Kids Who Start Social Media Earlier May Fall Behind in School, New Study Finds

Parents debating when to let their child open an Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat or other social media account have a new piece of research to consider.

A major study published in Nature Human Behaviour in August 2026 found that children who began using social media earlier tended to perform worse later in school, particularly in mathematics and their native language. The differences were not tiny. For some students, researchers estimated the gap was roughly equivalent to six months of learning.

The study, titled Longitudinal effect of early social media use on standardized learning outcomes during school career, followed the academic histories of 5,227 students in northern Italy and compared standardized test performance with the age at which students reported opening their first personal social media account. Read the study in Nature Human Behaviour

The results add an important new dimension to the ongoing debate over kids and screens. The question may not simply be how much time children spend online. When they begin using social media may matter too.

Researchers Looked at Years of School Performance

One of the strengths of this research is that it did not simply ask teenagers whether they believed social media hurt their grades.

Researchers combined students' reported digital histories with standardized test records collected by Italy's National Institute for the Evaluation of the Education and Training System, known as INVALSI.

Those records allowed researchers to examine performance in Italian, mathematics and English at different points during the students' education. The students' digital histories included when they first received smartphones, began independently using computers or tablets, used messaging apps and opened personal social media accounts.

Social media arrived early for many of them.

Researchers found that 11.4% had opened an account during primary school, 29.3% during sixth grade, 25.1% during seventh grade and 17.9% during eighth grade. Only 16.4% waited until ninth grade or later.

Because researchers did not have enough academic data from before social media adoption for the children who joined during primary school, those earliest users could not be included in the main longitudinal analysis.

The main comparisons therefore looked at students who opened accounts in sixth, seventh or eighth grade against similar students who waited until ninth grade or later.

Earlier Social Media Use Was Linked to Lower Scores

The pattern researchers found was striking.

Students who created their first social media account in sixth grade, roughly age 11 or 12, scored about 0.21 standard deviations lower in Italian and 0.17 lower in mathematics by eighth grade compared with students who waited until ninth grade or later.

The difference did not disappear as students got older.

By tenth grade, students who began social media in sixth grade were approximately 0.22 standard deviations lower in Italian and 0.27 lower in mathematics.

Starting a little later appeared to be associated with smaller differences.

Students who opened accounts in seventh grade showed smaller academic gaps, while those beginning in eighth grade had smaller gaps still. By tenth grade, eighth-grade adopters were about 0.11 standard deviations lower in both Italian and math compared with the later-adoption group.

In other words, researchers found something resembling a gradient: the earlier students entered social media, the larger the later academic difference tended to be.

Could the Difference Really Equal Six Months of School?

This is one of the study's most attention-grabbing findings, but it needs some context.

There is no official formula that converts an INVALSI test-score difference into "months of learning."

The researchers noted that some education researchers use approximately 0.4 standard deviations as an informal equivalent of one year of learning. Using that benchmark, the difference between children beginning social media in sixth grade and comparable students waiting until ninth grade worked out to approximately six months of learning.

So six months should be viewed as an illustration of the magnitude of the difference, not as proof that every child who joins Instagram at 11 literally loses half a school year.

Still, the size of the difference was large enough to get researchers' attention.

One Subject Didn't Follow the Pattern: English

There was one surprising exception.

Researchers found no evidence that earlier social media adoption negatively affected English performance.

Because English was a foreign language for these Italian students, the researchers suggested one possible explanation: social media itself exposes young people to a tremendous amount of English-language content.

Videos, music, memes, games, creators and conversations online could provide incidental English exposure that partially counteracts the negative effects seen in other subjects.

That explanation is plausible, but the study did not directly prove that this was the reason.

Constant Phone Checking May Be Part of the Problem

Perhaps the most useful finding for parents involves how children use their phones.

The researchers examined what they called smartphone pervasiveness, essentially the degree to which smartphones intruded into important moments of everyday life.

Students with higher levels of pervasive smartphone use tended to perform worse academically and were also more likely to have opened social media accounts earlier.

According to the researchers' analysis, smartphone pervasiveness could account for a meaningful portion of the relationship between early social media use and later performance, particularly in mathematics.

The obvious concern is attention.

Social media isn't confined to the 30 minutes someone consciously decides to spend scrolling. A phone can create dozens or hundreds of tiny interruptions throughout a day: checking a notification during homework, looking at a message during dinner, picking up the phone before bed or wondering what is happening online while trying to concentrate on something else.

Lead researcher Marco Gui described this as a kind of continuous state of alert, in which young people feel compelled to repeatedly check what is happening online.

That distinction matters.

For families trying to establish healthy technology habits, the issue may be less about simply counting total "screen time" and more about preventing technology from fragmenting the periods children need for reading, studying, sleeping, talking, playing and simply concentrating on one activity at a time.

Parental Supervision May Help

The study also found that children who began social media earlier were less likely to report having parental supervision of their social media use.

Parental controls and parental access to children's online activities were associated with better academic scores, although parental controls themselves explained only a small portion of the overall relationship between early social media adoption and performance.

That suggests that supervision may help, but it probably isn't a magic solution.

Giving an 11-year-old unrestricted access to highly engaging social platforms and then relying exclusively on parental controls may not address the larger issue of attention and habitual checking.

Does This Study Prove Social Media Causes Lower Grades?

No, and this is an important distinction.

This was a longitudinal observational study, not a randomized experiment.

Researchers used sophisticated statistical methods, including matching students based on characteristics that could affect both social media adoption and academic performance. They also examined students' academic performance before social media exposure and conducted several robustness checks.

Those techniques make the research considerably stronger than a simple survey showing that heavy social media users have lower grades.

But they cannot eliminate every possible explanation.

There could still be unmeasured differences between children who receive social media accounts at 11 and children whose families wait until 14 or 15. Personality, family dynamics, peer groups and changing life circumstances could potentially contribute to the results.

Independent experts reviewing the paper for the Science Media Centre generally described the research as strong and important while cautioning against interpreting it as definitive proof that early social media use directly causes poorer academic performance. Read independent expert reactions to the study

That nuance shouldn't obscure the finding, however. Earlier social media adoption was consistently associated with poorer performance in Italian and mathematics even after researchers attempted to account for numerous other differences.

What Should Parents Take Away From the Research?

The study does not establish a perfect age at which every child should be allowed onto social media.

It does provide another argument against the assumption that there is no downside to letting children start simply because "all their friends already have it."

Waiting appears to be a reasonable option.

Parents can also focus on the behaviors highlighted by the research: reduce habitual phone checking, keep devices away during homework and meals, protect sleep from late-night notifications, establish clear family expectations and encourage activities that allow children to become absorbed without constant digital interruptions.

Just as importantly, children need things to do when they're not on their phones.

Reading a book, creating something, playing outside, talking with family or listening to someone they love read a favorite story may look simple compared with an endless stream of algorithmically selected content. That's precisely the point.

Not every moment of childhood needs to compete for a child's attention.

The Bigger Picture: Delay May Be a Feature, Not a Failure

Parents are under enormous pressure to give children access to technology earlier.

A smartphone can feel like a milestone. A social media account can feel socially necessary. And when classmates already have them, saying "not yet" can feel as if you're holding your child back.

This study suggests another way of looking at that decision.

Waiting may actually give children something valuable: more time to develop their ability to focus, learn, read, sleep and navigate relationships before introducing platforms specifically engineered to demand their attention.

The researchers themselves emphasize that the subject remains complex and that their findings should be interpreted carefully. More studies in different countries and populations will be needed.

But for parents wondering whether an 11-year-old really needs a personal social media account right now, the evidence supporting "not yet" is getting harder to ignore.

Sources and Further Reading

• Nature Human Behaviour: Longitudinal effect of early social media use on standardized learning outcomes during school career
• Nature Human Behaviour research briefing: Negative influence of early social media use on school outcomes
• University of Milano-Bicocca: EYES UP research project findings
• Science Media Centre: Independent expert reaction to the study