As we move towards the end of 2025, the pattern has become hard to ignore. Over the past twelve months, the same sequence has played out again and again. Concerns rise about young people’s mental health. Attention quickly turns to social media. And before long, a policy proposal appears that promises clarity and decisiveness: an age limit, a ban, a single, identifiable culprit.

This pattern is not new. Anyone who has followed debates about youth mental health over the past five years will recognise it. The recent decision in Australia to ban social media for under-16s has merely made this tendency more visible. Similar calls have surfaced elsewhere, often disconnected from the more nuanced recommendations that public health researchers and expert advisory bodies have been emphasising for years.

The mention of social media as a factor should not surprise anyone. In earlier posts on this blog, I discussed how problematic use is associated with poorer mental well-being, and why certain groups, particularly adolescent girls, appear more vulnerable. Anyone trying to understand current trends cannot simply ignore digital media. But turning social media into the explanation is something else entirely. And that is where the debate increasingly goes wrong.

What has become clearer over the past years is that youth mental health is not a one-dimensional problem. In earlier analyses, I pointed to the pandemic’s lasting impact, the risk of overlooking less visible causes, and growing evidence that social media alone cannot account for the observed trends. Again and again, the same conclusion emerged: the more complex the phenomenon, the stronger the temptation to reduce it to something simpler.

This tension is articulated particularly sharply in Gonneke Stevens’ inaugural lecture A Plea for the Complex Story. She describes how appealing it is to attribute societal problems to a single cause, and why this is so problematic. Not only because such explanations are scientifically insufficient, but because they almost inevitably lead to overly simplistic policy responses. Social media then cease to be one factor among many and instead become the story itself.

The problem with that simple story is not only that it is incomplete. It also subtly shifts responsibility. If social media are the problem, we no longer need to talk as much about rising performance pressure in education, about socioeconomic inequality, about parental uncertainty in increasingly competitive societies, or about youth mental health services that remain structurally under-resourced. The simple story is attractive because it is clear and manageable, but also because it allows us to sidestep uncomfortable questions.

We have seen this dynamic before. When commentators argue that young people “talk too much” about mental health, the conclusion follows almost automatically: additional support must be unnecessary. When policymakers frame social media as the primary cause, bans quickly present themselves as decisive action. What drops out of the conversation is a more uncomfortable question: what do these measures actually fail to address? They do not reduce inequality. They do not strengthen relationships between young people, parents and schools. And they do not equip young people to navigate a digital world that does not suddenly disappear once they cross a legal age threshold.

None of this implies that regulation is pointless or that age limits are inherently misguided. The argument is more subtle, and therefore harder to sell. When policymakers present a single measure as the solution to a complex problem, other relevant causes fade from view. That choice is not trivial. It determines where resources flow, which professionals receive backing, and which young people ultimately gain access to support.

If you place the posts from recent years side by side, one thing stands out above all: what has not changed. The evidence base has grown richer. The analyses have become more refined. Yet the impulse to respond to complex problems with simple stories persists, and may even be strengthening. While expert advice increasingly emphasises context, interaction and differentiation, policy responses move in the opposite direction: more visible, faster and simpler. Perhaps because this is what we have collectively learned to expect.

The question, then, is not whether social media play a role in youth mental health. They do. The question is why we keep acting as if they are the whole story. Anyone who takes youth mental health seriously will have to tolerate the discomfort of complexity. Not everything that matters can be captured in a ban. And not every problem becomes smaller when we describe it as simpler than it really is.