Social Media and Violence Amongst Young People: A Growing Concern

Two questions I get asked a lot as head of the Youth Endowment Fund is “does social media cause violence?” and “what do we do about it?” So, here’s my attempt at some answers.

Does social media cause violence?

The short answer is we don’t know, but I think it’s likely. Here’s the thing: there is no categorical evidence that shows that social media causes violence.[1] However, I think the balance of evidence suggests there it does. Here are five reasons why I think that:

1. Lots of exposure to violence online: 60% of teenage children reported seeing real-life violence on social media platforms within the last year, illustrating the pervasiveness of violent content. This varied by site, with TikTok being the worst offender; just under 50% of TikTok users saw violence on the site.[2]
2. There’s a clear pathway from social media to violence: The main reason teenage children give for being violent is being “baited” or provoked. There is clear qualitative evidence that this ‘baiting’ is common online and can lead to violence.[3]
3. Children believe social media causes violence: 42% of teenage children perceive social media as a major contributor to youth violence, much, much more so than other forms of entertainment like music, television, or video games, and close to the number identifying gangs or drugs as major contributor.
4. Those involved in violence hate social media: 35% of teenage children would turn off social media if they could. That’s high.  But those who perpetrate violence or are victims are even more keen to turn it all off (48% and 49%). Children with specific vulnerabilities to violence are also much, more likely to say they would get rid of all social media if they could; particularly those supported by YOTs, carrying weapons, in gangs and having had police contact.

What do we do?

So, what do we do? Here are three things that would be worth doing. Each would help if social media does cause violence. The big plus is – they would all help children even if they social media doesn’t cause violence.

1. Ban Smartphones in Schools: Implement bans on smartphone usage during school hours. This reduces social media exposure, limiting opportunities for online conflicts to spill over into school environments.[4]
2. Provide Social Skills Training in Schools: Offer targeted training in social skills for students who struggle with empathy and self-control, which has been shown to decrease violence involvement by up to 30%.[5] This is likely to help reduce the flow from online ‘baiting’ to violence.
3. Sort access to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT): We should provide CBT programmes to students and children who most need it. This helps children to recognise and manage the emotional triggers from social media interactions before they lead to violent reactions. These approaches have been found to reduce violence by around 30%.[6] This is also likely to help reduce the flow from online ‘baiting’ to violence. But there is a real problem is ensuring access to these programmes led by trained clinicians. This should be a top priority; when it comes to mental health support in schools, this is one of few proven approaches.
   

[1] This will be hard to get – likely involving randomising access to social media for quite a lot of people (as violence is thankfully relatively rare).

[2] All stats from the YEF’s annual Children, Violence and Vulnerability report: https://youthendowmentfund.org.uk/reports/children-violence-and-vulnerability-2023/

[3] Further to this, one study managed to find that reading angry social media posts actually led to greater violence: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4380957

[4] We have forthcoming research in the next CVV survey (2024), available soon, which asks directly about school policies on smartphone use.

[5] https://youthendowmentfund.org.uk/toolkit/social-skills-training/

[6] https://youthendowmentfund.org.uk/toolkit/cognitive-behavioural-therapy/