The term ‘media’ frequently has negative connotations; mass media, screen time and social media are all terms we may talk about in the primary school that feel heavily laden with fear and uncertainty. Research suggests that the public and educational debate often revels in portraying media as dangerous; Neuhaus and O’Connor (2025) found that media articles portraying screen time as universally ‘harmful’ spread significantly faster than balanced research, supporting the idea that this wave of worry fuels guilt and confusion for parents and carers, often leading to fear-based narratives in policy. With social media, the stories that hit the headlines are often the terrible tragedies that have occurred through connections made online. But in this article, the authors argue that alongside these awful events, are positive connections for many other children and young people.
Gibson et al. (Thu,) studied this question.