Brandon teen bound for national science fair with study linking social media to poor mental health

Aiden Simard, 18, had a hunch that heavy social media scrolling might be linked to poor mental health among people in his generation, so he put it to the test for his school science fair.

Turns out, the Brandon, Man., teen's findings were so convincing he'll go all the way to the Canada-Wide Science Fair to present them next week.

"As an adolescent growing up, I'm very aware of the difficulties with fitting in and feeling validated and just feeling loved in general. And having social media as a coping mechanism seems very beneficial to me and everybody else, because it allows you to go online and feel exactly what you want," Simard said.

"But as seen through my results, too much of a good thing is not good."

To test his theory, the Neelin High School student recruited 28 participants, aged 15 to 17, who agreed to wean themselves off social media over a four-week period. Before, during and after the experiment, Simard had the participants fill out questionnaires about their stress levels, and he monitored their blood pressure and cortisol levels.

By the end of the experiment, he had 21 participants left. Their data suggested they were less stressed, were sleeping and eating better and were more sociable.

"They actually followed very similar patterns to different drugs, which is heroin and cocaine, where they had a very big withdrawal period where stresses and anxieties spiked up once they were limited," Simard said.

"People were getting stomach aches and headaches through the withdrawal period, but once they had the adaptation period all those all those symptoms start to flip and become much, much better than they were at the beginning."

Simard is flying to Fredericton, N.B., on Friday to participate in the Canada-Wide Science Fair with teens from across the country. Festivities begin Saturday with judging scheduled for Monday and awards on Thursday.

'There had to be something that I could do to help'

Some of the participants said they're going to restrict their social media use in the long-term after the experiment ended, Simard said. Himself, he hasn't kicked the habit yet — an ethics board told him it would be unethical if he put himself through the same routine as his participants.

Now that the results are in, Simard said his goal is to spread awareness about the harm social media could be doing to users' mental health. His concern about mental health issues was what got him doing the research in the first place, he said.

"There have been a couple people in my life who have unfortunately had to combat pretty severe mental health crises, and it's had a very big impact on my life, personally. And I know that I'm not alone," he said.

"Many of my peers have found themselves in very similar situations, combating mental health disorders such as anorexia, anxiety and depression. I felt as though there had to be something that I could do to help contribute to this issue."