictive because social media uses algorithms. Algorithms are a complex set of rules and calculations that prioritise and personalize the content a user sees. 

But we need to remember that social media platforms use algoriths to keep users on the platforms for as long as possible because the revenue comes from advertising. Revenue is the money a company earns. They are paid by other companies to use the social media space to promote their products. 

This should be seen as social media platforms priotizing money over the mental health of users- a worry  for parents. Professor Devi Srichar talked about the challenges of having a teenager addicted to social media on BBC World Service programme, Inside Science: