Explainer: How to improve mental health safety on social media – not just for young people

Juries in California and New Mexico recently found social media companies liable for opening young people up to mental health harm, suicide risk and other safety issues in two major court cases.

As punishment, they imposed hundreds of millions of dollars in financial penalties.

Meanwhile, other social media companies had already settled out of court in the California case for unknown sums, rather than wait for a verdict.

Many more court cases are still in process. And federal regulators, Congress, state governments and social media companies are talking about requiring age verification, better monitoring, and more.

But young people, parents, and all social media users have options now to protect their mental health, and don't have to wait for juries, judges, lawmakers or companies to act, say experts from University of Michigan Health and their colleagues.

They’ve launched an easy-to-follow and free “Social Media Mini Course” that walks anyone through key settings on different social media platforms that users can change to make their experience more positive, and less risky, if they choose to stay on social media.

It’s available through the Instagram account @socialmediaminicourse, or directly, as an interactive webpage.

A link in the Instagram account’s bio leads to a page of even more information and free tools, as well as to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

The settings featured in the mini course – from disabling like counts on Instagram to refreshing the For You feed on TikTok – disrupt some potentially harmful properties of the platforms for young minds.

The toolkit also walks users through scenarios of how social media use can affect mood, self-image, sleep patterns and more, and asks them to reflect on their own use and what they might want to change.

The team tested the mini course with young people. They also included in the course quotes of advice from participants in the MyVoice study of youth, which has done text-message-based polling on social media and many other topics in teens and young adults for years.  

U-M C.S. Mott Children's Hospital child and adolescent psychiatrist Jane Harness, D.O., helped lead the mini course development and testing.

“We are all certainly constrained by the settings offered and the design of the platforms themselves,” she said. “We have been able to introduce new information to young people about turning off the like counts, refreshing the For You or Explore pages, setting time limits and changing the content they are presented with on social media, but so much more could be done.”

Discussions about social media use between parents and young people, or among young people, are crucial, she said.

“Some young people use these features and settings, as we showed in our study several years ago, while others are not aware they exist,” said Harness, who is an adjunct faculty member in the U-M Medical School Department of Psychiatry. “A growing concern also includes AI chatbots," she said, which may play a role in suicidal thoughts or the onset of signs of psychosis.

The team behind the mini course acknowledges that social media can have positive effects for young people if used in moderation and with safety settings on – for example, connecting them with friends, family and a wider world of information and views.

They hope their mini course will help families, young people and any social media user navigate the online world more safely.

In addition to Harness, the social media mini course was created by clinical child psychologist Sarah E. Domoff, Ph.D., of the University at Albany, child psychiatrist Heide Rollings, M.D. and Amy Mancuso, LMSW of Michigan State University and Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and clinical psychologist Jessica Schleider, Ph.D., of Northwestern University. The MyVoice study of youth is led by Tammy Chang, M.D., M.P.H., M.S., of the U-M Department of Family Medicine.

The mini course evaluation was funded by the University of Michigan Medical School Research Scouts program and the Todd Ouida Clinical Scholars Award from the U-M Eisenberg Family Depression Center.