ReviewCureus2026
Adolescent Mental Health in the Age of Social Media: Clinical Risks and Policy Lessons From Australia's World-First Under-16 Restrictions.
Review in Cureus, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Social media is now embedded in adolescent relationships, identity formation, sleep, learning, emotion regulation, and help-seeking. This clinically oriented narrative review synthesizes evidence on adolescent social media use and mental health, with emphasis on anxiety and depression, sleep, cyberbullying, body image and eating concerns, self-harm-related content, digital social support, family context, and policy responses. The review aims to provide clinicians with a practical framework for assessment and management while using Australia's under-16 social media restrictions as a policy case study. Current evidence does not support a simple screen-time model. Risk appears more closely related to adolescent vulnerability, harmful or algorithmically amplified content, compulsive or loss-of-control use, cyberbullying, sleep disruption, social comparison, limited coping strategies, and the availability of offline protective relationships. Australia's Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024, in effect from 10 December 2025, creates obligations for age-restricted platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent Australians under 16 from creating or maintaining accounts. This law should be understood as a platform-accountability intervention rather than a complete mental health intervention. Clinicians should assess social media use through functional impairment, sleep, mood, exposure to harmful content, cyberbullying, body image, self-harm risk, family media practices, and supportive online connections. Management should escalate when disclosures involve suicidal ideation, self-harm content, coercion, threats, image-based abuse, or severe sleep or eating disturbance. The goal is neither moral panic nor technological complacency, but safer digital environments and stronger family, clinical, school, and policy supports around young people.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.