Social media and teenage girls: the comparison you cannot see

“Nothing. I’m fine.”

Sunday dinner. Half an hour ago your daughter was in a good mood, laughing with her brother and talking about a trip. Then she glanced at her phone for a minute. When she turned it face down, she was quieter. For the rest of the meal you barely heard her, and the question “is something wrong?” got the answer every parent of a teenage girl knows: nothing, I’m fine.

In a moment like this a parent sees nothing at all. Nobody insulted her, she did not get a bad mark, she did not fall out with a friend. She saw a few photos — a classmate at the seaside, a group of girls at a party she was not invited to, an influencer with a “morning routine” that starts at six and ends with a perfect face. And within a few seconds she made a comparison that happened silently, without words and without witnesses.

This piece is for parents who sense that something is happening to their daughter on her phone but do not know what. I have written about how self-image is built in the teenage years more generally in Self-image in the teenage years: what parents can do. Here I am focusing on one very specific mechanism: the comparison you cannot see.

Comparison is old, the stage is new

People have compared themselves with one another for as long as we have existed. In 1954 the psychologist Leon Festinger described how we evaluate ourselves partly by measuring ourselves against others — especially when there is no clear external yardstick. Adolescence is a time when there is almost no such yardstick: who am I, what do I like, am I pretty, am I interesting, do people like me. We look for the answers in the mirror of our peers.

Once, that mirror was limited to a classroom, a street and a few magazines. Today a teenage girl carries in her pocket hundreds or thousands of faces, bodies and lives, almost all of them curated. People post their best moments, often edited with filters and taken over several attempts. And what gets compared with them is her perfectly ordinary day — with rows at home, spots, a boring afternoon and all the doubts that nobody posts.

I have written about what constantly measuring yourself against others does to adults in Comparing yourself on social media: what constant measuring does to the brain. With teenage girls the story is similar, but with one important difference: their self-image is still being formed. An adult woman who feels envy at a photo has at least a few years of experience to set against it. A thirteen-year-old does not.

Why teenage girls, and why now

One of the most interesting studies of recent years comes from Amy Orben’s group. In 2022, using a large British sample of young people, they looked for the periods when social media use is most strongly linked to lower life satisfaction later on. For girls this window was between the ages of 11 and 13, and for boys somewhat later, between 14 and 15. The authors linked this to the different timing of puberty. The message for parents is that the early teenage years may be particularly sensitive for girls.

Another British study (Kelly and colleagues, 2018), using data on fourteen-year-olds, showed that the link between social media use and depressive symptoms was stronger in girls than in boys. What is interesting is what it ran through: poorer sleep, online harassment, lower self-esteem and a poorer body image. In other words, it was not the screen itself that did harm, but what happened on it and what it pushed out.

A third finding is perhaps the most telling. In 2015 Jacqueline Nesi and Mitchell Prinstein showed that what mattered for adolescents was not so much the time spent on social media as how they used it. Those who used it for comparison and seeking reassurance — checking how many likes a post got, comparing their own photos with other people’s — reported more depressive symptoms. The link was stronger in girls.

There is another, more biological reason. In 2016 Lauren Sherman and colleagues showed teenagers in an MRI scanner photos that looked like social media posts, some with many likes and others with few. When the adolescents saw their own photos with many likes, brain areas linked to reward became more active. They were also more inclined to like photos that many others had already liked. So a like is not just a number. It is a small, measurable dose of belonging — and its absence is a small, measurable rejection. You can read more about how the reward system works under dopamine in the knowledge base.

What the research says — and where it disagrees

I need to be honest here, because this is an area where experts have been arguing loudly in recent years.

The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues in The Anxious Generation (2024) that the shift to a childhood lived through the smartphone, around 2010–2015, is an important cause of the rise in anxiety and depression among young people, especially girls. He proposes clear collective measures: no smartphone before secondary school, no social media before 16, phone-free schools.

Other researchers disagree. When the book came out, the psychologist Candice Odgers wrote in Nature that the data do not support such a causal story: the links are mostly small, they are often correlations, and young people who are struggling may simply spend more time on social media. Amy Orben and Andrew Przybylski have shown in their analyses that the average link between digital technology use and young people’s wellbeing is very small — while also pointing out that an average can hide individuals for whom the harm is considerable.

So what should a parent do with this? My honest answer is: we do not know enough to say that social media is the main cause of teenage girls’ distress. But we know enough to take seriously the way your daughter uses it. For your family it matters less who wins the scientific argument in the end, and more what is happening to her.

What a parent does not see

Comparison rarely shows itself directly. A teenage girl will rarely say “I feel ugly because I saw her photos”. But it does show in small things that are easy to miss:

• she spends a long time preparing a post, takes dozens of photos and then deletes them;
• after posting she checks her phone every few minutes and is in a bad mood if there is no response;
• she deletes old posts that did not get enough likes;
• she often mentions other girls’ bodies, faces or weight — or suddenly goes completely silent on the subject;
• after time on her phone she is noticeably quieter, more irritable or sadder;
• she knows exactly who was at which get-together and who was not invited.

None of this is an alarm in itself. But it is a sign that the phone is not just entertainment for her, but also a place where she is constantly being assessed. When the assessment touches her body, it is especially important to pay attention. I have written about what constant exposure to “perfect” bodies does in Bodies on social media: what constant comparison does, and about a teenage girl’s relationship with her own body in A teenage girl and her body: what a parent can do.

Behind this there is often a feeling that teenage girls find hard to name: shame. Not guilt about something they did, but a sense that there is something wrong with them. How these two feelings differ is explained under shame in the knowledge base.

How to ask without the door closing

A parent’s most natural reaction is to criticise social media: “Those pictures are all fake.” “Why do you even look at that rubbish?” Although there is some truth in it, what a teenage girl mainly hears is that you do not understand her — and that she is stupid for caring.

It is better to start with curiosity. The conversation below is composite and not about a real person.

“Will you show me who you like following most?”
“Why? You won’t like her.”
“Maybe not. But I’m interested in what you like about her.”
“I don’t know. She’s always so put together. And she has a really nice life.”
“How do you feel when you look at her posts?”
“… Sometimes fine. Sometimes I feel completely boring.”
“Thank you for telling me. That happens to me too, when I look at some people.”
(a composite conversation, not about a real person)

In this conversation the parent did not correct anything, did not lecture about filters and did not forbid anything. But they did something more important: they invited their daughter to look at her own experience and showed her that she could share it without being judged. In psychology, this ability to understand our own and other people’s inner states is called mentalising. A teenage girl who can say “her posts make me feel boring” already has a little more space between herself and the comparison.

Exercise: looking through one profile together

You can try this exercise with your daughter if she is open to talking. If she is not, you can first do it yourself with your own social media — and later tell her what you noticed.

1. Choose one profile she follows. Not the one you dislike most. The one she likes most.
2. Look at five posts together and ask of each one: what is outside the frame? What had to happen for this photo to exist — how many attempts, who took it, what was going on five minutes earlier?
3. For each post, ask her for one word for how she feels when she sees it. No explanation, no correcting. Just the name of the feeling.
4. See whether a pattern appears. Which posts make her feel good, and which worse? They are often surprisingly different.
5. Let her decide whether to change anything. Perhaps she will unfollow one profile, perhaps none. What matters is that the decision stays hers.

This exercise does not work as a ban, but as training in noticing. A teenage girl who has once noticed how she feels when she sees certain posts may notice it on her own next time, without you.

What a parent can do

You do not have to become a social media expert. But a few things matter a great deal for teenage girls.

Watch what you yourself say about bodies. Teenage girls hear very clearly what their mother says about her own figure and what their father says about someone having “put on weight”. If bodies are often judged at home, social media will fall on well-prepared ground.

Praise things that are not about looks. This is not about never telling her she is pretty. It is about her also hearing that she is funny, brave, persistent, kind, clever. The more measures she has for her own worth, the less weight each like carries.

Protect her sleep. Comparison hurts most late at night, when a person is tired and alone. Keeping the phone out of the bedroom at night is one of the few rules supported by almost all researchers, whichever side of the argument they are on. I have described how to agree on this in Teenagers and screens: how much is too much and where to draw the line.

Do not wait for her to come to you. Teenage girls rarely bring up comparison first, because they are ashamed of it. A short question at the right moment — in the car, on a walk, not in front of everyone at the table — often opens up more than a big talk.

Be with her even when there is no reason. The best protection against feeling you are not enough is the experience of mattering to someone without having to perform. This is not advice about social media. It is advice about the relationship — and that is exactly why it also works on social media. You can read more about how self-image is built and how it differs from self-confidence under self-image.

Where this explanation does not apply

It would not be fair to end this piece with the impression that social media is dangerous for every teenage girl. It is not.

For many young people social media is also a place of support. A girl who feels different in her class — because of her interests, her sexual orientation, an illness or something else — may find people online who understand her, and that can be very precious to her. A ban would take that away too.

Nor is comparison only a girls’ thing. Research shows some differences between the sexes, but boys compare themselves too — by body, success, money or popularity. In boys, distress often shows differently, through withdrawal or anger rather than silence.

And finally: sometimes social media is not the cause, but only the place where something that was already happening becomes visible. A girl who is lonely, sad or anxious will often spend more time on social media and be more vulnerable there. Remove the phone and you have not removed the distress. If a low mood goes on for several weeks, if she withdraws from friends, gives up things she used to enjoy or changes how she eats, it is wise to consult your GP or paediatrician, the school counselling service, or a therapist who works with children and adolescents. I have described the first signs worth watching for around eating in Early signs of an eating disorder in a teenager — what to notice before it gets bad.

In Slovenia, young people can turn anonymously to TOM, the helpline for children and adolescents, on 116 111. If you ever notice signs of self-harm or hear that she does not want to live any more, do not wait: call Klic v duševni stiski in Slovenia on 01 520 99 00 (every day from 7 pm to 7 am), the Samarijan helpline in Slovenia on 116 123 (24 hours), or in an emergency 112.

When to seek help as a family

Sometimes a conversation about social media can no longer happen at home, because every attempt is already a row. Sometimes the parents blame each other for being too strict or too lenient. And sometimes your daughter simply goes quiet and nobody knows how to reach her any more. I have written about how to understand a teenager’s silence and what a family can do about it in When a teenager goes quiet: how family therapy opens the conversation.

In such cases family therapy can help. Not so that someone can “fix” your daughter, but so that the family can find a way of talking about difficult things — including the ones that happen quietly, on a screen, in a few seconds at Sunday dinner.

What to remember

• Comparison on social media is silent: a parent usually sees only the last step — a bad mood or “nothing, I’m fine”.
• More than the time spent on social media, how it is used matters: comparing and chasing likes are more closely linked to distress.
• Researchers disagree about whether social media is the main cause of young people’s distress. The average effect is small, but for some girls it can be large.
• Curiosity opens more than criticism: ask how she feels when she sees posts, not just what she looks at.
• Sleep, how bodies are talked about at home, and a sense that she is worth something without performing are the best protection.