No, your family relationships don’t get worse even if you spend a lot of time on social media

Are the kids glued to their phones all day? What about you? Are you spending hours scrolling? Could you use some good news right now?

Although social media may not be the most meaningful thing you can spend your time on, research from NTNU suggests that it isn't necessarily all that harmful to family life.

“We found no evidence that either adolescents’ or parents’ use of social media is associated with poorer family relationships, reduced family functioning, or weaker attachment between children and their parents over time,” says Habib Niyaraq Nobakht.

He is a researcher at NTNU’s Department of Psychology and conducted the study together with professors Lars Wichstrøm and Silje Steinsbekk.

Earlier studies had limitations

Does less screen time and fewer distractions lead to stronger family relationships?

Several studies have attempted to answer this question, but previous research has had a number of limitations, according to Nobakht.

For example, these studies have often failed to distinguish between stable family dynamics and changes that can occur within families over time.

Many studies have also relied on the experience of only one family member. This can produce a skewed picture of the family dynamics, according to the researchers.

The NTNU team took a more thorough approach.

Nearly 1,000 participants

The researchers used data from the long-term Trondheim Early Secure Study. It has followed the development of nearly 1,000 children born in 2003 and 2004.

Social media use was assessed every second year from the age of 10 until participants turned 20. The sample included a roughly equal number of boys and girls.

“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 Steinsbekk.

Parents were also included. The researchers examined their social media use through questionnaires. One of the questions asked whether the parents themselves considered their use problematic.

“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,” says Wichstrøm.

Little cause for concern

The findings appear to offer some genuinely reassuring news.

“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,” says Nobakht.

Even parents who described their own social media use as problematic did not report poorer family relationships than others. For example, they might have felt addicted or struggled to limit the time they spent online.

“The amount of time we spend on social media does not, in itself, appear to weaken relationships between family members. However, our study does not address what happens when phone use interrupts time spent together, for example at the dinner table. Those kinds of behaviours may still have negative consequences,” says Nobakht.

Will you share this piece of good news with your family or on social media first?

Reference:

Nobakht et al. Social Media Use and the Quality of Family Relationships: A Six-Wave Longitudinal Study of Within-Family Effects from Age 10 to 20, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 2026. DOI: 10.1007/s10964-026-02362-5

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Read the Norwegian version of this article on forskning.no

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