Eoin Whelan

we found that maybe the algorithms and constantly feeding the same content over and over again, that can be a harm.

We've done other studies as well which show that the auto scroll where you just constantly get the same videos or videos that automatically fetch you over and over again, that can harm well-being for a certain cohort of teenagers.

So there are harms, maybe not for across the board,

We know that some teenagers actually thrive online.

I had a discussion recently with somebody who had learning difficulties and explained that when they grew up and they were a teenager that they found it very difficult, their face-to-face world, the offline world, if we call it that, they found it very difficult to meet friends.

And the online world was a saviour for them.

And in their words, they said, you know, they're not sure if they'd be around today if they didn't have the online world.

So there's no – everyone is different.

Every teenager is different.

What we're looking for here is sensible regulation.

Yeah, that's the whole model of the social media world.

It's engagement.

They're trying to make their media as engaging as possibly.

But, you know, other businesses and media outlets, they all try to make their engagement or their content as engaging as possible.

So the point with social media is that at a certain time or certain point, that can become risky, can become harmful for teenagers.

We have to identify why exactly that is happening.

And a large part of the problem, even though there's been thousands of studies looking at social media and teenagers, I'd estimate at best we only have about 60% of the picture.

Part of the reason, like my own study, it has limits because it's based on self-reported data.

If we really want to find out how social media is impacting teenagers, we need actual use data.

So we need to know what content they're looking at, what features they're using, when they're using social media and for how long.