Positive Effects of Social Media: What Studies Show

The positive effects of social media show up most clearly as connection, support and a place to create, not as a general boost to mental health. In Pew Research Center's 2025 survey of US teens, 74% said these platforms make them feel more connected to what is going on in their friends' lives, and 63% said they have a place to show their creative side. Friendships were the only part of life where more teens said social media helps than hurts: 30% versus 7%.

That is not the same as “social media is good for you.” About half of those same teens said the effect on their own mental health is neither help nor hurt, and 45% said it hurts their sleep. The useful question is which uses produce the good parts, and how to keep those without sliding into comparison-and-scroll. For the other half of the ledger, see the negative effects of social media. This piece covers what actually holds up on the plus side.

What Are the Positive Effects of Social Media?

The research keeps landing on a short list. People feel more connected to friends. Some get support during hard times. Many have a place to make things and be seen. Others find people who share an identity or interest their school or town does not offer. And some use the same apps to find information, including, with a large grain of salt, information about mental health.

The 2023 US Surgeon General advisory on social media and youth mental health is not a pep talk. It is the document that treated the mental health risks as serious enough for a national warning. Even that advisory says social media can benefit some young people by offering community, self-expression and access to information, and by helping them form and keep friendships they might not have nearby.

I like starting there because it cuts through the culture-war version of this debate. If the office that issued the warning also lists real benefits, those benefits are not a branding exercise. They are part of the same evidence pile. A later summary from the American Academy of Pediatrics hits the same notes: teens use these platforms to keep up existing friendships, to find new ones and to get social support.

Connection and Friendships

Pew's April 2025 report, based on 1,391 US teens ages 13 to 17 and their parents surveyed from September 18 to October 10, 2024, is the cleanest recent read on what teens think is happening to them. Roughly three-quarters (74%) say what they see on social media makes them feel more connected to their friends' lives. About half (52%) say it makes them feel more accepted, and the same share say they have people who will support them through tough times.

That support number used to be 67% in 2022. The feeling of having backup is slipping even as the connection number stays high. Worth sitting with. Creativity slipped too, though 63% still say the platforms give them a place to show that side of themselves.

When Pew asked about impact on specific parts of life, friendships were the only category where “helps” beat “hurts.” Mental health, grades, sleep and productivity did not get the same verdict.

A lot of adults hear “positive effects of social media” and picture a wellness ad. Teens are more specific. The good part is keeping up with people they already care about. The bad part is sleep, drama and time. Those can be true at once. Related reading: social media effects on teenagers and social media and mental health.

Support, Belonging and Who Benefits Most

The Surgeon General advisory is clearest on who may get more out of the connection: young people who are often left out offline, including racial, ethnic, sexual and gender minorities. Online, they can find peers who share an identity or an interest that their hallway does not. The advisory notes that social media may support LGBTQ+ youth by enabling peer connection, identity development and social support. It also cites a finding that seven out of ten adolescent girls of color report seeing positive or identity-affirming content related to race.

Pew's 2025 numbers rhyme with that. Black teens were more likely than White or Hispanic teens to say social media made them feel a lot more accepted and a lot of support during tough times. That does not mean the platforms are safe rooms. It means for some people the alternative is having almost no room at all.

Some teens also treat the apps as a library. Thirty-four percent at least sometimes get mental health information on social media, including 9% who do it often. Among those who do, 63% say it is an important way they get that information. I would not outsource therapy to TikTok. I also would not pretend a 15-year-old who is uncomfortable talking to a parent has a long list of other doors. Only 52% of teens said they would be highly comfortable discussing their own mental health with a parent.

Creativity and Self-Expression

Sixty-three percent of teens told Pew the platforms give them a place to show their creative side, including 68% of girls and 58% of boys. Black teens were more likely than White teens to say they feel that way a lot. Sharing a song, a drawing, a joke or a recap of a game is a different behavior than watching strangers' highlight reels for an hour. The well-being research keeps making that distinction, even when headlines mash every tap into one blob called “screen time.”

The Surgeon General lists self-expression and access to important information among the potential benefits too. That does not make every post a public service. It does mean deleting the account also deletes a studio some people actually use. If the goal is a healthier relationship with the phone, the job is to protect the studio and shrink the trance.

How You Use Social Media Matters More Than Hours

Clark, Algoe and Green (2018) looked at years of mixed findings on social network sites and well-being and offered a simple split. When people use the sites to make meaningful social connections, the research tends to show benefits. When they use them in ways that isolate or invite social comparison, the picture turns sour. Message a friend, comment with care, make plans: connection. Endless browsing of people you do not know: usually not. Their paper in Current Directions in Psychological Science calls this the interpersonal-connection-behaviors framework.

A 2019 study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found something similar in a nationally representative sample of 1,027 American adults. Bekalu, McCloud and Viswanath reported that routine use, such as using social media as part of everyday life and responding to what others share, was positively associated with social well-being, positive mental health and self-rated health. Emotional connection to the platforms, such as checking constantly out of fear of missing out or feeling disappointed and cut off when you are not logged in, was negatively associated with all three. The study is cross-sectional, so it cannot prove cause. It can tell you the pattern is not “more minutes, worse person.”

That is the sentence I wish more explainers led with. Hours still matter, especially past the heavy-use range we cover in the negative-effects piece and in social media addiction. Two people with the same two hours can have opposite days: one replies to three friends and logs off, the other scrolls a polished feed and feels smaller. The design of the apps pushes you toward the second pattern. Your job is to protect the first.

How to Keep the Positive Effects of Social Media

If the good parts come from connection, keep the parts that help you talk to people and drop the parts that keep you watching. You do not have to quit to get this right. Deleting every account works the way moving to a cabin works. Most people will not do it, and they should not have to in order to text their friends.

The Bottom Line

The positive effects of social media are real, specific and easier to miss than the panic. Connection, a bit of support, a place to make things, and a lifeline for people who cannot find their people nearby. Those sit next to lost sleep, lost time and, for some, a worse mood. Both halves can be true for the same person in the same week.

Use the apps like a messaging tool that happens to have a feed, not like a feed that happens to have messages. Make the phone less sticky so the useful parts stay and the trance does not. Get Go Gray on the App Store if you want one-tap grayscale, timed color breaks and nudges on the apps that eat your day, or see how the app works. Keep the friends. Lose the spell.