The Psychological Impact of Social Media on Adolescents

In the past decade, social media has grown from a marginal phenomenon to a ubiquitous and indispensable force influencing adolescent psychological growth globally. With the existence of platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube founded on the principles of algorithmic personalization, today's teenagers live in a personalized digital world catering to their individual tastes even as it is engineered to optimize attention and emotional engagement. This research assesses the worldwide psychological effects of social media on 13- to 19-year-olds, synthesizing data from a mixed-methods experiment in India, the United States, and the United Kingdom with case studies from Africa, Europe, and East Asia.