Pew survey of 743 US teens: 81% feel social media makes them more connected, 69% say it helps diversify friend groups; 26% say it makes them feel worse
escaping the tyranny of geography. http://twitter.com/... Margarita Noriega / @margarita : Incredible: only 37 percent of teenagers believe that social media helps people their age find trustworthy information http://www.pewinternet.org/... via @pewinternet http://twitter.com/... @pewinternet : Share of teens who say they have a close friend who is of a different... Gender 61% Race/Ethnicity 60% Religion 46% https://pewrsr.ch/2Atwnzr pic.twitter.com/qDxPgmea6h @pewinternet : 44% of teens say they at least sometimes unfriend or unfollow people on social media. Top reasons for doing so: Drama 78% Posting too often 54% Bullying 52% https://pewrsr.ch/2TUkcEx pic.twitter.com/eaUtwZ6L6w @pewinternet : Older teens are more likely than younger teens to have a close friend who is someone they first met online https://pewrsr.ch/2Atwnzr pic.twitter.com/bSqZfr0mMB @pewinternet : % of U.S. teens who say the following *positive* things about social media: Feel more connected to friends 81% Think it helps teens interact with a more diverse group of people 69% Feel as if they have people who support them through tough times 68% https://pewrsr.ch/2KEISgd pic.twitter.com/pJIjk8gntN @pewinternet : % of teens who say they at least sometimes post ___ on social media: Things only their closest friends would understand 50% Selfies 45 Updates on their location, what they're doing 42 Videos they've recorded 41 Things they want to go viral 29 https://pewrsr.ch/2KEISgd pic.twitter.com/jRdjLPHuk1 @pewinternet : Share of teens who say social media makes them feel more... Included 71% Excluded 25% Confident 69% Insecure 26% https://pewrsr.ch/2KEISgd pic.twitter.com/OfEL2gGXvS Christopher Mims / @mims : the kids are all right (but that never makes headlines) http://twitter.com/... Katie Notopoulos / @katienotopoulos : Contrary to what you might think, 81% of teens say social media is good for them and helps them connect with friends, makes them outgoing, and introduces them to more diverse friends and viewpoints (this was not written by a teen) http://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... @mat : I said the same thing about cigarettes when I was 15: A majority of today's teens say social media helps them with friendships and actually makes them feel goodhttps://t.co/AcWoCNwtK5 via @katienotopoulos
Context & Ripple Effects
This 2018 Pew survey is the baseline in a series the center has been running for nearly a decade: it captures US teens at peak connection optimism — 81% feeling closer to friends, 69% crediting social media with diversifying friend groups — alongside early warning signs like only 37% trusting information they find there and 44% regularly unfriending over drama. It landed just after reporting that teens had largely abandoned Facebook, with only 15% using it versus 68% in 2012 (teens fleeing Facebook), meaning the connection benefits were already accruing to newer platforms.
The follow-on surveys show the arc bending: by late 2022 Pew still found 80% feeling closer to friends (the 2022 follow-up survey) but with girls reporting more drama, and by 2025 the share of teens saying social media harms people their age had climbed from 32% to 48% (the 2025 harms survey). The 2018 finding that a quarter already felt worse was the leading edge of that shift.
First-order effects
- Teens themselves draw the line the industry still argues about: overwhelming majorities credit social media with connection and friendship diversity, yet only 37% call it a trustworthy information source — a split between social utility and informational utility that lands directly on the platforms hosting both.
- Older teens being more likely than younger ones to have a close friend first met online gives platforms a cohort argument for network growth: each graduating class arrives with online-origin friendships as the norm.
Second-order effects
- The self-reported nature of these numbers became a live controversy when Facebook's internal teen mental health research was challenged for resting on exactly this kind of small-sample, self-reported data (NPR's critique of Facebook's research) — surveys like this one are both the evidence base and the methodological weak point platforms get judged by.
- The unfriending behavior Pew documents — 44% doing it at least sometimes, mostly over drama — feeds platform design pressure around blocking, muting, and friction tools, since managing peer conflict is now a core product surface rather than an edge case.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds across Pew's series — connection scores stable, harm perceptions rising, girls consistently skewing more negative — the structural endpoint is regulation and product policy built on longitudinal teen-survey evidence rather than any single study, with platforms accountable for the trend line, not the snapshot.
- The durability of the connection numbers across 2018 and 2022 suggests the debate settles not on whether teens benefit socially but on how platforms price the minority harm — the 26% who felt worse in 2018 growing into the near-majority concern by 2025.
The trend: Pew's serial teen surveys are charting a decade-long drift from connection optimism toward perceived harm, turning adolescent self-reporting into the de facto evidence base for how social media gets regulated.