Professor Amy Orben

I think there's different ways to look at evidence in this space.

Naturally, technology is really fast moving and companies don't provide a lot of access to data or resources to test the impacts and the safety.

So I think evidence is evolving.

We have pretty good evidence that it has harmed individual young people, right?

Coroners have found that some young people have died partially because of what content they've been exposed to on social media.

Individual harm of severe harm is enough evidence

to cause major policy change.

In those studies with young adults, we do see that there's much better evidence of reduction in social media use leading to improvements in well-being.

While abstinent from social media completely, the evidence is still much more mixed and difficult to interpret.

Yes, you're right, right?

We've seen teen mental health decline from the time that social media or smartphones were released.

And actually, there was a similar time there was an economic crash.

There's been a lot of other changes happening.

going on.

And there's been a lot of debate what they say or what not.

We wouldn't expect evidence to be great, just given the lack of the raw materials for proper science to be done.

And so I think it's critical for us not to just talk about is there evidence or is there not?

But what are the risks of different options?

What's the risk of saying there potentially isn't an impact when in five years, we found out that there has been?

And I think that helps policymakers make those judgments.