For years, the narrative surrounding teenagers’ use of digital technology has been one of alarm.

Time spent scrolling through TikTok or playing video games is widely seen to be driving the current crisis in youth mental health, fuelling rising rates of anxiety and depression.

But our recent study suggests that this simple story of cause and effect is not supported by the evidence.

After following more than 25,000 young people in Greater Manchester over three school years, we found little evidence that self-reported time spent on social media or frequent gaming causes mental health problems in early-to-mid adolescence. Instead, the relationship between digital technology use and teenagers’ wellbeing is far more nuanced than simple cause and effect.

While many previous studies have looked at a single snapshot in time, we used a longitudinal approach: observing the same young people over an extended period of time. We did this through the #BeeWell programme, which surveys young people annually. We tracked the same pupils across three........

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