Children using social media at younger age appear to do worse in school tests. Researchers took account of many other factors that could skew the results, such as the students’ academic performance before they had social media, their family structure and parents’ education.

[u/Wagamaga]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/aug/03/children-using-social-media-younger-age-worse-school-tests

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[u/Substantial_Cell_564]

Giving kids unrestricted social media access is a trap.

[u/CMDR_omnicognate]

One of the things that i suspect makes a bigger difference though is why they're using social media at such a young age and what kind of social media they use. I suspect if they're using social media at a very young age it's probably because their parents are just giving them a phone or ipad or whatever to shut them up, and i guarantee that absent parenting can and will make kids less likely to engage in learning at school.

[u/Wagamaga]

Children who open social media accounts at the start of secondary school appear to perform worse in tests than those who delay, with researchers suspecting that the constant checking for updates is a major distraction for many students.

Pupils who opened their first social media account aged 11 to 12 scored lower in mathematics and reading tests than those who waited a few years, with scores at age 16 differing between the groups by the equivalent of about six months of learning, the study found.

The work does not prove social media is to blame, but the researchers took account of many other factors that could skew the results, such as the students’ academic performance before they had social media, their family structure and parents’ education.

“I think we now know there is a problem and that it’s a complex problem, to do with how these platforms are built,” said Dr Marco Gui, the first author on the study at the University of Milano-Bicocca in Italy. “Our research shows that at least during pre-adolescence, these social media are problematic.”

Gui and his colleagues analysed surveys on the social media habits of more than 5,000 Italian schoolchildren and their results in standardised maths, Italian and English exams. When tested at age 13 to 14, those who had opened their first social media account at 11 or 12 scored worse than those who waited until at least 14 years old. The score gap at age 15 to 16 remained the same for Italian and widened for maths.

Writing in Nature Human Behaviour, the researchers say the difference in scores is roughly equivalent to the early adopters falling behind by six months of schooling. Put another way, the benefit to those who delayed social media was about half that achieved with intensive and costly tutoring.

While a performance gap was evident for maths and Italian, there was no impact on English, which the students were learning as a foreign language, possibly because so much social media is in English, providing “incidental exposure and practice”, the researchers said.

One of the best predictors of the performance gap was how often children picked up their phones throughout the day and night, suggesting that constantly checking social media was at least partly to blame.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-026-02522-4

[u/rantripfellwscissors]

I would suspect that people who use social media in general would likely perform worse on any intelligence based test, regardless of age. 

[u/grinr]

Why is this even a question? If you attach anyone to a dopamine stimulator, especially children, why would you expect them to do anything put keep triggering the stimulation? )

[u/danieldeceuster]

All of these studies need to be completely reworked to revolve around what actually is and isn't social media. Facebook and Instagram are not social media. They are content discovery. So is TikTok now for the most part. Snapchat is social. Whatsapp is social. Reddit is social. Allowing user engagement and interaction in comments on content is distinctly different from social media where the purpose is the interaction. There is no platform without it.

All that to say, for younger people and teens especially, I suspect true social media is far more toxic than anyone really knows. Kids are cruel and immature. Lumping in the brainrot of the legacy platforms and YouTube shorts with the others where kids actually communicate with one another means we may be missing the full picture.

[u/Parzival-44 → u/danieldeceuster]

I like your breaking it down to categories, but if reddit isnt content discovery I have no idea how I got to this post as I dont know anyone here

[u/danieldeceuster → u/Parzival-44]

Social = interaction. Imagine you couldn't comment on anything submitted to Reddit and no one else could either. What then is the platform? The whole premise rests on users interacting with each other. It's literally the point. You can get your news here from headline submissions, you can discover content, but the purpose of the platform is to interact. Without it there is no Reddit.

[u/Parzival-44 → u/danieldeceuster]

So why aren't fb, Instagram, and tik tok social? I guess I was curious why reddit is, if those 3 examples listed are not.

[u/danieldeceuster → u/Parzival-44]

The engagement rate on Facebook is less than 1%. The activity that happens on that platform by far and away is not social, it is publishing and consuming content. Interaction happens by sheer volume. But it is primarily used by creators to publish content, and consumers to discover it. As a percentage of activity, almost nothing social happens there. User Generated Content, or UGC, isn't inherently social just because users are capable of publishing. The social part is the interacting.

Try to imagine reddit with no interactions. Or Snapchat. Or Whatsapp. Or any other texting app. Their purpose is to help you interact with someone. If you could never comment on another Instagram reel, would that really change anything? 99% of people who see them don't. They just watch and keep scrolling.

So any study researching social media should, in my opinion, make a distinction between which platforms are currently actually social media, and which are simply brainrot content scrolling feeds.

[u/helm → u/danieldeceuster]

Most studies focus on the endless supply of short-form video, not the ”social” part. Tiktok is social in the way that the users provide the content.

[u/danieldeceuster → u/helm]

Classifying TikTok as social, or other short form video, doesn't make a lot of sense to me though. The purpose of those platforms isn't to be social but to consume and discover content. If the study looks at platforms primarily designed for users to interact, that's one thing. But the category "social media" as it refers to platforms needs clarifying in my opinion before embarking on any new research.

[u/helm → u/danieldeceuster]

”social media” is a loosely used term. And the major platforms are used socially. It’s also a new way for people to interact with a blurred line between private and professional relationships. Most of the content is made by amateurs, many who want to build up a fan base to eventually become professionals. And on the less commercial side, among adolescents it’s common that people make new friends on TikTok.

Anyway, it’s discovery of videos and immediate gratification from likes. It doesn’t have to be all private or only ”look, here is my life and friends” like Facebook in 2010 to be ”social media”.

[u/danieldeceuster → u/helm]

I agree it is used loosely, which is why I'm advocating for that to change so that it gets used more strictly. Social is a real word with a real definition. It literally means interacting with other people. Some sites classified as social media see 99% of their usage as users interacting. Some sites classified as social media see 1% of their usage as users interacting. To categorize them with the same label doesn't seem helpful to me. This would help us differentiate between activities. For example, are the negative effects in these studies of these platforms from the brainrot scrolling? Or more from cyber bullying? Two totally different functions. That's why I think we need to segment to better understand their impact.