For years, parents and researchers have worried that hours spent scrolling through social media could quietly erode family life. A new long-term study from Norway suggests those fears may not be well-founded.
Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology tracked nearly 1,000 children from age 10 to 20 and found no connection between social media use and damage to family relationships, according to a report by Phys.org. The findings were published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.
"We found no evidence that either adolescents' or parents' use of social media is associated with poorer family relationships, reduced family functioning or weaker parent-child attachment over time," says Habib Niyaraq Nobakht, a postdoctoral researcher at NTNU's Department of Psychology.
The study drew on data from the long-running Tidlig Trygg i Trondheim study, also called the Trondheim Early Secure Study. All participants were born between 2003 and 2004. Social media use was assessed every other year from age 10 until participants turned 20, with roughly equal numbers of boys and girls included in the sample.
The research team did not rely on self-reporting alone. "We measured how often the adolescents checked social media, how actively they used it, and how much time they spent on it, using both interviews and objective data collected from their phones," says Silje Steinsbekk, the project's co-leader.
Parents were included as well. Their social media habits were tracked through questionnaires, including whether they considered their own use to be problematic. Adolescents reported on the closeness of their relationships with their parents and the level of conflict they experienced. Researchers also used observational methods alongside questionnaires to assess attachment and family functioning.
"The adolescents also reported on the closeness of their relationships with their parents and the level of conflict they experienced. In addition, we assessed attachment and family functioning using both questionnaires and observational methods," summarizes Lars Wichstrøm, the project leader.
Earlier studies on this topic had notable weaknesses. Many failed to separate stable family dynamics from changes that develop over time. Others drew on the perspective of only one family member, which can produce a skewed picture of how a household functions. This study took a more comprehensive approach by gathering data from multiple family members across a decade.
"Our results suggest that normal variations in social media use are unlikely to be an important driver of change in the quality of family life," Nobakht explains.
Even parents who described their own social media habits as problematic did not show a measurable negative effect on their family relationships in the data. The study does not argue that social media is the most valuable way to spend time, but its findings push back against the assumption that everyday screen use is quietly pulling families apart.
