As studies on the impact of social media pile up, the latest piece of evidence on its impact is a faintly encouraging one. Having correlated Facebook usage to wellbeing data among nearly a million people across 72 countries, scientists at Oxford report that the evidence for psychological harm is “on balance, more speculative than conclusive”.
Although this is welcome news, it is no reason for complacency. Governments need to be more proactive in the face of the threat that social media poses to the mental health of young people. The widespread use of smartphones by children is the biggest change in the behaviour of the young in living memory. Almost everybody has a phone by the time they are 12. Startlingly, a fifth of three-to-four
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