The teens are on Instagram. That much is obvious. A majority of teens say they use the app, including 8 percent who say they use it “almost constantly,” according to the Pew Research Center. And yet a lot is still unknown about what such extensive use might do to kids. Many people believe that it and other social-media apps are contributing to a teen mental-health crisis.
…
Candice Odgers, a psychologist at UC Irvine who studies the effects of technology on adolescent mental health and has written on the subject for The Atlantic, said the pilot program is a decent, if limited, first step. “Scientifically, I think this is a critical step in the right direction as it offers a potentially open and transparent way of testing how social media may be impacting adolescents’ well-being and lives,” she told me. “It can help to ensure that science is conducted in the light of day, by having researchers preregister their findings and openly share their code, data, and results for others to replicate.” Researchers have long called for more data sharing from Meta, Odgers noted. “This announcement represents one step forward, although they can, and should, certainly do more.”