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Primary Submission Category: Mental health/function
What Kinds of Harmful Content Do Teens Actually See on Social Media? Objective Evidence from a Representative Sample of Teens’ Screen Recordings, Surveys, and App-Level Screen Time Data
Authors: Marie Bragg, Zora Hall, Emil Hafeez, Roxanne Dupuis,
Presenting Author: Marie Bragg*
Exposure to harmful content on social media has become a growing public health concern, yet few studies have directly measured what large samples of adolescents encounter on their actual social media feeds. This study integrates objective screen-time metrics, screen recordings of real social media use, and survey data to provide granular and unprecedented insights into adolescents’ exposure to problematic content across platforms—and how teens interact with such content.
Participants were recruited from an opt-in national research panel with demographic quotas to reflect state populations. In Wave 1, 175 teens from Texas completed a survey assessing demographics, social media use, and mental health and uploaded screenshots of their weekly smartphone screen-time reports. A randomly selected subsample of 80 teens also uploaded at least one hour of screen recordings showing their typical social media use. Trained coders analyzed the videos and categorized problematic content using a coding framework derived from major platform safety guidelines: profanity/crude humor; violence/criminal behavior; sexual abuse/violence; harassment/bullying; suicide/self-harm; depression; disordered eating or risky weight management; dangerous challenges; sexualized content; graphic content; hate speech; and other concerning material.
Most teens reported concerns about their own use: 68.6% said they use social media “too much,” and 53.5% reported unsuccessful attempts to cut back. Objective screen-time data showed teens spent an average of 4.83 hours per day on their top five apps, with TikTok the most used platform (1.53 hours/day). Among the 80 teens whose actual feeds were analyzed, 93.8% were exposed to at least one instance of problematic content. Across 85.9 hours of recorded social media use, coders identified 1,431 posts containing problematic content—an average of 16.6 such posts per hour. Profanity/crude humor was most common (59.5%), followed by sexualized content and dangerous activities (11.5% each), shocking and graphic content (6.6%). TikTok accounted for the majority of problematic posts and had the highest number of instances across most content categories, including suicide and depression-related content. We are analyzing data on how many teens liked, commented on, or shared problematic content.
These findings provide rare objective evidence of the volume and types of concerning content appearing in adolescents’ social media feeds, and how they self-report their own problematic use—along with unprecedented insights into how teens like, comment, and share harmful content—with implications for platform governance, youth mental health, and emerging digital safety policies.