New ICLE White Paper Finds Social-Media Bans Lack Evidence and Risk Harm
PORTLAND, Ore. (Sept. 15, 2026) — Restrictions on minors’ social-media use, including a recently introduced federal bill that would require parental permission for users younger than 16, have become common responses to adolescent mental-health problems. But a new white paper from the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) finds that such policies are unsupported by evidence, almost certainly cause more harm than good, and fail to address the underlying problem.
In “The Forbidden Feed: Adolescent Well-Being and the Limits of Social-Media Regulation,” consumer and social psychologist Lura Forcum and ICLE Senior Scholars Julian Morris and Ben Sperry survey research in psychology, economics, and law, and conclude that “the most politically popular interventions—minimum-age bans, universal age verification, and mandatory time caps—have the weakest evidence of effectiveness and the highest documented costs.”
The authors acknowledge that adolescent mental health has worsened but question the claim that social media is a major cause. They identify other possible contributors, including restrictions on children’s and adolescents’ freedom to play, travel, and socialize independently. Blanket social media bans may therefore prove ineffective or even harmful.
“For most adolescents, smartphones and social media appear neither uniformly good nor uniformly bad for mental health,” the authors write. “They seem to benefit a significant minority and harm a smaller minority. Their effects also depend heavily on context, suggesting that blanket rules are unlikely to offer an effective solution.”
While studies have found a “statistically significant” correlation between social media use and poorer mental health, meaning that the measured relationship is unlikely to reflect chance, such correlations are generally very small. In studies estimating the average relationship, the paper notes, “digital-technology use typically explains less than 1% of the variation in adolescent well-being.”
Analysis by psychologists Amy Orben and Andrew Przybylski found that bullying was 4.3 times more strongly associated with reduced well-being than technology use. Wearing eyeglasses was 1.5 times more strongly associated. While Jonathan Haidt and others argue that some effects are larger, Candice Odgers offers a different assessment: “Hundreds of researchers, myself included, have searched for the kind of large effects suggested by Haidt. Our efforts have produced a mix of no, small and mixed associations.”
Evidence from Australia’s ban on social-media accounts for those under age 16 casts further doubt on blanket restrictions. A June 2026 study of 436 Australian adolescents found that 86% of participants younger than 16 had accessed platforms covered by the country’s age ban after it took effect. Because major platforms allow extensive browsing without an account, account-level bans can actually serve to remove the safety features and parental controls available to registered users.
“A policy intended to protect teenagers could make some of them less safe by pushing them from monitored accounts to unmonitored browsing,” the authors warn.
China’s gaming curfews produced a similar pattern despite much harsher enforcement. Analysis published in Nature Human Behaviour, based on 7 billion hours of Tencent usage data, found no credible evidence that restrictions adopted in 2019 or 2021 reduced heavy gaming among minors. The authors describe the broader problem this way: “Squeeze activity in one place and it bulges out somewhere else.”
The paper also finds that the policies with the weakest evidence face the steepest constitutional problems. Federal courts have permanently enjoined age-verification and parental-consent laws in Arkansas and Louisiana, although the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a similar Ohio injunction in June 2026.
Instead, the authors find that narrower, voluntary measures show more promise. These include friction-based tools such as grayscale displays and pauses before apps open, independent certification and design standards, and family tools that give parents authority without requiring universal surveillance. Those approaches “address how platforms are experienced rather than who uses them,” the authors write. “They are less politically dramatic, but they are more likely to actually reduce harm.”
The paper also argues that the debate may have reversed cause and effect. Adolescents “may suffer from too little in-person social connection ‘in real life’ and seek substitute forms through smartphones and social media. If so, restricting their access to phones and social media may do little to address the underlying problem and could even make it worse.”
Among people ages 15 to 24, in-person time with friends fell by nearly 70% between 2003 and 2020. Social media use may increase when opportunities for independent play and face-to-face interaction decline. The most effective response may therefore involve removing barriers that prevent children and adolescents from developing social skills through in-person activity.
Download a PDF of the full white paper here. To arrange an interview with the authors, contact Jim Fellinger at [email protected].
About ICLE
The International Center for Law & Economics is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center working with a roster of more than one-hundred academic affiliates and research centers from around the globe. ICLE scholars promote the use of law and economics methodologies to inform public policy debates.