The Youth Who Are Thriving Online and What They Can Teach Us

April 3, 2026

The rulings against Meta and YouTube have set off a wave of  calls to limit (or even ban) young people's social media use. The instinct is understandable, but it’s important to understand the broader context around how and why youth are engaging with social media in the first place. Data from the Youth Mental Health Tracker paints a more nuanced picture when it comes to youth and social media. Across five distinct user profiles, we find that "high use" does not equal "high risk",  and that some of the most active users are also among the most socially thriving.

Five Types of Engagement

Our research identifies five patterns of youth social media engagement. On one end, two profiles of social media engagement present high risk: the Perpetually Plugged-in users, whose near-constant, multi-platform use serves both positive and negative functions and Burned-Out Browsers, marked by heavy exposure to harmful content and repeated, unsuccessful attempts to disengage. Both groups show the poorest mental health and wellbeing outcomes compared to other users.

However, there's a third group that deserves closer attention: Positive Engagers. These youth report the highest levels of social wellbeing and are using social media platforms for identity exploration, peer connection, and support-seeking. Nearly 92% of Positive Engagers indicate that social media is important for identity exploration. Over 95% note that social media is important for connection with peers, indicating that for the majority of these youth, going offline could have negative effects and lead to isolation.

External Context Matters

Positive Engagers aren't simply high users who got lucky. They are operating from a different starting point — one shaped by their broader social environment. Compared to high-risk groups, they experience less bullying and discrimination, have stronger tools for managing their emotions, and feel a greater sense of belonging and support in their lives. These aren't small advantages, but rather, conditions that make healthy social media use possible in the first place. Youth who shift into Positive Engager patterns also show substantially lower rates of depression and anxiety, less stress, and higher life satisfaction than those who move into high-risk segments.

Policy and Public Health Implications

The harms and benefits of social media are shaped less by screen time itself than by the emotional and social conditions a young person brings to the screen. 

If policy response to social media stops at restriction, we risk cutting off the very connections that are helping some young people thrive, while doing little to address the underlying conditions that make social media harmful for others. Some research indicates that simply banning social media can risk the rise of loneliness, free expression, and also limit youth developing key digital literacy skills.

The goal shouldn't necessarily be less social media, it should be better external conditions for young people that are using it. That means investing in bullying prevention in schools, emotion regulation support, and the social infrastructure that helps youth show up online from a place of strength rather than scarcity. It also means holding platforms accountable for their design choices and removing features engineered for compulsive use. Real progress will require confronting the broader systems shaping youth wellbeing, while demanding that platforms do better, not just less.

Across both our generative AI and social media research, a consistent pattern is emerging: outcomes are shaped far more by a young person’s environment and context than by any single platform. While public narratives often search for a technological scapegoat, the data points to a more complex truth: we are often treating the symptom, not the underlying condition. Technology still plays a role, but focusing on it in isolation is like repainting a water stain while the leak continues to spread overhead.