Anxiety and low mood
This is the most contested area in the field and the one where confident claims should make you suspicious. What is reasonably clear is that displaced sleep affects mood, that some young people are reliably worse after use than before it, and that a minority experience something specific and describable around checking. What is disputed is how much of the population-level picture social media explains.
If you need help now
Call 911 if someone is unresponsive or badly hurt. Call or text 988 for thoughts of suicide or self harm. Both are free and open all day and night. All crisis resources
Where the disagreement actually is
Researchers looking at the same datasets reach different conclusions about effect size, and some argue the measures themselves are too crude to answer the question.
The disagreement is real and it is not a reason to dismiss the concern. It is a reason to be careful with anyone who tells you the number.
The thing worth watching in your own house
A young person who is reliably worse after use than before it, and who knows it, and uses anyway, is describing something specific. That gap between knowing and continuing is worth naming to a clinician, because it is more useful than a general worry.
Anxiety around checking
Some describe restlessness that settles the moment they look. Others describe dread before opening an app and relief afterward, or the reverse. If your child can describe something like that, tell whoever assesses them, because specific is useful.
What helps while the argument continues
Sleep, first. A doctor, second. One change at home rather than five. And the thing most parents skip, which is telling someone else what is going on, so that the person managing it is not doing it alone.
Three different kinds of help
These are separate on purpose. A parent looking for clinical help should never arrive in a legal intake queue by accident.
Getting help
A family doctor first, the school counselor second, a therapist third. The first two are faster and cheaper, and both can refer you onward.
Finding helpWe do not provide treatment and take no payment from anyone who does.
The lawsuits
How the claims work, what has to be shown, and why the deadlines are different for a child. This comes second to getting your child care, and that is not a formality.
How the lawsuits workContacting us does not create an attorney client relationship, and what you send is not confidential or privileged.
Reporting and resources
Reporting an image or an adult, what a school can actually do, and the organizations worth your time.
ResourcesNobody pays to be listed and listing is not endorsement.