how to describe a research article

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Primacy of the research question, structure of the paper, writing a research article: advice to beginners.

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Thomas V. Perneger, Patricia M. Hudelson, Writing a research article: advice to beginners, International Journal for Quality in Health Care , Volume 16, Issue 3, June 2004, Pages 191–192, https://doi.org/10.1093/intqhc/mzh053

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Writing research papers does not come naturally to most of us. The typical research paper is a highly codified rhetorical form [ 1 , 2 ]. Knowledge of the rules—some explicit, others implied—goes a long way toward writing a paper that will get accepted in a peer-reviewed journal.

A good research paper addresses a specific research question. The research question—or study objective or main research hypothesis—is the central organizing principle of the paper. Whatever relates to the research question belongs in the paper; the rest doesn’t. This is perhaps obvious when the paper reports on a well planned research project. However, in applied domains such as quality improvement, some papers are written based on projects that were undertaken for operational reasons, and not with the primary aim of producing new knowledge. In such cases, authors should define the main research question a posteriori and design the paper around it.

Generally, only one main research question should be addressed in a paper (secondary but related questions are allowed). If a project allows you to explore several distinct research questions, write several papers. For instance, if you measured the impact of obtaining written consent on patient satisfaction at a specialized clinic using a newly developed questionnaire, you may want to write one paper on the questionnaire development and validation, and another on the impact of the intervention. The idea is not to split results into ‘least publishable units’, a practice that is rightly decried, but rather into ‘optimally publishable units’.

What is a good research question? The key attributes are: (i) specificity; (ii) originality or novelty; and (iii) general relevance to a broad scientific community. The research question should be precise and not merely identify a general area of inquiry. It can often (but not always) be expressed in terms of a possible association between X and Y in a population Z, for example ‘we examined whether providing patients about to be discharged from the hospital with written information about their medications would improve their compliance with the treatment 1 month later’. A study does not necessarily have to break completely new ground, but it should extend previous knowledge in a useful way, or alternatively refute existing knowledge. Finally, the question should be of interest to others who work in the same scientific area. The latter requirement is more challenging for those who work in applied science than for basic scientists. While it may safely be assumed that the human genome is the same worldwide, whether the results of a local quality improvement project have wider relevance requires careful consideration and argument.

Once the research question is clearly defined, writing the paper becomes considerably easier. The paper will ask the question, then answer it. The key to successful scientific writing is getting the structure of the paper right. The basic structure of a typical research paper is the sequence of Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion (sometimes abbreviated as IMRAD). Each section addresses a different objective. The authors state: (i) the problem they intend to address—in other terms, the research question—in the Introduction; (ii) what they did to answer the question in the Methods section; (iii) what they observed in the Results section; and (iv) what they think the results mean in the Discussion.

In turn, each basic section addresses several topics, and may be divided into subsections (Table 1 ). In the Introduction, the authors should explain the rationale and background to the study. What is the research question, and why is it important to ask it? While it is neither necessary nor desirable to provide a full-blown review of the literature as a prelude to the study, it is helpful to situate the study within some larger field of enquiry. The research question should always be spelled out, and not merely left for the reader to guess.

Typical structure of a research paper

The Methods section should provide the readers with sufficient detail about the study methods to be able to reproduce the study if so desired. Thus, this section should be specific, concrete, technical, and fairly detailed. The study setting, the sampling strategy used, instruments, data collection methods, and analysis strategies should be described. In the case of qualitative research studies, it is also useful to tell the reader which research tradition the study utilizes and to link the choice of methodological strategies with the research goals [ 3 ].

The Results section is typically fairly straightforward and factual. All results that relate to the research question should be given in detail, including simple counts and percentages. Resist the temptation to demonstrate analytic ability and the richness of the dataset by providing numerous tables of non-essential results.

The Discussion section allows the most freedom. This is why the Discussion is the most difficult to write, and is often the weakest part of a paper. Structured Discussion sections have been proposed by some journal editors [ 4 ]. While strict adherence to such rules may not be necessary, following a plan such as that proposed in Table 1 may help the novice writer stay on track.

References should be used wisely. Key assertions should be referenced, as well as the methods and instruments used. However, unless the paper is a comprehensive review of a topic, there is no need to be exhaustive. Also, references to unpublished work, to documents in the grey literature (technical reports), or to any source that the reader will have difficulty finding or understanding should be avoided.

Having the structure of the paper in place is a good start. However, there are many details that have to be attended to while writing. An obvious recommendation is to read, and follow, the instructions to authors published by the journal (typically found on the journal’s website). Another concerns non-native writers of English: do have a native speaker edit the manuscript. A paper usually goes through several drafts before it is submitted. When revising a paper, it is useful to keep an eye out for the most common mistakes (Table 2 ). If you avoid all those, your paper should be in good shape.

Common mistakes seen in manuscripts submitted to this journal

Huth EJ . How to Write and Publish Papers in the Medical Sciences , 2nd edition. Baltimore, MD: Williams & Wilkins, 1990 .

Browner WS . Publishing and Presenting Clinical Research . Baltimore, MD: Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins, 1999 .

Devers KJ , Frankel RM. Getting qualitative research published. Educ Health 2001 ; 14 : 109 –117.

Docherty M , Smith R. The case for structuring the discussion of scientific papers. Br Med J 1999 ; 318 : 1224 –1225.

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Scientific Writing: Sections of a Paper

• Sections of a Paper
• Common Grammar Mistakes Explained
• Citing Sources

Introduction

• Materials & Methods

Typically scientific journal articles have the following sections:

Materials & Methods

References used:

Kotsis, S.V. and Chung, K.C. (2010) A Guide for Writing in the Scientific Forum. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. 126(5):1763-71. PubMed ID:  21042135

Van Way, C.W. (2007) Writing a Scientific Paper. Nutrition in Clinical Practice. 22: 663-40. PubMed ID:  1804295

What to include:

• Background/Objectives: include the hypothesis
• Methods: Briefly explain the type of study, sample/population size and description, the design, and any particular techniques for data collection and analysis
• Results: Essential data, including statistically significant data (use # & %)
• Conclusions: Summarize interpretations of results and explain if hypothesis was supported or rejected
• Be concise!
• Emphasize the methods and results
• Do not copy the introduction
• Only include data that is included in the paper
• Write the abstract last
• Avoid jargon and ambiguity
• Should stand-alone

Additional resources: Fisher, W. E. (2005) Abstract Writing. Journal of Surgical Research. 128(2):162-4. PubMed ID:  16165161 Peh, W.C. and Ng, K.H. (2008) Abstract and keywords. Singapore Medical Journal. 49(9): 664-6. PubMed ID:  18830537

• How does your study fit into what has been done
• Explain evidence using limited # of references
• Why is it important
• How does it relate to previous research
• State hypothesis at the end
• Use present tense
• Be succinct
• Clearly state objectives
• Explain important work done

Additional resources: Annesley, T. M. (2010) "It was a cold and rainy night": set the scene with a good introduction. Clinical Chemistry. 56(5):708-13. PubMed ID:  20207764 Peh, W.C. and Ng, K.H. (2008) Writing the introduction. Singapore Medical Journal. 49(10):756-8. PubMed ID:  18946606  

• What was done
• Include characteristics
• Describe recruitment, participation, withdrawal, etc.
• Type of study (RCT, cohort, case-controlled, etc.)
• Equipment used
• Measurements made
• Usually the final paragraph
• Include enough details so others can duplicate study
• Use past tense
• Be direct and precise
• Include any preliminary results
• Ask for help from a statistician to write description of statistical analysis
• Be systematic

Additional resources: Lallet, R. H. (2004) How to write the methods section of a research paper. Respiratory Care. 49(10): 1229-32. PubMed ID:  15447808 Ng, K.H. and Peh, W.C. (2008) Writing the materials and methods. Singapore Medical Journal. 49(11): 856-9. PubMed ID:  19037549

• Describe study sample demographics
• Include statistical significance and the statistical test used
• Use tables and figures when appropriate
• Present in a logical sequence
• Facts only - no citations or interpretations
• Should stand alone (not need written descriptions to be understood)
• Include title, legend, and axes labels
• Include raw numbers with percentages
• General phrases (significance, show trend, etc. should be used with caution)
• Data is plural ("Our data are" is correct, "Our data is" is in-correct)

Additional resources: Ng, K.H and Peh, W.C. (2008) Writing the results. Singapore Medical Journal. 49(12):967-9. PubMed ID:  19122944 Streiner, D.L. (2007) A shortcut to rejection: how not to write the results section of a paper. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. 52(6):385-9. PubMed ID:  17696025

• Did you reject your null hypothesis?
• Include a focused review of literature in relation to results
• Explain meaning of statistical findings
• Explain importance/relevance 
• Include all possible explanations
• Discuss possible limitations of study
• Suggest future work that could be done
• Use past tense to describe your study and present tense to describe established knowledge from literature
• Don't criticize other studies, contrast it with your work
• Don't make conclusions not supported by your results
• Stay focused and concise
• Include key, relevant references
• It is considered good manners to include an acknowledgements section

Additional resources: Annesley, T. M. (2010) The discussion section: your closing argument. Clinical Chemistry. 56(11):1671-4. PubMed ID:  20833779 Ng, K.H. and Peh, W.C. (2009) Writing the discussion. Singapore Medical Journal. 50(5):458-61. PubMed ID:  19495512

Tables & Figures: Durbin, C. G. (2004) Effective use of tables and figures in abstracts, presentations, and papers. Respiratory Care. 49(10): 1233-7. PubMed ID:  15447809 Ng, K. H. and Peh, W.C.G. (2009) Preparing effective tables. Singapore Medical Journal. (50)2: 117-9. PubMed ID:  19296024

Statistics: Ng, K. H. and Peh, W.C.G. (2009) Presenting the statistical results. Singapore Medical Journal. (50)1: 11-4. PubMed ID:  19224078

References: Peh, W.C.G. and Ng, K. H. (2009) Preparing the references. Singapore Medical Journal. (50)7: 11-4. PubMed ID:  19644619

Additional Resources

• More from Elsevier Elsevier's Research Academy is an online tutorial to help with writing books, journals, and grants. It also includes information on citing sources, peer reviewing, and ethics in publishing
• Research4Life Training Portal Research4Life provides downloadable instruction materials, including modules on authorship skills as well as other research related skills.
• Coursera: Science Writing Coursera provides a wide variety of online courses for continuing education. You can search around for various courses on scientific writing or academic writing, and they're available to audit for free.

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Home » Research Methodology – Types, Examples and writing Guide

Research Methodology – Types, Examples and writing Guide

Table of Contents

Research Methodology

Definition:

Research Methodology refers to the systematic and scientific approach used to conduct research, investigate problems, and gather data and information for a specific purpose. It involves the techniques and procedures used to identify, collect , analyze , and interpret data to answer research questions or solve research problems . Moreover, They are philosophical and theoretical frameworks that guide the research process.

Structure of Research Methodology

Research methodology formats can vary depending on the specific requirements of the research project, but the following is a basic example of a structure for a research methodology section:

I. Introduction

• Provide an overview of the research problem and the need for a research methodology section
• Outline the main research questions and objectives

II. Research Design

• Explain the research design chosen and why it is appropriate for the research question(s) and objectives
• Discuss any alternative research designs considered and why they were not chosen
• Describe the research setting and participants (if applicable)

III. Data Collection Methods

• Describe the methods used to collect data (e.g., surveys, interviews, observations)
• Explain how the data collection methods were chosen and why they are appropriate for the research question(s) and objectives
• Detail any procedures or instruments used for data collection

IV. Data Analysis Methods

• Describe the methods used to analyze the data (e.g., statistical analysis, content analysis )
• Explain how the data analysis methods were chosen and why they are appropriate for the research question(s) and objectives
• Detail any procedures or software used for data analysis

V. Ethical Considerations

• Discuss any ethical issues that may arise from the research and how they were addressed
• Explain how informed consent was obtained (if applicable)
• Detail any measures taken to ensure confidentiality and anonymity

VI. Limitations

• Identify any potential limitations of the research methodology and how they may impact the results and conclusions

VII. Conclusion

• Summarize the key aspects of the research methodology section
• Explain how the research methodology addresses the research question(s) and objectives

Research Methodology Types

Types of Research Methodology are as follows:

Quantitative Research Methodology

This is a research methodology that involves the collection and analysis of numerical data using statistical methods. This type of research is often used to study cause-and-effect relationships and to make predictions.

Qualitative Research Methodology

This is a research methodology that involves the collection and analysis of non-numerical data such as words, images, and observations. This type of research is often used to explore complex phenomena, to gain an in-depth understanding of a particular topic, and to generate hypotheses.

Mixed-Methods Research Methodology

This is a research methodology that combines elements of both quantitative and qualitative research. This approach can be particularly useful for studies that aim to explore complex phenomena and to provide a more comprehensive understanding of a particular topic.

Case Study Research Methodology

This is a research methodology that involves in-depth examination of a single case or a small number of cases. Case studies are often used in psychology, sociology, and anthropology to gain a detailed understanding of a particular individual or group.

Action Research Methodology

This is a research methodology that involves a collaborative process between researchers and practitioners to identify and solve real-world problems. Action research is often used in education, healthcare, and social work.

Experimental Research Methodology

This is a research methodology that involves the manipulation of one or more independent variables to observe their effects on a dependent variable. Experimental research is often used to study cause-and-effect relationships and to make predictions.

Survey Research Methodology

This is a research methodology that involves the collection of data from a sample of individuals using questionnaires or interviews. Survey research is often used to study attitudes, opinions, and behaviors.

Grounded Theory Research Methodology

This is a research methodology that involves the development of theories based on the data collected during the research process. Grounded theory is often used in sociology and anthropology to generate theories about social phenomena.

Research Methodology Example

An Example of Research Methodology could be the following:

Research Methodology for Investigating the Effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in Reducing Symptoms of Depression in Adults

Introduction:

The aim of this research is to investigate the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) in reducing symptoms of depression in adults. To achieve this objective, a randomized controlled trial (RCT) will be conducted using a mixed-methods approach.

Research Design:

The study will follow a pre-test and post-test design with two groups: an experimental group receiving CBT and a control group receiving no intervention. The study will also include a qualitative component, in which semi-structured interviews will be conducted with a subset of participants to explore their experiences of receiving CBT.

Participants:

Participants will be recruited from community mental health clinics in the local area. The sample will consist of 100 adults aged 18-65 years old who meet the diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder. Participants will be randomly assigned to either the experimental group or the control group.

Intervention :

The experimental group will receive 12 weekly sessions of CBT, each lasting 60 minutes. The intervention will be delivered by licensed mental health professionals who have been trained in CBT. The control group will receive no intervention during the study period.

Data Collection:

Quantitative data will be collected through the use of standardized measures such as the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7). Data will be collected at baseline, immediately after the intervention, and at a 3-month follow-up. Qualitative data will be collected through semi-structured interviews with a subset of participants from the experimental group. The interviews will be conducted at the end of the intervention period, and will explore participants’ experiences of receiving CBT.

Data Analysis:

Quantitative data will be analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-tests, and mixed-model analyses of variance (ANOVA) to assess the effectiveness of the intervention. Qualitative data will be analyzed using thematic analysis to identify common themes and patterns in participants’ experiences of receiving CBT.

Ethical Considerations:

This study will comply with ethical guidelines for research involving human subjects. Participants will provide informed consent before participating in the study, and their privacy and confidentiality will be protected throughout the study. Any adverse events or reactions will be reported and managed appropriately.

Data Management:

All data collected will be kept confidential and stored securely using password-protected databases. Identifying information will be removed from qualitative data transcripts to ensure participants’ anonymity.

Limitations:

One potential limitation of this study is that it only focuses on one type of psychotherapy, CBT, and may not generalize to other types of therapy or interventions. Another limitation is that the study will only include participants from community mental health clinics, which may not be representative of the general population.

Conclusion:

This research aims to investigate the effectiveness of CBT in reducing symptoms of depression in adults. By using a randomized controlled trial and a mixed-methods approach, the study will provide valuable insights into the mechanisms underlying the relationship between CBT and depression. The results of this study will have important implications for the development of effective treatments for depression in clinical settings.

How to Write Research Methodology

Writing a research methodology involves explaining the methods and techniques you used to conduct research, collect data, and analyze results. It’s an essential section of any research paper or thesis, as it helps readers understand the validity and reliability of your findings. Here are the steps to write a research methodology:

• Start by explaining your research question: Begin the methodology section by restating your research question and explaining why it’s important. This helps readers understand the purpose of your research and the rationale behind your methods.
• Describe your research design: Explain the overall approach you used to conduct research. This could be a qualitative or quantitative research design, experimental or non-experimental, case study or survey, etc. Discuss the advantages and limitations of the chosen design.
• Discuss your sample: Describe the participants or subjects you included in your study. Include details such as their demographics, sampling method, sample size, and any exclusion criteria used.
• Describe your data collection methods : Explain how you collected data from your participants. This could include surveys, interviews, observations, questionnaires, or experiments. Include details on how you obtained informed consent, how you administered the tools, and how you minimized the risk of bias.
• Explain your data analysis techniques: Describe the methods you used to analyze the data you collected. This could include statistical analysis, content analysis, thematic analysis, or discourse analysis. Explain how you dealt with missing data, outliers, and any other issues that arose during the analysis.
• Discuss the validity and reliability of your research : Explain how you ensured the validity and reliability of your study. This could include measures such as triangulation, member checking, peer review, or inter-coder reliability.
• Acknowledge any limitations of your research: Discuss any limitations of your study, including any potential threats to validity or generalizability. This helps readers understand the scope of your findings and how they might apply to other contexts.
• Provide a summary: End the methodology section by summarizing the methods and techniques you used to conduct your research. This provides a clear overview of your research methodology and helps readers understand the process you followed to arrive at your findings.

When to Write Research Methodology

Research methodology is typically written after the research proposal has been approved and before the actual research is conducted. It should be written prior to data collection and analysis, as it provides a clear roadmap for the research project.

The research methodology is an important section of any research paper or thesis, as it describes the methods and procedures that will be used to conduct the research. It should include details about the research design, data collection methods, data analysis techniques, and any ethical considerations.

The methodology should be written in a clear and concise manner, and it should be based on established research practices and standards. It is important to provide enough detail so that the reader can understand how the research was conducted and evaluate the validity of the results.

Applications of Research Methodology

Here are some of the applications of research methodology:

• To identify the research problem: Research methodology is used to identify the research problem, which is the first step in conducting any research.
• To design the research: Research methodology helps in designing the research by selecting the appropriate research method, research design, and sampling technique.
• To collect data: Research methodology provides a systematic approach to collect data from primary and secondary sources.
• To analyze data: Research methodology helps in analyzing the collected data using various statistical and non-statistical techniques.
• To test hypotheses: Research methodology provides a framework for testing hypotheses and drawing conclusions based on the analysis of data.
• To generalize findings: Research methodology helps in generalizing the findings of the research to the target population.
• To develop theories : Research methodology is used to develop new theories and modify existing theories based on the findings of the research.
• To evaluate programs and policies : Research methodology is used to evaluate the effectiveness of programs and policies by collecting data and analyzing it.
• To improve decision-making: Research methodology helps in making informed decisions by providing reliable and valid data.

Purpose of Research Methodology

Research methodology serves several important purposes, including:

• To guide the research process: Research methodology provides a systematic framework for conducting research. It helps researchers to plan their research, define their research questions, and select appropriate methods and techniques for collecting and analyzing data.
• To ensure research quality: Research methodology helps researchers to ensure that their research is rigorous, reliable, and valid. It provides guidelines for minimizing bias and error in data collection and analysis, and for ensuring that research findings are accurate and trustworthy.
• To replicate research: Research methodology provides a clear and detailed account of the research process, making it possible for other researchers to replicate the study and verify its findings.
• To advance knowledge: Research methodology enables researchers to generate new knowledge and to contribute to the body of knowledge in their field. It provides a means for testing hypotheses, exploring new ideas, and discovering new insights.
• To inform decision-making: Research methodology provides evidence-based information that can inform policy and decision-making in a variety of fields, including medicine, public health, education, and business.

Advantages of Research Methodology

Research methodology has several advantages that make it a valuable tool for conducting research in various fields. Here are some of the key advantages of research methodology:

• Systematic and structured approach : Research methodology provides a systematic and structured approach to conducting research, which ensures that the research is conducted in a rigorous and comprehensive manner.
• Objectivity : Research methodology aims to ensure objectivity in the research process, which means that the research findings are based on evidence and not influenced by personal bias or subjective opinions.
• Replicability : Research methodology ensures that research can be replicated by other researchers, which is essential for validating research findings and ensuring their accuracy.
• Reliability : Research methodology aims to ensure that the research findings are reliable, which means that they are consistent and can be depended upon.
• Validity : Research methodology ensures that the research findings are valid, which means that they accurately reflect the research question or hypothesis being tested.
• Efficiency : Research methodology provides a structured and efficient way of conducting research, which helps to save time and resources.
• Flexibility : Research methodology allows researchers to choose the most appropriate research methods and techniques based on the research question, data availability, and other relevant factors.
• Scope for innovation: Research methodology provides scope for innovation and creativity in designing research studies and developing new research techniques.

Research Methodology Vs Research Methods

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How to Write a Research Article: A Comprehensive Guide

Writing a Research Article can be an unbelievably daunting task, but it is a vital skill for any researcher or academic. This blog post intends to provide a detailed instruction on how to create a Research Paper. It will delve into the crucial elements of a Research Article, including its format, various types, and how it differs from a Research Paper.   By following the steps provided, you will get vital insights on how to write a well-structured and successful research piece. Whether you are a student, researcher, or professional writer, this article will help you understand the key components required to produce a high-quality Research article. 

Table of Content

What is a research article .

A Research Article is a written document that represents the findings of original and authentic research. It is typically published in a peer-reviewed academic journal and is used to communicate new knowledge and ideas to the research community. Research Articles are often used as a basis for further research and are an essential part of scientific discourse. 

Components of a Research Article 

A Research Article typically consists of the following components: 

• Abstract – A summary of the research article, including the research question, methodology, results, and conclusion. 
• Introduction – This is an explanation of the purpose behind conducting the study, and a summary of the methodology adopted for the research. This section serves as the foundation of the research article and provides the reader with a contextual background for understanding the study’s objectives and methodology. It basically outlines the reason for conducting the research and provides a glimpse of the approach that will be used to answer the research question. 
• Literature Review – This section entails a comprehensive examination of the relevant literature that offers a framework for the research question and presents the existing knowledge on the subject. 
• Methodology – This section explains the study’s research design, data gathering, and analysis methods.  
• Results – A description of the findings of the research. 
• Discussion – An interpretation of the results, including their significance and implications, as well as a discussion of the limitations of the study. 
• Conclusion – A summary of the research findings, their implications, and recommendations for future research. 

Research Article Format 

A Research Article typically follows a standard format including: 

• Title : A clear and concise title that accurately reflects the research question. 
• Authors : A list of authors who contributed to the research. 
• Affiliations : The institutions or organizations that the authors are affiliated with. 
• Abstract : A summary of the research article. 
• Keywords : A list of keywords that describe the research topic. 
• Introduction : A fine background of the research question and a complete overview of the methodology used. 
• Literature Review : A review of the relevant literature. 
• Methodology : A description of the research design, data collection, and analysis methods used. 
• Results : A description of the findings of the research. 
• Discussion : An interpretation of the results and their implications, as well as a discussion of the limitations of the study. 
• Conclusion: A summary of the research findings and recommendations for future research. 

Types of Research Articles 

There are several types of research articles including: 

• Original Research Articles : These are articles that report on original research. 
• Review articles : These are articles that summarize and synthesize the findings of existing research. 
• Case studies : These are articles that describe and analyze a specific case or cases. 
• Short communications : These are brief articles that report on original research. 

Research Article vs Research Paper 

While research articles and Research Papers are often used interchangeably, there are some differences between the two. A research article is typically a formal, peer-reviewed document that presents the findings of original research. A research paper, on the other hand, is a broader term that can refer to any written work that presents the findings of research, including essays, reports, and dissertations. 

Example of a Research Article 

Here is an example of a research article : 

• Title: The effects of exercise on mental health in older adults.
• Abstract :  This study investigated the effects of exercise on mental health in older adults. A sample of 100 participants aged 65 and over were randomly assigned to an exercise or control group. The exercise group participated in a 12-week exercise program, while the control group received no intervention. The results showed that the exercise group had significantly lower levels of depression and anxiety compared to the control group. Additionally, the exercise group reported higher levels of well-being and satisfaction with life. These findings suggest that exercise can be an effective intervention for improving mental health in older adults. 
• Introduction:   Mental health issues such as depression and anxiety are common among older adults and can have a significant impact on quality of life. Exercise has been shown to have numerous physical health benefits, but its effects on mental health in older adults are less clear. This study aimed to investigate the effects of exercise on mental health outcomes in older adults. 
• Literature Review:   Previous research has suggested that exercise can improve mental health outcomes in older adults. For example, a study by Mather et al. (2016) found that a 12-week exercise program resulted in significant improvements in depression and anxiety in a sample of older adults. Similarly, a meta-analysis by Smith et al. (2018) found that exercise interventions were associated with improvements in various mental health outcomes, including depression and anxiety, in older adults. 
• Methodology:   A total of 100 participants aged 65 and over were recruited from a community centre and randomly assigned to an exercise or control group. The exercise group participated in a 12-week exercise program consisting of three 60-minute sessions per week. The program included a combination of aerobic and resistance exercises. The control group received no intervention. Both groups completed measures of depression, anxiety, well-being, and satisfaction with life at baseline and at the end of the 12-week period.
• Results:   The results showed that the exercise group had significantly lower levels of depression and anxiety compared to the control group at the end of the 12-week period. Additionally, the exercise group reported higher levels of well-being and satisfaction with life. There were no significant differences between the groups in terms of physical health outcomes.  
• Discussion:   These findings provide support for the use of exercise as an intervention for improving mental health outcomes in older adults. The results suggest that a 12-week exercise program can lead to significant reductions in depression and anxiety, and improvements in well-being and satisfaction with life. It is important to note, however, that the study had some limitations, including a relatively small sample size and a lack of long-term follow-up. Further research is needed to confirm these findings and explore the potential mechanisms underlying the effects of exercise on mental health in older adults. 

This study provides evidence that exercise can be an effective intervention for improving mental health outcomes in older adults. Given the high prevalence of mental health issues in this population, exercise programs may be an important tool for promoting well-being and improving quality of life. Further research is needed to determine the optimal duration, intensity, and type of exercise for improving mental health outcomes in older adults. 

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• Research Guides

Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper

• 7. The Results
• Purpose of Guide
• Design Flaws to Avoid
• Independent and Dependent Variables
• Glossary of Research Terms
• Reading Research Effectively
• Narrowing a Topic Idea
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• Theoretical Framework
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• Scholarly vs. Popular Publications
• Qualitative Methods
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• Insiderness
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The results section is where you report the findings of your study based upon the methodology [or methodologies] you applied to gather information. The results section should state the findings of the research arranged in a logical sequence without bias or interpretation. A section describing results should be particularly detailed if your paper includes data generated from your own research.

Annesley, Thomas M. "Show Your Cards: The Results Section and the Poker Game." Clinical Chemistry 56 (July 2010): 1066-1070.

Importance of a Good Results Section

When formulating the results section, it's important to remember that the results of a study do not prove anything . Findings can only confirm or reject the hypothesis underpinning your study. However, the act of articulating the results helps you to understand the problem from within, to break it into pieces, and to view the research problem from various perspectives.

The page length of this section is set by the amount and types of data to be reported . Be concise. Use non-textual elements appropriately, such as figures and tables, to present findings more effectively. In deciding what data to describe in your results section, you must clearly distinguish information that would normally be included in a research paper from any raw data or other content that could be included as an appendix. In general, raw data that has not been summarized should not be included in the main text of your paper unless requested to do so by your professor.

Avoid providing data that is not critical to answering the research question . The background information you described in the introduction section should provide the reader with any additional context or explanation needed to understand the results. A good strategy is to always re-read the background section of your paper after you have written up your results to ensure that the reader has enough context to understand the results [and, later, how you interpreted the results in the discussion section of your paper that follows].

Bavdekar, Sandeep B. and Sneha Chandak. "Results: Unraveling the Findings." Journal of the Association of Physicians of India 63 (September 2015): 44-46; Brett, Paul. "A Genre Analysis of the Results Section of Sociology Articles." English for Specific Speakers 13 (1994): 47-59; Go to English for Specific Purposes on ScienceDirect;Burton, Neil et al. Doing Your Education Research Project . Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2008; Results. The Structure, Format, Content, and Style of a Journal-Style Scientific Paper. Department of Biology. Bates College; Kretchmer, Paul. Twelve Steps to Writing an Effective Results Section. San Francisco Edit; "Reporting Findings." In Making Sense of Social Research Malcolm Williams, editor. (London;: SAGE Publications, 2003) pp. 188-207.

Structure and Writing Style

I.  Organization and Approach

For most research papers in the social and behavioral sciences, there are two possible ways of organizing the results . Both approaches are appropriate in how you report your findings, but use only one approach.

• Present a synopsis of the results followed by an explanation of key findings . This approach can be used to highlight important findings. For example, you may have noticed an unusual correlation between two variables during the analysis of your findings. It is appropriate to highlight this finding in the results section. However, speculating as to why this correlation exists and offering a hypothesis about what may be happening belongs in the discussion section of your paper.
• Present a result and then explain it, before presenting the next result then explaining it, and so on, then end with an overall synopsis . This is the preferred approach if you have multiple results of equal significance. It is more common in longer papers because it helps the reader to better understand each finding. In this model, it is helpful to provide a brief conclusion that ties each of the findings together and provides a narrative bridge to the discussion section of the your paper.

NOTE :   Just as the literature review should be arranged under conceptual categories rather than systematically describing each source, you should also organize your findings under key themes related to addressing the research problem. This can be done under either format noted above [i.e., a thorough explanation of the key results or a sequential, thematic description and explanation of each finding].

II.  Content

In general, the content of your results section should include the following:

• Introductory context for understanding the results by restating the research problem underpinning your study . This is useful in re-orientating the reader's focus back to the research problem after having read a review of the literature and your explanation of the methods used for gathering and analyzing information.
• Inclusion of non-textual elements, such as, figures, charts, photos, maps, tables, etc. to further illustrate key findings, if appropriate . Rather than relying entirely on descriptive text, consider how your findings can be presented visually. This is a helpful way of condensing a lot of data into one place that can then be referred to in the text. Consider referring to appendices if there is a lot of non-textual elements.
• A systematic description of your results, highlighting for the reader observations that are most relevant to the topic under investigation . Not all results that emerge from the methodology used to gather information may be related to answering the " So What? " question. Do not confuse observations with interpretations; observations in this context refers to highlighting important findings you discovered through a process of reviewing prior literature and gathering data.
• The page length of your results section is guided by the amount and types of data to be reported . However, focus on findings that are important and related to addressing the research problem. It is not uncommon to have unanticipated results that are not relevant to answering the research question. This is not to say that you don't acknowledge tangential findings and, in fact, can be referred to as areas for further research in the conclusion of your paper. However, spending time in the results section describing tangential findings clutters your overall results section and distracts the reader.
• A short paragraph that concludes the results section by synthesizing the key findings of the study . Highlight the most important findings you want readers to remember as they transition into the discussion section. This is particularly important if, for example, there are many results to report, the findings are complicated or unanticipated, or they are impactful or actionable in some way [i.e., able to be pursued in a feasible way applied to practice].

NOTE:   Always use the past tense when referring to your study's findings. Reference to findings should always be described as having already happened because the method used to gather the information has been completed.

III.  Problems to Avoid

When writing the results section, avoid doing the following :

• Discussing or interpreting your results . Save this for the discussion section of your paper, although where appropriate, you should compare or contrast specific results to those found in other studies [e.g., "Similar to the work of Smith [1990], one of the findings of this study is the strong correlation between motivation and academic achievement...."].
• Reporting background information or attempting to explain your findings. This should have been done in your introduction section, but don't panic! Often the results of a study point to the need for additional background information or to explain the topic further, so don't think you did something wrong. Writing up research is rarely a linear process. Always revise your introduction as needed.
• Ignoring negative results . A negative result generally refers to a finding that does not support the underlying assumptions of your study. Do not ignore them. Document these findings and then state in your discussion section why you believe a negative result emerged from your study. Note that negative results, and how you handle them, can give you an opportunity to write a more engaging discussion section, therefore, don't be hesitant to highlight them.
• Including raw data or intermediate calculations . Ask your professor if you need to include any raw data generated by your study, such as transcripts from interviews or data files. If raw data is to be included, place it in an appendix or set of appendices that are referred to in the text.
• Be as factual and concise as possible in reporting your findings . Do not use phrases that are vague or non-specific, such as, "appeared to be greater than other variables..." or "demonstrates promising trends that...." Subjective modifiers should be explained in the discussion section of the paper [i.e., why did one variable appear greater? Or, how does the finding demonstrate a promising trend?].
• Presenting the same data or repeating the same information more than once . If you want to highlight a particular finding, it is appropriate to do so in the results section. However, you should emphasize its significance in relation to addressing the research problem in the discussion section. Do not repeat it in your results section because you can do that in the conclusion of your paper.
• Confusing figures with tables . Be sure to properly label any non-textual elements in your paper. Don't call a chart an illustration or a figure a table. If you are not sure, go here .

Annesley, Thomas M. "Show Your Cards: The Results Section and the Poker Game." Clinical Chemistry 56 (July 2010): 1066-1070; Bavdekar, Sandeep B. and Sneha Chandak. "Results: Unraveling the Findings." Journal of the Association of Physicians of India 63 (September 2015): 44-46; Burton, Neil et al. Doing Your Education Research Project . Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2008;  Caprette, David R. Writing Research Papers. Experimental Biosciences Resources. Rice University; Hancock, Dawson R. and Bob Algozzine. Doing Case Study Research: A Practical Guide for Beginning Researchers . 2nd ed. New York: Teachers College Press, 2011; Introduction to Nursing Research: Reporting Research Findings. Nursing Research: Open Access Nursing Research and Review Articles. (January 4, 2012); Kretchmer, Paul. Twelve Steps to Writing an Effective Results Section. San Francisco Edit ; Ng, K. H. and W. C. Peh. "Writing the Results." Singapore Medical Journal 49 (2008): 967-968; Reporting Research Findings. Wilder Research, in partnership with the Minnesota Department of Human Services. (February 2009); Results. The Structure, Format, Content, and Style of a Journal-Style Scientific Paper. Department of Biology. Bates College; Schafer, Mickey S. Writing the Results. Thesis Writing in the Sciences. Course Syllabus. University of Florida.

Writing Tip

Why Don't I Just Combine the Results Section with the Discussion Section?

It's not unusual to find articles in scholarly social science journals where the author(s) have combined a description of the findings with a discussion about their significance and implications. You could do this. However, if you are inexperienced writing research papers, consider creating two distinct sections for each section in your paper as a way to better organize your thoughts and, by extension, your paper. Think of the results section as the place where you report what your study found; think of the discussion section as the place where you interpret the information and answer the "So What?" question. As you become more skilled writing research papers, you can consider melding the results of your study with a discussion of its implications.

Driscoll, Dana Lynn and Aleksandra Kasztalska. Writing the Experimental Report: Methods, Results, and Discussion. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University.

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How to Write a Good Introduction Section

A strong narrative is as integral a part of science writing as it is for any other form of communication..

Nathan Ni holds a PhD from Queens University. He is a science editor for The Scientist’s Creative Services Team who strives to better understand and communicate the relationships between health and disease.

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First impressions are important. Scientists need to make their work stand out among a sea of others. However, many mistakenly believe that first impressions are formed based only on titles and abstracts. In actuality, the introduction section is critical to making a real impression on the audience. The introduction is where authors outline their research topic and describe their study. It is where they provide background information and showcase their writing and argumentation styles. For these reasons, the introduction engages the audience in a deeper way than the formalities and rigidities of the title and abstract can afford. To use a fishing analogy: if the title and the abstract serve as the hook and the bait, then the introduction is the process of actually reeling the fish into the boat.

Good Introductions Are Important Guides

In contrast to the constraints placed on the title and abstract, the introduction is the first real opportunity for the scientist to engage with their audience and showcase and convey their passions and motivations for the study in question. This opportunity is somewhat of a double-edged sword. Study authors inevitably have a treasure trove of knowledge and expertise when it comes to their projects and their fields. However, they must remember that the audience does not necessarily have this background information—and that they are only engaging with their audience for a finite amount of time. Despite the urge to excitedly write about all of the different aspects and intricacies of the project, it is very important that authors keep their introductions simple and well organized. 

Therefore, the introduction should move from broad scopes to narrow focuses as the audience reads further. The author should direct the reader along this journey, focusing on topics with direct relevance to what was investigated in the study. A broad fact introduced early on should be linked or paired with a more specific fact along the same lines of thought, eventually culminating in how this information led to the motivation behind the study itself. It is vital to not go off on tangents or talk about things that are too esoteric. A confused audience is an audience that tends not to read further.

Applying Common Principles Across Well-Known and Niche Subjects

Writers can apply these principles in more specialized manuscripts focusing on a single entity rather than a well-known pathology. Consider the following example from a manuscript by cell biologist Luis R. Cruz-Vera’s research team from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. 1

Here, they divide the opening paragraph of their introduction into four distinct sections. First, they explain what ribosome arresting peptides (RAPs) are and what they do.

Ribosome arresting peptides (RAPs) are nascent polypeptides that act in cis on the translating ribosome to control the expression of genes by inducing ribosome arrest during translation elongation or termination. RAPs commonly sense external forces or low molecular weight compounds in the environment that spatially and temporally contribute to the expression of genes. 

Then they introduce the two different types of RAPs.

RAPs such as SecM that sense external forces on the ribosome are typically large, because these nascent peptides have a domain that functions outside of the ribosome. In contrast, those that sense small molecules inside of the ribosome, such as TnaC are smaller. 

They describe how each type works via a different mechanism.

Typically, larger RAPs interact with cellular factors that can control their capacity for arresting ribosomes. Because of their size and proximity to ribosomal components, large RAPs clearly show two structural domains, a sensor domain and an arresting domain. At the moment of the arrest for the large RAPs, the sensor domain is located outside the ribosome exit tunnel, whereas the arresting domain remains inside the tunnel. The short RAPs currently characterized interact with the compounds that they sense by using the ribosome exit tunnel as a binding surface. For these short RAPs, it has been determined that conserved amino acid residues are necessary to induce arrest by either directly binding the effector molecule or by acting at the peptidyl-transferase center (PTC) during ribosome arrest. 

And finally, they conclude by highlighting a knowledge gap in how small RAPs operate versus what is already known about large RAPs.

However, because the size of short RAPs ranges from only a few to a couple of dozen amino acids, as in the case of TnaC, it has remained unclear whether short RAPs are constituted by the two independent sensor and stalling domains, as it has been observed with larger RAPs.

In this way, the authors make a natural progression from “why this topic is important” to “what is known about this topic,” setting the stage for “what is unknown about this topic and why it should be studied.” 

Gradually Moving from Broad to Narrow

These principles can be further transferred towards the introductory section as a whole. The first paragraph should serve as an introduction to the field and the topic. The middle paragraph(s) provide exposition and detail regarding what is known and unknown, and what has already been done and still remains to do, and the final paragraph outlines the study and its principle findings, providing a transition into either the materials and methods or the results section. 

For example, this work by radiation oncologist Eric Deutsch’s group at Université Paris-Saclay, published in PLoS One , 2 opens by succinctly explaining a scientific problem: “ the threat of extensive dispersion of radioactive isotopes within populated areas that would have an unfortunate effect on human health has increased drastically .” It then offers the call to action necessitated by this problem: “ the development of a decorporating agent capable of effectively mitigating the effects of a wide range of isotopes is critical .”

In the next two paragraphs, the study authors provide information on how and why dispersion of radioactive isotopes are a problem—“ the FDA has approved only three compounds (only one of which is used as a preventative therapy) for the treatment of exposure to specific radioactive elements ”—and highlights the strengths and weaknesses of what is currently available. They then introduce the focal point of their own work, chitosan@DOTAGA, within this context, explaining its potential as a solution to the problem they previously introduced: “ After oral administration to rodents over several days, no signs of acute or chronic toxicity were observed, and DOTAGA did not enter the blood stream and was fully eliminated from the gastrointestinal tract within 24 hours of administration. ”

Finally, the introduction concludes by listing the study objective—“ explore the potential of this polymer for use in the decorporation of a wide range of radioactive isotopes ”—and the motivations and rationale behind the study objective—“ there are no suitable countermeasures available for uranium poisoning. […] This innovative approach aims to directly chelate the radioactive cations, specifically uranium, within the gastrointestinal tract prior to their systemic absorption, which ensures their prompt elimination and mitigation of the associated toxicities. ”

The Introduction Engages with the Reader

The introduction section is often overlooked in favor of the title and the abstract, but it serves two important functions. First, it gives the audience all of the information that it needs to contextualize the yet-to-be-presented data within the context of the problem that needs to be solved or the scientific question that needs to be addressed. Second, and more importantly, it justifies the importance of the study, of its initiative, rationale, and purpose. The introduction is the author’s best—and arguably only real—opportunity to convince the audience that their study is worth reading.  

Looking for more information on scientific writing? Check out  The Scientist’s   TS SciComm  section. Looking for some help putting together a manuscript, a figure, a poster, or anything else?    The Scientist’s   Scientific Services  may have the professional help that you need.

• Judd HNG, et al. Functional domains of a ribosome arresting peptide are affected by surrounding nonconserved residues . J Biol Chem . 2024;300(3):105780.
• Durand A, et al. Enhancing radioprotection: A chitosan-based chelating polymer is a versatile radioprotective agent for prophylactic and therapeutic interventions against radionuclide contamination . PLoS One . 2024;19(4):e0292414.

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• Review Article
• Published: 07 May 2024

Mechanisms linking social media use to adolescent mental health vulnerability

• Amy Orben   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2937-4183 1 ,
• Adrian Meier   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8191-2962 2 ,
• Tim Dalgleish   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7304-2231 1 &
• Sarah-Jayne Blakemore 3 , 4  

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• Psychiatric disorders
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Research linking social media use and adolescent mental health has produced mixed and inconsistent findings and little translational evidence, despite pressure to deliver concrete recommendations for families, schools and policymakers. At the same time, it is widely recognized that developmental changes in behaviour, cognition and neurobiology predispose adolescents to developing socio-emotional disorders. In this Review, we argue that such developmental changes would be a fruitful focus for social media research. Specifically, we review mechanisms by which social media could amplify the developmental changes that increase adolescents’ mental health vulnerability. These mechanisms include changes to behaviour, such as sharing risky content and self-presentation, and changes to cognition, such as modifications in self-concept, social comparison, responsiveness to social feedback and experiences of social exclusion. We also consider neurobiological mechanisms that heighten stress sensitivity and modify reward processing. By focusing on mechanisms by which social media might interact with developmental changes to increase mental health risks, our Review equips researchers with a toolkit of key digital affordances that enables theorizing and studying technology effects despite an ever-changing social media landscape.

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The effect of social media on well-being differs from adolescent to adolescent

Probing the digital exposome: associations of social media use patterns with youth mental health

Social contextual risk taking in adolescence

Introduction.

Adolescence is a period marked by profound neurobiological, behavioural and environmental changes that facilitate the transition from familial dependence to independent membership in society 1 , 2 . This critical developmental stage is also characterized by diminished well-being and increased vulnerability to the onset of mental health conditions 3 , 4 , 5 , particularly socio-emotional disorders such as depression, and eating disorders 4 , 6 (Fig. 1 ). Notable symptoms of socio-emotional disorders include heightened negative affect, mood dysregulation and an increased focus on distress or challenges concerning interpersonal relationships, including heightened sensitivity to peers or perceptions of others 6 . Although some risk factors for socio-emotional disorders do not necessarily occur in adolescence (including genetic predispositions, adverse childhood experiences and poverty 7 , 8 , 9 ), the unique developmental characteristics of this period of life can interact with pre-existing vulnerabilities, increasing the risk of disorder onset 10 .

Meta-analytic proportion of age of onset of anxiety (red), obsessive-compulsive disorder (purple), eating disorders (orange), personality disorders (green), schizophrenia (grey) and mood disorders (blue). The peak age of onset (dotted lines) is 5.5 and 15.5 years for anxiety, 14.5 years for obsessive-compulsive disorder, 15.5 years for eating disorders and 20.5 years for personality disorders, schizophrenia and mood disorders. Adapted from ref. 258 , CC BY 4.0 ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ).

Over the past decade, declines in adolescent mental health have become a great concern 11 , 12 . The prevalence of socio-emotional disorders has increased in the adolescent age range (10–24 years 2 ) 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , leading to mounting pressures on child and adolescent mental health services 16 , 21 , 22 . This increase has not been as pronounced among other age groups when compared with adolescents 20 , 22 , 23 (measured in ref.  20 , ref.  22 and ref.  23 as age 12–25 years, 12–20 years and 18–25 years, respectively), even if some studies have found increases across the entire lifespan 24 , 25 . Although these trends might not be generalizable across the world 26 or to subclinical indicators of distress 15 , similar trends have been found in a range of countries 27 . Declines in adolescent mental health, especially socio-emotional problems, are consistent across datasets and researchers have argued that they are not solely driven by changes in social attitudes, stigma or reporting of distress 28 , 29 .

Concurrently, adolescents’ lives have become increasingly digital, with most young people using social media platforms throughout the day 30 . Ninety-five per cent of UK adolescents aged 15 years use social media 31 , and 50% of US adolescents aged 13–17 years report being almost constantly online 32 . The social media environment impacts adolescent and adult life across many domains (for example, by enabling social communication or changing the way news is accessed) and influences individuals, dyads and larger social systems 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 . Because social media is inherently social and relational 37 , it potentially overlaps and interacts with the developmental changes that make adolescents vulnerable to the onset of mental health problems 38 , 39 (Fig. 2 ). Thus, it has been intensely debated whether the increase in social media use during the past decade has a causal role in the decline of adolescent mental health 40 . Indeed, rapid changes to the environment experienced before and during adolescence might be a fruitful area to explore when examining current mental health trends 41 .

During adolescence, the interaction between genetic programming (yellow), social determinants (red) and environmental factors (blue), as well as the developmental changes discussed in this Review, increases the risk for onset of mental health conditions. Digital environments, mediated behaviours and experiences, and the impact that this technology has on society and economy more generally, are one aspect of the complex forces that might lead to the declines in adolescent mental health observed in the last decade. Adapted from ref. 259 , Springer Nature Limited.

Although there are many environmental changes that could be relevant, a substantial body of research has emerged to investigate the potential link between social media use and declines in adolescent mental health 42 , 43 using various research approaches, including cross-sectional studies 44 , longitudinal observational data analyses 45 , 46 , 47 and experimental studies 48 , 49 . However, the scientific results have been mixed and inconclusive (for reviews, see refs. 43 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 ), which has made it difficult to establish evidence-based recommendations, regulations and interventions aimed at ensuring that social media use is not harmful to adolescents 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 .

Many researchers attribute the mixed results to insufficient study specificity. For instance, the relationship between social media use and mental health varies notably across individuals 45 , 58 and developmental time windows 59 . Yet studies often examine adolescents without differentiating them based on age or developmental stage 60 , which prevents systematic accounts of individual and subgroup differences. Additionally, most studies only rely on self-reported measures of time spent on social media 61 , 62 , and overlook more nuanced aspects of social media use such as the nature of the activities 63 and the content or features that users engage with 52 . These factors need to be considered to unpack any broader relationships 35 , 64 , 65 , 66 . Furthermore, the measurement of mental health often conflates positive and negative mental health outcomes as well as various mental health conditions, which could all be differentially related to social media use 52 , 67 .

This research space presents substantial complexity 68 . There is an ever-increasing range of potential combinations of social media predictors, well-being and mental health outcomes and participant groups of varying backgrounds and demographics that can become the target of scientific investigation. However, the pressure to deliver policy and public-facing recommendations and interventions leaves little time to investigate comprehensively each of these combinations. Researchers need to be able to pinpoint quickly the research programmes with the maximum potential to create translational and real-world impact for adolescent mental health.

In this Review, we aim to delineate potential avenues for future research that could lead to concrete interventions to improve adolescent mental health by considering mechanisms at the nexus between pre-existing processes known to increase adolescent mental health vulnerability and digital affordances introduced by social media. First, we describe the affordance approach to understanding the effects of social media. We then draw upon research on adolescent development, mental health and social media to describe behavioural, cognitive and neurobiological mechanisms by which social media use might amplify changes during adolescent development to increase mental health vulnerability during this period of life. The specific mechanisms within each category were chosen because they have a strong evidence base showing that they undergo substantive changes during adolescent development, are implicated in mental health risk and can be modulated by social media affordances. Although the ways in which social media can also improve mental health resilience are not the focus of our Review and therefore are not reviewed fully here, they are briefly discussed in relation to each mechanism. Finally, we discuss future research focused on how to systematically test the intersection between social media and adolescent mental health.

Social media affordances

To study the impact of social media on adolescent mental health, its diverse design elements and highly individualized uses must be conceptualized. Initial research predominately related access to or time spent on social media to mental health outcomes 46 , 69 , 70 . However, social media is not similar to a toxin or nutrient for which each exposure dose has a defined link to a health-related outcome (dose–response relationship) 56 . Social media is a diverse environment that cannot be summarized by the amount of time one spends interacting with it 71 , 72 , and individual experiences are highly varied 45 .

Previous psychological reviews often focused on social media ‘features’ 73 and ‘affordances’ 74 interchangeably. However, these terms have distinct definitions in communication science and information systems research. Social media features are components of the technology intentionally designed to enable users to perform specific actions, such as liking, reposting or uploading a story 75 , 76 . By contrast, affordances describe the perceptions of action possibilities users have when engaging with social media and its features, such as anonymity (the difficulty with which social media users can identify the source of a message) and quantifiability (how countable information is).

The term ‘affordance’ came from ecological psychology and visuomotor research, and was described as mainly determined by human perception 77 . ‘Affordance’ was later adopted for design and human–computer interaction contexts to refer to the action possibilities that are suggested to the user by the technology design 78 . Communication research synthesizes both views. Affordances are now typically understood as the perceived — and therefore flexible — action possibilities of digital environments, which are jointly shaped by the technology’s features and users’ idiosyncratic perceptions of those features 79 .

Latent action possibilities can vary across different users, uses and technologies 79 . For example, ‘stories’ are a feature of Instagram designed to share content between users. Stories can also be described in terms of affordances when users perceive them as a way to determine how long their content remains available on the platform (persistence) or who can see that content (visibility) 80 , 81 , 82 , 83 , 84 . Low persistence (also termed ephemerality) and comparatively low visibility can be achieved through a technology feature (Instagram stories), but are not an outcome of technology use itself; they are instead perceived action possibilities that can vary across different technologies, users and designs 79 .

The affordances approach is particularly valuable for theorizing at a level above individual social media apps or specific features, which makes this approach more resilient to technological changes or shifts in platform popularity 79 , 85 . However, the affordances approach can also be related back to specific types of social media by assessing the extent to which certain affordances are ‘built into’ a particular platform through feature design 35 . Furthermore, because affordances depend on individuals’ perceptions and actions, they are more aligned than features with a neurocognitive and behavioural perspective to social media use. Affordances, similar to neurocognitive and behavioural research, emphasize the role of the user (how the technology is perceived, interpreted and used) rather than technology design per se. In this sense, the affordances approach is essential to overcome technological determinism of mental health outcomes, which overly emphasizes the role of technology as the driver of outcomes but overlooks the agency and impact of the people in question 86 . This flexibility and alignment with psychological theory has contributed to the increasing popularity of the affordance approach 35 , 73 , 74 , 85 , 87 and previous reviews have explored relevant social media affordances in the context of interpersonal communication among adults and adolescents 35 , 88 , 89 , adolescent body image concerns 73 and work contexts 33 . Here, we focus on the affordances of social media that are relevant for adolescent development and its intersection with mental health (Table  1 ).

Behavioural mechanisms

Adolescents often use social media differently to adults, engaging with different platforms and features and, potentially, perceiving or making use of affordances in distinctive ways 35 . These usage differences might interact with developmental characteristics and changes to amplify mental health vulnerability (Fig.  3 ). We examine two behavioural mechanisms that might govern the impact of social media use on mental health: risky posting behaviours and self-presentation.

Social media affordances can amplify the impact that common adolescent developmental mechanisms (behavioural, cognitive and neurobiological) have on mental health. At the behavioural level (top), affordances such as permanence and publicness lead to an increased impact of risk-taking behaviour on mental health compared with similar behaviours in non-mediated environments. At the cognitive level (middle), high quantifiability influences the effects of social comparison. At the neurobiological level (bottom), low synchronicity can amplify the effects of stress on the developing brain.

Risky posting behaviour

Sensation-seeking peaks in adolescence and self-regulation abilities are still not fully developed in this period of life 90 . Thus, adolescents often engage in more risky behaviours than other age groups 91 . Adolescents are more likely to take risks in situations involving peers 92 , 93 , perhaps because they are motivated to avoid social exclusion 94 , 95 . Whether adolescent risk-taking behaviour is inherently adaptive or maladaptive is debated. Although some risk-taking behaviours can be adaptive and part of typical development, others can increase mental health vulnerability. For example, data from a prospective UK panel study of more than 5,500 young people showed that engaging in more risky behaviours (including social and health risks) at age 16 years increases the odds of a range of adverse outcomes at age 18 years, such as depression, anxiety and substance abuse 96 .

Social media can increase adolescents’ engagement in risky behaviours both in non-mediated and mediated environments (environments in which the behaviour is executed in or through a technology, such as a mobile phone and social media). First, affordances such as quantifiability in conjunction with visibility and association (the degree with which links between people, between people and content or between a presenter and their audience can be articulated) can promote more risky behaviours in non-mediated environments and in-person social interactions. For example, posts from university students containing references to alcohol gain more likes than posts not referencing alcohol and liking such posts predicts an individual’s subsequent drinking habits 97 . Users expecting likes from their audience are incentivized to engage in riskier posting behaviour (such as more frequent or more extreme posts containing references to alcohol). The relationship between risky online behaviour and offline behaviour is supported by meta-analyses that found a positive correlation between adolescents’ social media use and their engagement in behaviours that might expose them to harm or risk of injury (for example, substance use or risky sexual behaviours) 98 . Further, affordances such as persistence and visibility can mean that risky behaviours in mediated and non-mediated environments remain public for long periods of time, potentially influencing how an adolescent is perceived by peers over the longer term 39 , 99 .

Adolescence can also be a time of more risky social media use. For most forms of semi-public and public social media use, users typically do not know who exactly will be able to see their posts. Thus, adolescents need to self-present to an ‘imagined audience’ 100 and avoid posting the wrong kind of content as the boundaries between different social spheres collapse (context collapse 101 ). However, young people can underestimate the risks of disclosing revealing information in a social media environment 102 . Affordances such as visibility, replicability (social media posts remain in the system and can be screenshotted and shared even if they are later deleted 39 ), association and persistence could heighten the risk of experiencing cyberbullying, victimization and online harassment 103 . For example, adolescents can forward privately received sexual images to larger friendship groups, increasing the risk of online harassment over the subject of the sexual images 104 . Further, low bandwidth (a relative lack of socio-emotional cues) and high anonymity have the potential to disinhibit interactions between users and make behaviours and reactions more extreme 105 , 106 . For example, anonymity was associated with more trolling behaviours during an online group discussion in an experiment with 242 undergraduate students 107 .

Thus, social media might drive more risky behaviours in both mediated and non-mediated contexts, increasing mental health vulnerability. However, the evidence is still not clear cut and often discounts adolescent agency and understanding. For example, mixed-methods research has shown that young people often understand the risks of posting private or sexual content and use social media apps that ensure that posts are deleted and inaccessible after short periods of time to counteract them 39 (even though posts can still be captured in the meantime). Future work will therefore need to investigate how adolescents understand and balance such risks and how such processes relate to social media’s impact on mental health.

Self-presentation and identity

The adolescent period is characterized by an abundance of self-presentation activities on social media 74 , where the drive to present oneself becomes a fundamental motivation for engagement 108 . These activities include disclosing, concealing and modifying one’s true self, and might involve deception, to convey a desired impression to an audience 109 . Compared with adults, adolescents more frequently take part in self-presentation 102 , which can encompass both realistic and idealized portrayals of themselves 110 . In adults, authentic self-presentation has been associated with increased well-being, and inauthentic presentation (such as when a person describes themselves in ways not aligned with their true self) has been associated with decreased well-being 111 , 112 , 113 .

Several social media affordances shape the self-presentation behaviours of adolescents. For example, the editability of social media profiles enables users to curate their online identity 84 , 114 . Editability is further enhanced by highly visible (public) self-presentations. Additionally, the constant availability of social media platforms enables adolescents to access and engage with their profiles at any time, and provides them with rapid quantitative feedback about their popularity among peers 89 , 115 . People receive more direct and public feedback on their self-presentation on social media than in other types of environment 116 , 117 . The affordances associated with self-presentation can have a particular impact during adolescence, a period characterized by identity development and exploration.

Social media environments might provide more opportunities than offline environments for shaping one’s identity. Indeed, public self-presentation has been found to invoke more prominent identity shifts (substantial changes in identity) compared with private self-presentation 118 , 119 . Concerns have been raised that higher Internet use is associated with decreased self-concept clarity. Only one study of 101 adolescents as well as adults reviewed in a 2021 meta-analysis 120 showed that the intensity of Facebook use (measured by the Facebook Intensity Scale) predicted a longitudinal decline in self-concept clarity 3 months later, but the converse was not the case and changes in self-concept clarity did not predict Facebook use 121 . This result is still not enough to show a causal relationship 121 . Further, the affordances of persistence and replicability could also curtail adolescents’ ability to explore their identity freely 122 .

By contrast, qualitative research has highlighted that social media enables adolescents to broaden their horizons, explore their identity and identify and reaffirm their values 123 . Social media can help self-presentation by enabling adolescents to elaborate on various aspects of their identity, such as ethnicity and race 124 or sexuality 125 . Social media affordances such as editability and visibility can also facilitate this process. Adolescents can modify and curate self-presentations online, try out new identities or express previously undisclosed aspects of their identity 126 , 127 . They can leverage social media affordances to present different facets of themselves to various social groups by using different profiles, platforms and self-censorship and curation of posts 128 , 129 . Presenting and exploring different aspects of one’s identity can have mental health implications for minority teens. Emerging research shows a positive correlation between well-being and problematic Internet use in transgender, non-binary and gender-diverse adolescents (age 13–18 years), and positive sentiment has been associated with online identity disclosures in transgender individuals with supportive networks (both adolescent and adult) 130 , 131 .

Cognitive mechanisms

Adolescents and adults might experience different socio-cognitive impacts from the same social media activity. In this section, we review four cognitive mechanisms via which social media and its affordances might influence the link between adolescent development and mental health vulnerabilities (Fig.  3 ). These mechanisms (self-concept development, social comparison, social feedback and exclusion) roughly align with a previous review that examined self-esteem and social media use 115 .

Self-concept development

Self-concept refers to a person’s beliefs and evaluations about their own qualities and traits 132 , which first develops and becomes more complex throughout childhood and then accelerates its development during adolescence 133 , 134 , 135 . Self-concept is shaped by socio-emotional processes such as self-appraisal and social feedback 134 . A negative and unstable self-concept has been associated with negative mental health outcomes 136 , 137 .

Perspective-taking abilities also develop during adolescence 133 , 138 , 139 , as does the processing of self-relevant stimuli (measured by self-referential memory tasks, which assess memory for self-referential trait adjectives 140 , 141 ). During adolescence, direct self-evaluations and reflected self-evaluations (how someone thinks others evaluate them) become more similar. Further, self-evaluations have a distinct positive bias during childhood, but this positivity bias decreases in adolescence as evaluations of the self are integrated with judgements of other people’s perspectives 142 . Indeed, negative self-evaluations peak in late adolescence (around age 19 years) 140 .

The impact of social media on the development of self-concept could be heightened during adolescence because of affordances such as personalization of content 143 (the degree to which content can be tailored to fit the identity, preferences or expectations of the receiver), which adapts the information young people are exposed to. Other affordances with similar impacts are quantifiability, availability (the accessibility of the technology as well as the user’s accessibility through the technology) and public visibility of interactions 89 , which render the evaluations of others more prominent and omnipresent. The prominence of social evaluation can pose long-term risks to mental health under certain conditions and for some users 144 , 145 . For example, receiving negative evaluations from others or being exposed to cyberbullying behaviours 146 , 147 can, potentially, have heightened impact at times of self-concept development.

A pioneering cross-sectional study of 150 adolescents showed that direct self-evaluations are more similar to reflected self-evaluations, and self-evaluations are more negative, in adolescents aged 11–21 years who estimate spending more time on social media 148 . Further, longitudinal data have shown bidirectional negative links between social media use and satisfaction with domains of the self (such as satisfaction with family, friends or schoolwork) 47 .

Although large-scale evidence is still unavailable, these findings raise the interesting prospect that social media might have a negative influence on perspective-taking and self-concept. There is less evidence for the potential positive influence of social media on these aspects of adolescent development, demonstrating an important research gap. Some researchers hypothesize that social media enables self-concept unification because it provides ample opportunity to find validation 89 . Research has also discussed how algorithmic curation of personalized social media feeds (for example, TikTok algorithms tailoring videos viewed to the user’s interests) enables users to reflect on their self-concept by being exposed to others’ experiences and perspectives 143 , an area where future research can provide important insights.

Social comparison

Social comparison (thinking about information about other people in relation to the self 149 ) also influences self-concept development and becomes particularly important during adolescence 133 , 150 . There are a range of social media affordances that can amplify the impact of social comparison on mental health. For example, quantifiability enables like or follower counts to be easily compared with others as a sign of status, which facilitates social ranking 151 , 152 , 153 , 154 . Studies of older adolescents and adults aged, on average, 20 years have also found that the number of likes or reactions received predict, in part, how successful users judge their self-presentation posts on Facebook 155 . Furthermore, personalization enables the content that users see on social media to be curated so as to be highly relevant and interesting for them, which should intensify comparisons. For example, an adolescent interested in sports and fitness content will receive personalized recommendations fitting those interests, which should increase the likelihood of comparisons with people portrayed in this content. In turn, the affordance of association can help adolescents surround themselves with similar peers and public personae online, enhancing social comparison effects 63 , 156 . Being able to edit posts (via the affordance of editability) has been argued to contribute to the positivity bias on social media: what is portrayed online is often more positive than the offline experience. Thus, upward comparisons are more likely to happen in online spaces than downward or lateral comparisons 157 . Lastly, the verifiability of others’ idealized self-presentations is often low, meaning that users have insufficient cues to gauge their authenticity 158 .

Engaging in comparisons on social media has been associated with depression in correlational studies 159 . Furthermore, qualitative research has shown that not receiving as many positive evaluations as expected (or if positive evaluations are not provided quickly enough) increases negative emotions in children and adolescents aged between age 9 and 19 years 39 . This result aligns with a reinforcement learning modelling study of Instagram data, which found that the likes a user receives on their own posts become less valuable and less predictive of future posting behaviour if others in their network receive more likes on their posts 160 . Although this study did not measure mood or mental health, it shows that the value of the likes are not static but inherently social; their impact depends on how many are typically received by other people in the same network.

Among the different types of social comparison that adolescents engage in (comparing one’s achievements, social status or lifestyle), the most substantial concerns have been raised about body-related comparisons. One review suggested that social media affordances create a ‘perfect storm’ for body image concerns that can contribute to both socio-emotional and eating disorders 73 . Social media affordances might increase young people’s focus on other people’s appearances as well as on their own appearance by showing idealized, highly edited images, providing quantified feedback and making the ability to associate and compare oneself with peers constantly available 161 , 162 . The latter puts adolescents who are less popular or receive less social support at particular risk of low self-image and social distress 35 .

Affordances enable more prominent and explicit social comparisons in social media environments relative to offline environments 158 , 159 , 163 , 164 , 165 . However, this association could have a positive impact on mental health 164 , 166 . Initial evidence suggests beneficial outcomes of upward comparisons on social media, which can motivate behaviour change and yield positive downstream effects on mental health 164 , 166 . Positive motivational effects (inspiration) have been observed among young adults for topics such as travelling and exploring nature, as well as fitness and other health behaviours, which can all improve mental health 167 . Importantly, inspiration experiences are not a niche phenomenon on social media: an experience sampling study of 353 Dutch adolescents (mean age 13–15 years) found that participants reported some level of social media-induced inspiration in 33% of the times they were asked to report on this over the course of 3 weeks 168 . Several experimental and longitudinal studies show that inspiration is linked to upward comparison on social media 157 , 164 , 166 . However, the positive, motivating side of social comparison on social media has only been examined in a few studies and requires additional investigation.

Social feedback

Adolescence is also a period of social reorientation, when peers tend to become more important than family 169 , peer acceptance becomes increasingly relevant 170 , 171 , 172 and young people spend increasing amounts of time with peers 173 . In parallel, there is a heightened sensitivity to negative socio-emotional or self-referential cues 140 , 174 , higher expectation of being rejected by others 175 and internalization of such rejection 142 , 176 compared with other phases in life development. A meta-analysis of both adolescents and adults found that oversensitivity to social rejection is moderately associated with both depression and anxiety 177 .

Social media affordances might amplify the potential impact of social feedback on mental health. Wanting to be accepted by peers and increased susceptibility to social rewards could be a motivator for using social media in the first place 178 . Indeed, receiving likes as social reward activated areas of the brain (such as the nucleus accumbens) that are also activated by monetary reward 179 . Quantifiability amplifies peer acceptance and rejection (via like counts), and social rejection has been linked to adverse mental health outcomes 170 , 180 , 181 , 182 . Social media can also increase feelings of being evaluated, the risk of social rejection and rumination about potential rejection due to affordances such as quantifiability, synchronicity (the degree to which an interaction happens in real time) and variability of social rewards (the degree to which social interaction and feedback occur on variable time schedules). For example, one study of undergraduate students found that active communication such as messaging was associated with feeling better after Facebook use; however, this was not the case if the communication led to negative feelings such as rumination (for example, after no responses to the messages) 183 .

In a study assessing threatened social evaluation online 184 , participants were asked to record a statement about themselves and were told their statements would be rated by others. To increase the authenticity of the threat, participants were asked to rate other people’s recordings. Threatened social evaluation online in this study decreased mood, most prominently in people with high sensitivity to social rejection. Adolescents who are more sensitive to social rejection report more severe depressive symptoms and maladaptive ruminative brooding in both mediated and non-mediated social environments, and this association is most prominent in early adolescence 185 . Not receiving as much online social approval as peers led to more severe depressive symptoms in a study of American ninth-grade adolescents (between age 14 and 15 years), especially those who were already experiencing peer victimization 153 . Furthermore, individuals with lower self-esteem post more negative and less positive content than individuals with higher self-esteem. Posted negative content receives less social reward and recognition from others than positive content, possibly creating a vicious cycle 186 . Negative experiences pertaining to social exclusion and status are also risk factors for socio-emotional disorders 180 .

The impact of social media experiences on self-esteem can be very heterogeneous, varying substantially across individuals. As a benefit, positive social feedback obtained via social media can increase users’ self-esteem 115 , an association also found among adolescents 187 . For instance, receiving likes on one’s profile or posted photographs can bolster self-esteem in the short term 144 , 188 . A study linking behavioural data and self-reports from Facebook users found that receiving quick responses on public posts increased a sense of social support and decreased loneliness 189 . Furthermore, a review of reviews consistently documented that users who report more social media use also perceive themselves to have more social resources and support online 52 , although this association has mostly been studied among young adults using social network sites such as Facebook. Whether such social feedback benefits extend to adolescents’ use of platforms centred on content consumption (such as TikTok or Instagram) is an open question.

Social inclusion and exclusion

Adolescents are more sensitive to the negative emotional impacts of being excluded than are adults 170 , 190 . It has been proposed that, as the importance of social affiliation increases during this period of life 134 , 191 , 192 , adolescents are more sensitive to a range of social stimuli, regardless of valence 193 . These include social feedback (such as compliments or likes) 95 , 194 , negative socio-emotional cues (such as negative facial expressions or social exclusion) 174 and social rejection 172 , 185 . By contrast, social inclusion (via friendships in adolescence) is protective against emotional disorders 195 and more social support is related to higher adolescent well-being 196 .

Experiencing ostracism and exclusion online decreases self-esteem and positive emotion 197 . This association has been found in vignette experiments where participants received no, only a few or a lot of likes 198 , or experiments that used mock-ups of social media sites where others received more likes than participants 153 . Being ostracized (not receiving attention or feedback) or rejected through social media features (receiving dislikes and no likes) is also associated with a reduced sense of belonging, meaningfulness, self-esteem and control 199 . Similar results were found when ostracism was experienced over messaging apps, such as not receiving a reply via WhatsApp 200 .

Evidence on whether social media also enables adolescents to experience positive social inclusion is mostly indirect and mixed. Some longitudinal surveys have found that prosocial feedback received on social media during major life events (such as university admissions) helps to buffer against stress 201 . Adult participants of a longitudinal study reported that social media offered more informational support than offline contexts, but offline contexts more often offered emotional or instrumental support 202 . Higher social network site use is, on average, associated with a perception of having more social resources and support in adults (for an overview of meta-analyses, see ref. 52 ). However, most of these studies have not investigated social support among adolescents, and it is unclear whether early findings (for example, on Facebook or Twitter) generalize to a social media landscape more strongly characterized by content consumption than social interaction (such as Instagram or TikTok).

Still, a review of social media use and offline interpersonal outcomes among adolescents documents both positive (sense of belonging and social capital) and negative (alienation from peers and perceived isolation) correlates 203 . Experience sampling research on emotional support among young adults has further shown that online social support is received and perceived as effective, and its perceived effectiveness is similar to in-person social support 204 . Social media use also has complex associations with friendship closeness among adolescents. For example, one experience sampling study found that greater use of WhatsApp or Instagram is associated with higher friendship closeness among adolescents; however, within-person examinations over time showed small negative associations 205 .

Neurobiological mechanisms

The long-term impact of environmental changes such as social media use on mental health might be amplified because adolescence is a period of considerable neurobiological development 95 (Fig.  3 ). During adolescence, overall cortical grey matter declines and white matter increases 206 , 207 . Development is particularly protracted in brain regions associated with social cognition and executive functions such as planning, decision-making and inhibiting prepotent responses. The changes in grey and white matter are thought to reflect axonal growth, myelination and synaptic reorganization, which are mechanisms of neuroplasticity influenced by the environment 208 . For example, research in rodents has demonstrated that adolescence is a sensitive period for social input, and that social isolation in adolescence has unique and more deleterious consequences for neural, behavioural and mental health development than social isolation before puberty or in adulthood 206 , 209 . There is evidence that brain regions involved in motivation and reward show greater activation to rewarding and motivational stimuli (such as appetitive stimuli and the presence of peers) in early and/or mid adolescence compared with other age groups 210 , 211 , 212 , 213 , 214 .

Little is known about the potential links between social media and neurodevelopment due to the paucity of research investigating these associations. Furthermore, causal chains (for example, social media increasing stress, which in turn influences the brain) have not yet been accurately delineated. However, it would be amiss not to recognize that brain development during adolescence forms part of the biological basis of mental health vulnerability and should therefore be considered. Indeed, the brain is proposed to be particularly plastic in adolescence and susceptible to environmental stimuli, both positive and negative 208 . Thus, even if adults and adolescents experienced the same affective consequences from social media use (such as increases in peer comparison or stress), these consequences might have a greater impact in adolescence.

A cross-sectional study (with some longitudinal elements) suggested that habitual checking of social media (for example, checking for rewards such as likes) might exacerbate reward sensitivity processes, leading to long-term hypersensitization of the reward system 215 . Specifically, frequently checking social media was associated with reduced activation in brain regions such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the amygdala in response to anticipated social feedback in young people. Brain activation during the same social feedback task was measured over subsequent years. Upon follow-up, anticipating feedback was associated with increased activation of the same brain regions among the individuals who checked social media frequently initially 215 . Although longitudinal brain imaging measurements enabled trajectories of brain development to be specified, the measures of social media use were only acquired once in the first wave of data collection. The study therefore cannot account for confounds such as personality traits, which might influence both social media checking behaviours and brain development. Other studies of digital screen use and brain development have found no impact on adolescent functional brain organization 216 .

Brain development and heightened neuroplasticity 208 render adolescence a particularly sensitive period with potentially long-term impacts into adulthood. It is possible that social media affordances that underpin increased checking and reward-seeking behaviours (such as quantifiability, variability of social rewards and permanent availability of peers) might have long-term consequences on reward processing when experienced during adolescence. However, this suggestion is still speculative and not backed up by evidence 217 .

Stress is another example of the potential amplifying effect of social media on adolescent mental health vulnerability due to neural development. Adolescents show higher stress reactivity because of maturational changes to, and increased reactivity in, the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis 218 , 219 . Compared with children and adults, adolescents experience an increase in self-consciousness and associated emotional states such as self-reported embarrassment and related physiological measures of arousal (such as skin conductance), and heightened neural response patterns compared with adults, when being evaluated or observed by peers 220 . Similarly, adolescents (age 13–17 years) show higher stress responses (higher levels of cortisol or blood pressure) compared with children (age 7–12 years) when they perform in front of others or experience social rejection 221 .

Such changes in adolescence might confer heightened risk for the onset of mental health conditions, especially socio-emotional disorders 6 . Both adolescent rodents and humans show prolonged hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal activation after experiencing stress compared with conspecifics of different ages 218 , 219 . In animal models, stress during adolescence has been shown to result in increased anxiety levels in adulthood 222 and alterations in emotional and cognitive development 223 . Furthermore, human studies have linked stress in adolescence to a higher risk of mental health disorder onset 218 and reviews of cross-species work have illustrated a range of brain changes due to adolescent stress 224 , 225 .

There is still little conclusive neurobiological evidence about social media use and stress, and a lack of understanding about which affordances might be involved (although there has been a range of work studying digital stress; Box  1 ). Studies of changes in cortisol levels or hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal functioning and their relation to social media use have been mixed and inconclusive 226 , 227 . These results could be due to the challenge of studying stress responses in adolescents, particularly as cortisol fluctuates across the day and one-point readings can be unreliable. However, the increased stress sensitivity during the adolescent developmental period might mean that social media use can have a long-term influence on mental health due to neurobiological mechanisms. These processes are therefore important to understand in future research.

Box 1 Digital stress

Digital stress is not a unified construct. Thematic content analyses have categorized digital stress into type I stressors (for example, mean attacks, cyberbullying or shaming) and type II stressors (for example, interpersonal stress due to pressure to stay available) 260 . Other reviews have noted its complexity, and categorized digital stress into availability stress (stress that results from having to be constantly available), approval anxiety (anxiety regarding others’ reaction to their own profile, posts or activities online), fear of missing out (stress about being absent from or not experiencing others’ rewarding experiences) and communication overload (stress due to the scale, intensity and frequency of online communication) 261 .

Digital stress has been systematically linked to negative mental health outcomes. Higher digital stress was longitudinally associated with higher depressive symptoms in a questionnaire study 262 . Higher social media stress was also longitudinally related to poorer sleep outcomes in girls (but not boys) 263 . Studies and reviews have linked cyberbullying victimization (a highly stressful experience) to decreased mental health outcomes such as depression, and psychosocial outcomes such as self-esteem 103 , 146 , 147 , 264 , 265 . A systematic review of both adolescents and adults found a medium association ( r  = 0.26–0.34) between different components of digital stress and psychological distress outcomes such as anxiety, depression or loneliness, which was not moderated by age or sex (except for connection overload) 266 . However, the causal structure giving rise to such results is still far from clear. For example, surveys have linked higher stress levels to more problematic social media use and fear of missing out 267 , 268 .

Thus, the impact of digital stress on mental health is probably complex and influenced by the type of digital stressor and various affordances. For example, visibility and availability increase fear of negative public evaluation 269 and high availability and a social norm of responding quickly to messages drive constant monitoring in adolescents due to a persistent fear of upsetting friends 270 .

A range of relevant evidence from qualitative and quantitative studies documents that adolescents often ruminate about online interactions and messages. For example, online salience (constantly thinking about communication, content or events happening online) was positively associated with stress on both between-person and within-person levels in a cross-sectional quota sample of adults and three diary studies of young adults 271 , 272 . Online salience has also been associated with lower well-being in a pre-registered study of momentary self-reports from young adults with logged online behaviours. However, this study also noted that positive thoughts were related to higher well-being 273 . Furthermore, although some studies found no associations between the amount of communication and digital stress 272 , a cross-sectional study found that younger users’ (age 14–34 years and 35–49 years) perception of social pressure to be constantly available was related to communication load (measured by questions about the amount of use, as well as the urge to check email and social media) and Internet multitasking, whereas this was not the case for older users aged 50–85 years 274 . By contrast, communication load and perceived stress were associated only among older users.

Summary and future directions

To help to understand the potential role of social media in the decline of adolescent mental health over the past decade, researchers should study the mechanisms linking social media, adolescent development and mental health. Specifically, social media environments might amplify the socio-cognitive processes that render adolescents more vulnerable to mental health conditions in the first place. We outline various mechanisms at three levels of adolescent development — behavioural, cognitive and neurobiological — that could be involved in the decline of adolescent mental health as a function of social media engagement. To do so, we delineate specific social media affordances, such as quantification of social feedback or anonymity, which can also have positive impacts on mental health.

Our Review sets out clear recommendations for future research on the intersection of social media and adolescent mental health. The foundation of this research lies in the existing literature investigating the underlying processes that heighten adolescents’ risk of developing socio-emotional disorders. Zooming in on the potential mechanistic targets impacted by social media uses and affordances will produce specific research questions to facilitate controlled and systematic scientific inquiry relevant for intervention and translation. This approach encourages researchers to pinpoint the mechanisms and levels of explanation they want to include and will enable them to identify what factors to additionally consider, such as participants’ age 60 , the specific mental health outcomes being measured, the types of social media being examined and the populations under study 52 , 228 . Targeted and effective research should prioritize the most promising areas of study and acknowledge that all research approaches have inherent limitations 229 . Researchers must embrace methodological diversity, which in turn will facilitate triangulation. Surveys, experience sampling designs in conjunction with digital trace data, as well as experimental or neuroimaging paradigms and computational modelling (such as reinforcement learning) can all be used to address research questions comprehensively 230 . Employing such a multi-method approach enables the convergence of evidence and strengthens the reliability of findings 231 .

Mental health and developmental research can also become more applicable to the study of social media by considering how studies might already be exploring features of the digital environment, such as its design features and perceived affordances. Many cognitive neuroscience studies that investigate social processes and mental health during adolescence necessarily design tasks that can be completed in controlled experimental or brain scanning environments. Consequently, they tend to focus on digitally mediated interactions. However, researchers conceptualize and generalize their results to face-to-face interactions. For example, it is common across the discipline to not explicitly describe the interactions under study as being about social processes in digital environments (such as studies that assess social feedback based on the number of ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ received in social media 232 ). Considering whether cognitive neuroscience studies include key affordances of mediated (or non-mediated) environments, and discussing these in published papers, will make studies searchable within the field of social media research, enabling researchers to broaden the impact of their work and systematically specify generalizations to offline environments 233 .

To bridge the gap between knowledge about mediated and non-mediated social environments, it is essential to directly compare the two 233 . It is often assumed that negative experiences online have a detrimental impact on mental health. However, it remains unclear whether this mechanism is present in both mediated and non-mediated spaces or whether it is specific to the mediated context. For instance, our Review highlights that the quantification of social feedback through likes is an important affordance of social media 160 . Feedback on social media platforms might therefore elicit a greater sense of certainty because it is quantified compared with the more subjective and open-to-interpretation feedback received face to face 151 . Conducting experiments in which participants receive feedback that is more or less quantified and uncertain, specifically designed to compare mediated and non-mediated environments, would provide valuable insights. Such research efforts could also establish connections with computational neuroscience studies demonstrating that people tend to learn faster from stimuli that are less uncertain 234 .

We have chosen not to make recommendations concerning interventions targeting social media use to improve adolescent mental health for several reasons. First, we did not fully consider the bidirectional interactions between environment and development 35 , 235 , or the factors modulating adolescents’ differential susceptibility to the effects of social media 45 , 58 . For example, mental health status also influences how social media is used 47 , 58 , 59 , 236 , 237 (Box  2 ). These bidirectional interactions could be addressed using network or complexity science approaches 238 . Second, we do not yet know how the potential mechanisms by which social media might increase mental health vulnerability compare in magnitude, importance, scale and ease and/or cost of intervention with other factors and mechanisms that are already well known to influence mental health, such as poverty or loneliness. Last, social media use will probably interact with these predictors in ways that have not been delineated and can also support mental health resilience (for example, through social support or online self-help programmes). These complexities should be considered in future research, which will need to pinpoint not just the existence of mechanisms but their relative importance, to identify policy and intervention priorities.

Our Review has used a broad definition of mental health. Focusing on specific diagnostic or transdiagnostic symptomatology might reveal different mechanisms of interest. Furthermore, our Review is limited to mechanisms related to behaviour and neurocognitive development, disregarding other levels of explanation (such as genetics and culture) 34 , and also studying predominately Western-centric samples 239 . Mechanisms do not operate solely in linear pathways but exist within networks of interacting risk and resilience factors, characterized by non-linear and complex dynamics across diverse timescales 9 . Mechanisms and predisposing factors can interact and combine, amplifying mental health vulnerability. Mental health can be considered a dynamic system in which gradual changes to external conditions can have substantial downstream consequences due to system properties such as feedback loops 240 , 241 , 242 . These consequences are especially prominent in times of change and pre-existing vulnerability, such as adolescence 10 .

Indeed, if social media is a contributing factor to the current decline in adolescent mental health, as is commonly assumed, then it is important to identify and investigate mechanisms that are specifically tailored to the adolescent age range and make the case for why they matter. Without a thorough examination of these mechanisms and policy analysis to indicate whether they should be a priority to address, there is insufficient evidence to support the hypothesis that social media is the primary — or even just an influential and important — driver of mental health declines. Researchers need to stop studying social media as monolithic and uniform, and instead study its features, affordances and outcomes by leveraging a range of methods including experiments, questionnaires, qualitative research and industry data. Ultimately, this comprehensive approach will enhance researchers’ ability to address the potential challenges that the digital era poses on adolescent mental health.

Box 2 Effects of mental health on social media use

Although a lot of scientific discussion has focused on the impact of social media use on mental health, cross-sectional studies cannot differentiate between whether social media use is influencing mental health or mental health is influencing social media use, or a third factor is influencing both 51 . It is likely that mental health status influences social media use creating reinforcing cycles of behaviour, something that has been considered in the communication sciences literature under the term ‘transactional media effects’ 58 , 236 , 237 . According to communication science models, media use and its consequences are components of reciprocal processes 275 .

There are similar models in mental health research. For example, people’s moods influence their judgements of events, which can lead to self-perpetuating cycles of negativity (or positivity); a mechanism called ‘mood congruency’ 276 . Behavioural studies have also shown that people experiencing poor mental health behave in ways that decrease their opportunity to experience environmental reward such as social activities, maintaining poor mental health 277 , 278 . Although for many people these behaviours are a form of coping (for example, by avoiding stressful circumstances), they often worsen symptoms of mental health conditions 279 .

Some longitudinal studies found that a decrease in adolescent well-being predicted an increase in social media use 1 year later 47 , 59 . However, other studies have found no relationships between well-being and social media use over long-term or daily time windows 45 , 46 . One reason behind the heterogeneity of the results could be that how mental health impacts social media use is highly individual 45 , 280 .

Knowledge on the impact of mental health on social media use is still in its infancy and studies struggle to reach coherent conclusions. However, findings from the mental health literature can be used to generate hypotheses about how aspects of mental health might impact social media use. For example, it has been repeatedly found that young people with anxiety or eating disorders engage in more social comparisons than individuals without these disorders 281 , 282 , and adolescents with depression report more unfavourable social comparisons on social media than adolescents without depression 283 . Similar results have been found for social feedback seeking (for example, reassurance), including in social media environments 159 . Specifically, depressive symptoms were more associated with social comparison and feedback seeking, and these associations were stronger in women and in adolescents who were less popular. Individuals from the general population with lower self-esteem post more negative and less positive content than individuals with higher self-esteem, which in turn is associated with receiving less positive feedback from others 185 . There are therefore a wide range of possible ways in which diverse aspects of mental health might influence specific facets of how social media is used — and, in turn, how it ends up impacting the user.

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A.O. and T.D. were funded by the Medical Research Council (MC_UU_00030/13). A.O. was funded by the Jacobs Foundation and a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship (MR/X034925/1). S.-J.B. is funded by Wellcome (grant numbers WT107496/Z/15/Z and WT227882/Z/23/Z), the MRC, the Jacobs Foundation, the Wellspring Foundation and the University of Cambridge.

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A ‘greenhouse affect’? Exploring young Australians’ emotional responses to climate change

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• Volume 177 , article number  75 , ( 2024 )

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Recent studies reveal that young people are experiencing a range of emotions relating to climate change, including anxiety, anger and a sense of powerlessness. Young people have also voiced distrust in governments for failing to adequately address climate change, which they see as a critical threat to their future. However, there is limited research considering the interplay between young people’s emotions about climate change and the broader social context in which they live; social-ecological theory can assist in identifying important systemic factors influencing emotional responses to climate change. In this qualitative research project, I drew upon a social-ecological theoretical framework to explore the affective dimensions of climate change as experienced by young Australians aged 18–24 ( N  = 14). A primary, overarching finding was of climate change as a multidimensional emotional challenge for young people, with four sub-themes that describe key experiences through which it manifests: a fragmented climate education; disillusionment with politics, but hope for change; reckoning with uncertain futures; and grappling with agency. The findings contribute to the growing literature on climate-related emotions, highlighting experiences of interrelated emotions that resist being reduced to one label (e.g., ‘eco-anxiety’). Accordingly, I discuss a ‘greenhouse affect’ to convey the affective quandary provoked by climate change, expanding upon established anxiety-centred concepts. I also discuss implications for educating young Australians about climate change, and how this might improve their sense of agency to meaningfully contribute to climate solutions.

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1 Introduction

Climate change poses ever-growing risks across social, environmental and economic systems, as well as to physical and mental health of individuals (IPCC, 2022 ). The impacts of climate change are beginning to be felt around the globe, but the myriad ways in which people’s lives will be affected are yet to fully unfold. Contemplating this situation can be deeply unsettling, and in recent years, scholarly attention has turned to associated questions of how people are responding to the climate crisis in an emotional, affective sense. While there are a variety of contrasting theories of affect and emotion residing in different academic disciplines, we can broadly conceive of emotions and feelings as ‘affective responses to external stimuli or the imagination’ (Reyes et al. 2021 ; p.1). Diverse disciplinary perspectives, including from social psychology and human geography, have been applied to understanding the affective dimensions of climate change (see Ojala et al. 2021 ; and Reyes et al. 2021 ; for examples). Broadly, the literatures indicate that people are experiencing significant levels of distress due to climate change and society’s failure to adequately address it. Climate distress, which commonly comprises feelings of worry, grief, anger and despair, is considered a rational response to a serious threat (Verplanken and Roy 2013 ; Hickman et al. 2021 ; Lawrance et al. 2022a ). Understanding these affective dimensions of climate change is critical given that emotions can influence people in multiple ways – for example, regarding support for climate policy (Wang et al. 2018 ), undertaking pro-environmental behaviours (Ogunbode et al. 2022 ), and participating in climate action (Stanley et al. 2021 ).

Research in the social psychology discipline has begun to shift focus from examining direct psychological impacts caused by extreme weather events, to the indirect impacts related to knowledge of climate change as a broad phenomenon (Pihkala 2020 ). In this literature, emotional responses to climate change are commonly defined in ways that centre on individual experiences of anxiety. This has led to the introduction of new terms and standardised measures to describe and assess such experiences, including instruments to evaluate ‘eco-anxiety’ (Hogg et al. 2021 ) and ‘climate anxiety’ (Clayton and Karazsia 2020 ). The use of said instruments in empirical studies is primarily intended to develop an understanding of the nature and prevalence of distressing climate emotions. Despite the efforts to define and measure such experiences, Coffey et al. ( 2021 ) found that there is a suite of terms describing similar experiences - such as ‘eco-anger’, ‘climate grief’, and the place-based concept of ‘solastalgia’ (Albrecht 2005 ) - and some of these are used interchangeably in the literature. The lack of clarity around many of these terms has led to the proposal of an initial taxonomy to help elucidate the array of climate-related emotions (Pihkala 2022 ). Definitional challenges aside, terms such as eco-anxiety and climate anxiety appear to have resonated outside of academia; they are being increasingly reported in media outlets to describe people’s climate distress (e.g., Gregory 2021 ; Sarner 2022 ), suggesting a broader societal relevance.

Human geographers and political ecologists have also examined the role of emotions and affect towards environmental issues, and sought to place them into social context (Pile 2010 ). Literature in this field emphasises the relational aspects between people and nature, as well as interrogating issues of power, politics and conflict (Sultana 2015 ). In this literature, emotions are conceptualised as both subjective and social experiences; they can also present generative opportunities for shaping social and political action against environmental harm (Head, 2016 ). Indeed, Nightingale et al. ( 2022 ) highlight the need to understand these experiences of climate in order to effect transformative change, positioning it as a critical component in grappling with an uncertain, climate-altered future.

These bodies of work from diverse disciplinary perspectives can be broadly understood as dealing with the ways that people feel about environmental problems such as climate change. For young people coming of age in a time of climate-altered futures, these issues are particularly acute: not only are they disproportionately burdened by the impacts of greenhouse gases emitted even before they were born, but they will also bear much responsibility for enacting society’s climate mitigation and adaptation agenda in coming decades. This daunting prospect is exacerbated for young people who feel they currently lack political power and agency to effect change, and who are disheartened with societal and governmental responses to date. Thus, how young people think and feel about climate change may have important ramifications for how society adapts to an altered environment in coming decades. The following section considers the significance of climate distress for young people, and important contextual factors in its development as the conceptual grounding for the qualitative exploration of young people’s climate emotions.

1.1 Climate distress in young people

Young people are particularly vulnerable to the psychological impacts of climate change (Clayton et al. 2017 ), and are also reporting higher levels of climate anxiety than older people (Heeren et al. 2022 ). The relationship between individually experienced emotions and the real-world context in which they manifest is particularly compounded in young adulthood, a significant developmental phase in which individuals continue to develop worldviews and relate to the challenges of the larger world (see Corner et al., 2015 , for discussion). According to Ecological Systems Theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979 ) a person’s development is profoundly influenced by the individual’s social environment. The theory proposes a nested set of ‘systems’ that affect young people’s social, emotional and cognitive development to varying degrees. Crandon et al. ( 2022 ) utilised this theory to create a social-ecological framework describing systemic factors influencing development of climate anxiety in young people. The authors describe the factors at play, which begin with the immediate ‘micro’ system (family, peers) and move through more distal influences: ‘meso’ (community, school, local environment); ‘exo’ (media, government); and ‘macro’ systems (culture). In other words, if we accept that a person’s emotional and cognitive responses to climate change are not arrived at spontaneously, but are influenced by family relationships, education, media, and government policies, then exploring these factors may provide insight into how climate distress develops.

A recent review (Ma et al. 2022 ) found limited research examining how systemic factors may influence development of climate distress in young people. Examples of published studies include work by Jones and Davison ( 2021 ), in which the authors investigated the emotional significance of climate education experiences among participants aged 18–24 in Tasmania, Australia. Here, the authors identified three major themes connecting experiences of education, emotion and climate change: ‘stripped of power’; ‘stranded by the generational gap’; and ‘daunted by the future’. Another important study (Hickman et al. 2021 ) was the first to demonstrate that young people’s climate distress was greater when coupled with perceptions of deficient governmental climate responses, which led to feelings of betrayal. Findings such as these underscore the need to apprehend emotions not merely as individualised experiences, but as reflections of the world in which they exist.

Given the implications for young people’s mental health from sustained climate distress, there are urgent calls for further research to improve the state of knowledge on these matters (Wu et al. 2020 ; Hickman et al. 2021 ). The present paper contributes to furthering the current understanding in several ways. Firstly, the study responds to an identified need to improve our understanding of distressing climate-related emotions in young people (Lawrance et al. 2022b ). Secondly, it responds to calls for these emotional experiences to be placed into social context, so that contributing factors may be better understood (Crandon et al. 2022 ). Thirdly, it utilises a qualitative approach to generate nuanced insights into the experiences of young people - an approach identified as largely absent in current research (Ma et al. 2022 ). Understanding these matters is critical to supporting young people whose futures are disproportionately burdened by climate change.

2 Research design, methodology and methods

In this study, I ask the question: ‘In the context of societal efforts to address climate change, what are the implications of young Australians’ emotional responses to climate change for how they perceive the future?’ The question is explored through several key themes, including:

How societal influences might shape participants’ understanding of climate change.

Participants’ emotional experiences related to that understanding.

Levels of trust in the Australian government to act on climate change.

Perceived agency to influence the climate response, through voting or by other means.

An objective of this study was to ascertain whether and how these themes are connected in the experience of young Australians; and further, to develop a nuanced account of how emotional responses to climate change are interwoven with the lived experiences of young people, and particularly their expectations for their future.

Given the exploratory nature of the research question above, I employed an interpretivist methodology which focuses on understanding participants’ lived experiences within their social contexts, and the subjective meaning that they make from these experiences (Creswell 2007 ; Usher and Jackson 2014 ). An important contextual factor at the time of the study was the 2022 Australian Federal election Footnote 1 , which helped to increase the salience of questions related to government and politics. I recruited participants aged 18–24, in line with the World Health Organisation’s definition of ‘young people’ (WHO, 2022 ), using a social media platform to advertise the study Footnote 2 . Twitter and Facebook were used to share information and recruitment links through the online networks of colleagues. Initial recruitment was supported by snowballing and attracted participants from multiple jurisdictions for a remote interview: Australian Capital Territory (n = 5), New South Wales (n = 3), Queensland (n = 1), South Australia (n = 2) and Victoria (n = 3). As gender was not, a priori, a salient conceptual theme for the research, I did not require participants to disclose their gender identification. The final participant group (n = 14) was arrived at through an iterative process of evaluating the data collected for richness, depth, and ability to identify clear themes (e.g., Gunasiri et al. 2022 ). Participants were given a $20 online gift voucher as an expression of appreciation for their time.

Rather than using firm pre-determined questions, I used semi-structured interviews to encourage a more free-flowing interaction that allowed for follow-up questions (Yin 2015 ). An interview protocol (Table  1 ) was developed and reviewed by two academic colleagues, and used to guide the conversations. My questions were asked in a manner that allowed participants to identify significant factors for themselves (e.g., broad educational influences); these were then followed up with more specific questions (e.g., specific school experiences). Interviews ranged in length from 24 min to 65 min and were conducted over Zoom to facilitate participation from different Australian jurisdictions. Participant responses were audio recorded and transcribed, and supplemented by notes recording significant affective cues that could be lost during transcription (for example, using a sarcastic tone of voice).

I analysed the interview data by listening to each interview in full before commencing coding of transcripts using NVivo12. Following Helm et al. ( 2021 ), I devised various deductive codes based on the project’s objectives (e.g., ‘emotional responses’) and added inductive codes as I identified these themes in the transcripts (e.g., ‘ways to cope’). My aim was to generate inductive insights linking emotional experiences of climate change in the context of different systemic influences, and reveal any patterns, similarities or differences in experiences between participants. I was also interested in participants’ engagement with complexity and contradictions in their responses, and later reviewed coded content in all nodes to challenge, verify, extend and complement the insights I had developed thus far. Through this process, I was able to engage with the content theme-by-theme, after having done so participant-by-participant. While taking this perspective, I re-evaluated the themes that I felt best represented the breadth and depth of perspectives shared by participants. This resulted in five top-level themes (explored below in Findings) that cut across and incorporated a range of codes.

The interviews yielded five key themes regarding the emotional dimensions of climate change as expressed by a group of young Australians, most of whom had completed – or were currently enrolled in – tertiary education. A primary, overarching theme was of climate change as an emotional challenge for young people, with four sub-themes describing key experiences through which it manifests: a fragmented climate education; disillusionment with politics, but hope for change; reckoning with uncertain futures; and grappling with agency. Each is discussed in turn in the following sections, with illustrative quotes.

3.1 Climate change as an emotional challenge

Perhaps the most important overarching finding is that climate change poses complex challenges for these young Australians in an affective sense. Climate change presents a series of dilemmas, tensions and contradictions that young people must work through, provoking emotional responses that are interwoven in many aspects of their lives.

Rather than reporting one specific emotion, participants articulated multiple co-existing emotions related to climate change. In answer to the question, ‘how does your understanding of climate change make you feel?’, the most common responses were worry, hopelessness, sadness, and frustration. Participants also commonly expressed anger, overwhelm, depression and guilt. At times, several of these emotions fused together in an intense and profound way:

We’re pretty much a plague on Earth, human beings, you know. We’ve sort of been destroying it from the start and it’s showing us signs that we’re destroying it and we’re not listening . (Young person, age 20) .

Feelings of worry took different forms, relating to specific issues, such as climate-induced species extinctions, but also manifesting as a generalised undercurrent of uneasiness about the future, for example:

I guess… I just sort of accept that bad things are gonna happen. (Young person, age 24) .

At the same time, there was a clear sense that these young people do not want to give in to the negativity, and actively seek ways to cope with their emotions. Coping mechanisms included processing climate distress verbally with friends; taking practical pro-environmental actions, such as a beach clean-up; and periodically disengaging from news about climate change. Several participants expressed negativity alongside a determined optimism:

I feel a little bit grim about the outlook, but I think… you can’t drop all the tools and give up, […] you need an optimistic positive approach, you have to believe there is a way . (Young person, age 23) .

The need to process negative emotions about climate change while maintaining hope that society will pull together to avert the crisis constitutes an emotional dilemma. This dilemma is one of a series facing this study’s participants in relation to climate change: contradictions are encountered in many aspects of their lives, from educational experiences to engaging with politics. The following sections describe how the emotional challenge of climate change is woven into the different life experiences of these young Australians.

3.2 A fragmented climate education

Learning has long been acknowledged as a process comprising both reason and emotion (see Jones and Davison 2021 ; for discussion). For most of these participants, learning about climate change occurred chiefly through traditional and social media, with limited contributions from formal schooling. Despite all having completed over a decade of formal schooling, most participants identified media as the primary way they learned about climate change. Several mentioned that media informed their understanding of Australia’s climate policy positions, particularly the tumultuous period known as the ‘climate wars’, which played out during the last decade (see Crowley 2013 ; 2017 ; 2021 ) - years in which young people were first engaging with climate issues.

In terms of formal schooling, most participants regarded their education on climate change as inadequate. Specifically, they reported that climate change was covered in a fragmented manner across primary and high school years, or that it was largely absent from their education. Given the implications of climate change for society, some participants were perplexed at this disjointed approach:

I don’t think it was touched on much because we weren’t assessed on it […] that’s kind of strange when you consider how big of an issue that it actually is . (Young person, age 20) .

Where lessons did cover climate change, several participants recalled that these largely focused on the mechanics of atmospheric warming and its consequences, with little discussion of how society could address the problem or options for adaptation, which instigated feelings of helplessness. Further, several participants reported feeling saddened or depressed following these lessons, but lacked avenues for expressing or processing those feelings once the lesson was finished. The following quote captures one participant’s experience of learning about climate change and its emotional impact:

{As the teacher} ‘this is what climate change is, the polar bears will die and islands are drowning. We need to stop emissions’… but then you understand like, emissions aren’t going to stop and you’re like, OK, so we’re doomed…[…] I think leaving people in that place is probably an issue . (Young person, age 20) .

The common perception of an inadequate education about a critical topic led these young people to acquire information from other sources. Participants reported supplementing their understanding of climate change via social media channels, which they acknowledged as sometimes confronting, and potentially misleading, sources of information:

I’m so passionate about the environment and climate change but I don’t know everything, and I want to be able to know what more can I do, instead of just… going through this loophole of social media and getting fed this false information . (Young person, age 21) .

In the absence of a comprehensive climate curriculum (see Whitehouse and Larri 2019 ), the ubiquity of social media provides an accessible proxy for this generation seeking to understand the issues. Several participants also provided recommendations for improving climate education in Australia, and identified a need to address the general emotional impact of learning about climate change regardless of source:

I think also being taught […] about how to disengage from these kinds of issues is really important to teach the next generation of people […] Otherwise you just get depressed and can’t function. (Young person, age 20) .

The paradox described here, of recognising an issue as critical for society but scarcely learning about it at school, provoked feelings of confusion and disempowerment – a situation that some participants believe needs to be acknowledged and addressed in the Australian education system.

3.3 Disillusionment with politics, but hope for change

Participants’ responses largely conveyed feelings of frustration and distrust in Australian governments on the matter of climate change. Previous Australian Federal governments were broadly perceived as having performed poorly on the issue in both international and domestic contexts. Several young people referenced key events, such as the repeal of the carbon price under the Abbott government Footnote 3 , as reasons for their lack of trust in governments to act in their interest; some cited a sense of repeated broken promises on climate action as grounds for their distrust. Based on this appraisal, many participants conveyed misgivings that governments would now begin to take the required actions to prioritise climate change action:

The government… have all this money to build all these stadiums and things we don’t really need, when we could be using that to like, help endangered species that are getting affected by climate change and reducing our emissions […] it’s frustrating . (Young person, age 20) .

This posed yet another dilemma. Most participants believed that governments have primary responsibility for addressing climate change due to the ability to act at scale, but had little confidence they would do so. Thus, these young people feel unable to trust the very institution they see as having the most responsibility and potential for positive impact, which leads to frustration.

Several participants additionally raised an appreciation of the complex trade-offs that politicians had to contend with in order to make decisions about energy transitions and the economy. There was a resounding view that governments must lead on these issues by either incentivising or regulating the private sector, who are not otherwise motivated to do anything other than seek profit in a capitalist system:

Ultimately if governments don’t lead the market, then in a capitalist [system], the market will seek profit as the end goal, the end goal is not social justice . (Young person, age 23) .

The recognition of the complicated trade-offs inherent to climate action demonstrates the participants’ willingness to engage with the challenges in this space, refuting potential criticism that their emotions stem from being naïve (see Barrett 2018 ). Yet this willingness, and desire for governments to lead on climate action, is undermined by the deficiencies the participants see in the political system. Indeed, this study has surfaced feelings of disillusionment and distrust in the political system, even among those who were newly eligible to vote.

At the same time, however, most participants expressed a cautious optimism as a result of the change of government following the 2022 election:

We have a few more Independent politicians in Parliament now […] so I think that is a positive… I feel more hopeful, but the trust is still low due to the previous government when nothing happened . (Young person, age 24) .

Similar statements conveyed a guarded hope that the Albanese-led Labor government elected in 2022, with support of the Greens and Independents, would overcome the legacy of the climate wars and devise a more progressive national climate policy for Australia. This provides further demonstration of the tensions these young people need to manage regarding climate change: how to reconcile competing feelings of distrust and hope in government action.

3.4 Reckoning with uncertainty

When asked about how their understanding of climate change made them feel about the future, participants overwhelmingly expressed deep uncertainty relating to many issues. Numerous issues were raised, including concern regarding anticipated climate impacts to people living in small island nations, and empathy for the injustice that presents; sadness for the expected extinction of other species; and a strong feeling of doubt that humanity will collectively be able to do what’s needed to avert the climate crisis. The uncertainty toward the future in the context of climate change was pervasive, and in some cases was perceived as obstructing young people’s intended life paths:

It makes it really hard to imagine a future and especially with my partner, you know, we can like, plan all of these things and think about our lives together, but again there’s that like… ‘climate pending, climate pending, climate pending’ . (Young person, age 24) .

In terms of the personal, some participants questioned their career aspirations due to growing understanding of their chosen field’s contribution to climate change. Yet more arresting was the finding that several participants actively questioned whether they would have children of their own given the threats posed by climate change. This finding had two dimensions: concern about the carbon footprint that another human would represent; and worry about the state of the planet that the next generation would inherit. This demonstrates an acute awareness of the long-term nature of climate change that will affect not only the participants’ lives, but the lives of future generations. It also constitutes another dilemma facing these young people attempting to plan their lives in the context of climate change, as expressed here:

It doesn’t feel right, to have kids. But I want kids and then it sucks to even have to think about, like, sacrificing having a family, because we’re worried about climate change . (Young person, age 20) .

That climate change is compelling some young people to re-evaluate an intention to have children is an important finding, speaking to the depth of their concerns for the future. Once again, there is a dilemma posed between the desire to have a family, and a regret that this feels irresponsible in the context of climate change:

For a while I didn’t want to have kids because it’s cruel to bring kids into the world that we know is going to burn, essentially, but […] I think you have to hold on to some sort of hope that there will be a turnaround . (Young person, age 20) .

The emotional challenge is once more illustrated here, with the profound uncertainty about the future existing together with a need to maintain a hopeful outlook.

3.5 Grappling with agency

Participants reported complicated emotions regarding their ability to meaningfully influence climate change. Two opposing ideas emerged: that everyone can and should take individual action to combat climate change; and that individual action is futile if more systemic change is not enacted. This constitutes yet another dilemma for these young people grappling with the issue of climate change. One participant found this especially vexing when considering that large-scale societal shutdowns in 2020 yielded little impact upon global greenhouse gas emissions (Le Quéré et al. 2020 ):

Like, how many people stayed home in 2020 and weren’t driving their cars […] it didn’t make that much of a dent… […] it only proves it’s not really the average population that needs fixing . (Young person, age 20) .

The majority of participants discussed the conundrum of individual versus systemic action at length. Many detailed the individual choices they had made to reduce their carbon footprints, such as becoming vegan, while expressing frustration that powerful entities were not taking commensurate measures that could create larger impact. In addition, several participants pushed back on the idea of devolving responsibility to individuals at all, when many of the actions required are those at the heart of Australia’s economic system:

It’s not an individual responsibility to combat climate change. If you make it an individual responsibility you abdicate responsibility from corporations and government . (Young person, age 23) .

However, most participants expressed feeling some sense of agency through the process of voting in the 2022 Federal election. The participants’ disillusionment with politics, discussed earlier, did not translate into distrust or apathy for the entire democratic process; indeed, casting a vote in the election was broadly perceived as empowering, particularly for the nine participants who were first-time voters:

[Voting] made me feel like I could actually have a say, you know, it’s not just a spectator sport watching politicians decide what’s going to happen to Australia… it felt like I made a difference . (Young person, age 19) .

Several participants reported that the ability to formally voice their views improved their sense of agency, especially given that climate change was in many cases their ‘number one’ voting issue. Outside of the electoral system, participants raised various forms of action as contributing to a sense of agency. For some, this included being involved in collective movements, such as organised protests and strikes. For others reluctant to engage in formal protests, collective activities included supporting groups lobbying government for climate action, and encouraging others in their networks to boycott companies with environmentally-damaging practices, or to patronise more environmentally responsible companies. Despite some doubts around the efficacy of individual choices, several participants also mentioned implementing pro-environmental behaviours such as veganism in their own lives, and modelling these choices to others as a way of promoting sustainable social norms. The various ways in which these young people sought to contribute to climate action demonstrate both the importance of the issue to their lives, and the emotional commitments they make to live a life that is aligned with their values.

3.6 Summary of findings

The findings describe a complicated emotional challenge for these young people trying to navigate a future in the context of climate change. For many participants, a fragmented climate education in earlier years left them feeling ill-equipped to handle the implications of climate change as young adults. Their understanding of climate change triggered conflicting emotions, such as hope in the new Federal government alongside a distrust of politics. An overarching sense of worry about the impacts of climate change produced deep unease about the future, resulting in profound uncertainty about personal life choices. Finally, the participants voiced a desire to meaningfully contribute to climate action, but questioned whether individual actions would make a difference in the context of entrenched social and economic systems. This complex emotional landscape, experienced at the individual level, was deeply connected to the social and environmental context confronting these young people in the era of climate change.

4 Discussion

The purpose of this study was to explore young Australians’ emotional responses to climate change, while attending to the broader social context in which these emotions develop and manifest. Informed by the social-ecological model advanced by Crandon et al. ( 2022 ), the study investigated the ways in which young people came to understand climate change and the emotional responses evoked. It also examined young people’s perspectives on societal responses to climate change, including consideration of their own agency. This study contributes in several ways to existing literature, which are discussed in the following sections.

4.1 A ‘greenhouse affect’

The findings reported here support published studies situated in social psychology regarding challenging climate-related emotions (e.g., Swim et al. 2022 ), as well as interdisciplinary studies noting the intertwined nature of such emotions (e.g., Marczak et al. 2023 ) and connections to the societal context in which they are experienced (see Kalwak and Weihgold 2022 ; for overview). The findings expand upon themes in other Australian studies examining young people’s emotional responses to climate change - in particular, feelings of worry and uncertainty about the future (Verlie 2019 ; Jones and Davison 2021 ; Gunasiri et al. 2022 ). The present study furthers understanding of these experiences by revealing the emotional dilemmas that these young people needed to negotiate when envisaging a future under climate change; tensions which were deeply relational, influenced by and manifested in daily life experiences.

Taken together with recent efforts to advance conceptual frameworks of climate emotions (e.g., Pihkala 2022 ; Voşki et al. 2023 ), these findings suggest we are witnessing an unfolding phenomenon - a state of affective quandary occasioned by the climate crisis. Contemplating the realities of climate change includes contending with the ways in which we are both implicated and impacted by the prevailing social-ecological system; this provokes an array of interlinked emotions that resist neat delineation. The state of affective quandary elicited by confronting a future altered by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions can be understood as a ‘greenhouse affect’. Accommodating emotional plurality, the ‘greenhouse affect’ does not assign dominance to any particular emotional construct, such as anxiety. Rather, the ‘greenhouse affect’ reflects the tensions inherent to experiencing diverse and at times competing climate emotions – for example, anxiety and hope. Given that climate anxiety and hope can co-exist and prove difficult to disentangle (e.g, Sangervo et al. 2022 ), the ‘greenhouse affect’ provides a means of describing the complex emotional realities of climate change. The phenomenon is arguably being experienced at a societal level, comprising a shared experience across nations (as demonstrated in Hickman et al. 2021 ). Further research to understand the ‘greenhouse affect’ would be welcomed, particularly studies examining the interconnectedness of emotional responses to climate change situated in different social contexts.

This study also demonstrates the value of using social-ecological frameworks to examine affective dimensions of climate change. Rather than interrogating one specific facet of the social-ecological system – such as the influence of media or government policy – this study sought to allow participants to identify significant influences in how they perceive the issue of climate change. Applying a social-ecological systems perspective has revealed the complex interplay between the individual and the societal context. As posited by Crandon et al. ( 2022 ), there appears to be bidirectionality between external influences and internal emotional experiences: these young people exhibited affective responses to the situation they were confronted with, and these in turn informed how they engaged with the world. Figure  1 depicts some key relational elements comprising the ‘ greenhouse affect’ as described by this study’s participants.

This model depicts key experiential elements inherent to the ‘greenhouse affect’ described by young people in the present study

4.2 Educational implications

My research highlighted the importance of the ways in which these young people learned about climate change for how they responded to the issue emotionally. The findings of this study add to existing Australian literature critiquing the adequacy of school-based climate education (e.g., Jones and Davison 2021 ). The Australian Curriculum was introduced with the rationale of ‘setting out the knowledge, understanding and skills needed for life and work in the 21st century’ (ACARA, 2012 , p.5). It sets the expectations regarding what students are taught in primary and secondary schooling, which is delivered through State and Territory education systems. Most participants in this study – reflecting on their educations in five of the eight Australian jurisdictions – assessed their climate education as inadequate for facing a future under climate change. This assessment appears to support other critiques (e.g., Whitehouse and Larri 2019 ; Beasy et al. 2023 ) that found climate change to be largely absent in the Australian curriculum, and that individual teachers are left to decide whether and how to cover the issue in the classroom. While the Australian Curriculum has recently increased the number of references to climate change (ACARA, 2022 ), the majority of those references reside in secondary science and technology areas, which puts at a disadvantage those students studying the arts and humanities. Further, they do not appear at all in the primary school curriculum, despite primary school students demonstrating deep engagement with the topic through participating in youth-led climate strikes (Zhou 2019 ). This appears to undermine the Australian Curriculum’s stated rationale of equipping young people for the 21st century.

The mismatch between rhetoric and action regarding Australian climate education is borne out by the responses of participants in this study, some of whom reported emotional disturbance in their limited learning experiences about climate change. Attending to the affective dimensions of climate change in educational settings should be a priority, as it can help students to better endure challenging emotions, as well as work to generate new ideas for climate adaptation (Verlie 2019 ). Wamsler and Bristow ( 2022 ) advocate for policy support to improve environmental education in a way that balances knowledge acquisition with cultivation of ‘inner human qualities/capacities that underpin individual and societal flourishing and sustainability’ (p.18). Further, enhancing learning and engagement in climate action may help to counter feelings of hopelessness (Ojala 2015 ). Delivering an improved climate education in Australia will thus require incorporating climate change across year levels and subject areas, and affording students a space to process their new knowledge cognitively and affectively. This presents considerable challenges for educational policy and practice, but is urgently required for preparing young Australians whose lives will be significantly impacted by climate change.

4.3 Navigating the future

The deep uncertainty regarding the future under climate change, alongside efforts to resist negativity, are reflective of the tensions described by the ‘ greenhouse affect’. Studies are only just beginning to examine whether young people’s negative assessments of the future materially influence their life decisions, such as whether or not to have children. For example, the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) found that one-third of women under 30 were reconsidering having children due to concern about climate change (ACF, 2019 ). In Denmark, Bodin and Bjorkland ( 2022 ) conducted focus groups discussing reproductive decisions and intentions using the words ‘in relation to world conditions’, and found that the issue of climate change was raised almost exclusively as the ‘burning topic across age groups’ (p.3). Two more studies examined reproductive intentions with direct reference to climate change concern. In the first empirical study of this topic, Schneider-Mayerson and Leong ( 2020 ) showed that all participants (climate-concerned Americans aged 27–45, n  = 607) were factoring climate change into reproductive decisions to some degree. In the same vein in the USA and New Zealand ( n  = 24), Helm et al. ( 2021 ) found that the uncertainty of climate-altered futures introduced feelings of guilt around having children. This guilt related to the potential planetary conditions that future children would be exposed to, and to the potential impact that future children would have on the planet – both themes which were raised in the present study. Such responses indicate the emotional toll that climate change may exert upon people, and how that affects perceptions about life decisions under a climate-altered future.

4.4 Implications for climate action

Another important intersection highlighted in my research is that the ‘greenhouse affect’ is interwoven with engagement with climate change, politics and avenues for climate action. A key element is the distrust and disillusionment that many participants expressed about governments and politics. These sentiments have been reported elsewhere; for example, Cameron and McAllister ( 2020 ) found that a mere 17% of Australians aged 18–24 agreed with the statement, ‘People in government can be trusted’. Participants in my study commonly identified politicians as having a unique responsibility to lead action on climate change, but they struggled to trust governments to do so. At the same time, there was a strong sense of limited agency to exert influence on climate change outside of election cycles.

Fostering a sense of agency through climate action – in particular, through collective activities - has been suggested as offering young people protection from the psychological impacts of climate change (Sanson et al. 2019 ). In their study of political agency in a climate policy context, Wamsler et al. ( 2022 ) use the definition of political agency as ‘citizens’ capacity and actions to exert political influence to support transformation’ (p.2). The authors argue that in order to foster political agency, policy processes and practices must integrate external, structural factors with individuals’ emotions and perceptions, which are important influences on engagement. Bright and Eames ( 2022 ) write that young people have typically been marginalized in politics due to political discourse being determined by adults, and that this marginalisation – combined with working through challenging emotions about climate change - was a key motivator for youth-led climate protest movements. The authors found that successfully working through climate distress to ultimately take strike action increased participants’ sense of political agency. Taking part in collective actions thus offers a means of political agency that is especially valuable for those under the age of 18, as well as an opportunity to process and channel difficult emotions about climate change. Indeed, as Nightingale et al. ( 2022 ) highlight, it was the outrage of young people that first sparked the youth-led international climate protest movement, demonstrating the connection between emotions and climate action.

Yet climate strikes are only one mode of collective action that may afford a space for the affective dimensions of climate change. Several participants in my study voiced a willingness to take part in other collective activities, such as community-based forums to generate ideas for tackling climate change at the local level, though they did not necessarily know whether these forums existed or how to access them. This reveals a latent potential to meaningfully engage young people on a subject that is critical to their future, and in ways that may build a sense of agency, beyond the electoral process or strike action. Thus, I argue that political discourse and processes need to make space for the affective dimensions of climate change in order to foster empowerment of young people. Further, a climate politics that regards young people as legitimate actors in shaping their own climate-altered future is necessary if society is to realise truly transformative climate policy.

5 Limitations and future directions

There are several limitations to this study which could be addressed in further research. Firstly, the purposive sampling and method of recruitment used here precludes generalization, and means that the participants likely represent a group of young people that are highly engaged on issues of climate change and politics. Future studies could seek to broaden the participant pool to establish whether these findings are consistent, or differ, among different cohorts of young people. For example, there would be value in examining the emotional experiences of climate change among specific groups of young people - such as early school leavers, First Nations Australians, and those from culturally diverse backgrounds – as well as intersectional experiences. Secondly, the timing of the study close to the Federal election was intended to increase the salience of questions regarding government and politics. It is possible, however, that this timing may have also promoted more ‘cautiously hopeful’ responses than if the study were conducted at a different time, perhaps later in the new government’s tenure. Thirdly, conducting the interviews over Zoom caused occasional technological glitches that interrupted the flow of the conversation; further, talking online may cause discomfort for some, which may have caused participants to share less than they would have during an in-person dialogue. Fourthly, examining reflections about education several years after leaving school may provide a different perspective than examining the experiences of current students; there is therefore opportunity to investigate this with current school students to assess whether they also express similar sentiment.

Aside from addressing limitations, there are many benefits to further research in this space. This study has provided five key findings that were interconnected in the lives of these young people, any one of which offers opportunity for deeper interrogation. For example: how do different educational approaches influence emotional responses to climate change in students? Does young people’s sense of disillusionment with governments on climate change predispose them to distrust governments on other matters, outside of climate change? What are the longer-term implications of these affective states on young people’s life decisions, or for mental wellbeing? Further research might also explore the utility of the ‘greenhouse affect’ as an overarching concept to describe the tensions inherent to experiencing multiple, interrelated climate emotions.

6 Conclusion

In this study, I qualitatively explored young Australians’ emotional responses to climate change and the societal influences significant in these experiences. I found that there are multiple intersections between participants and the broader social-ecological system that present a series of dilemmas that they must negotiate in daily life, and in contemplating their future. The ensuing range of emotions includes, but is not limited to, experiences of anxiety, a predominant characterisation in current research. The ‘greenhouse affect’ provides an overarching encapsulation of the complex affective challenge of living in an era of climate-altered futures, and confronting the associated dilemmas present in the broader social-ecological system.

My findings contribute to and strengthen those from existing literature, highlighting links between how young people learn and feel about climate change, and how this informs their broader perspectives about climate agency and politics. In particular, this study underscores the need to overcome fragmented approaches to climate education in Australian schools by embedding it across year levels and subjects, to better prepare young people to face the future challenges of climate change. This endeavour should be strengthened by facilitating an environment in which teachers and students can work through the affective demands inherent to this learning process. The study is also significant in its timing, examining these issues immediately following a Federal election, and revealing participants’ cautious hope for meaningful policy change under the newly elected Australian government. Finally, this study highlights the opportunity to engage young people in a climate politics that recognises them not only as agents of social change, but critical actors in the transformative efforts demanded of us as a society.

Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due to ethical obligations to protect the anonymity of participants.

The federal election on 21 May 2022 saw the former opposition Australian Labor Party (centrist/centre-left) gain government from the incumbent Coalition (centre-right/right) of Liberal and National parties.

Initially I sought to recruit participants aged 18–20, so that they would be ‘first time voters’ in the 2022 federal election). Despite extensive recruitment efforts including delivering presentations at vocational colleges, and distributing recruitment leaflets with QR codes linking to study information, ultimately recruitment of this initially targeted sample was unsuccessful. This may have been due to the very small number of students present in person, given the shift to online learning prompted by COVID. This led to the expansion of the age range to 18–24, and the use of social media and snowballing for recruitment.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the research participants who shared their views and experiences so generously. I would also like to thank my supervisors for their support in conceptualising this research and for providing feedback on earlier drafts of this paper: A/Prof Rebecca Colvin (Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU), Dr Samantha Stanley (Institute for Climate Risk and Response, University of New South Wales) and A/Prof Keith Barney (Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU).

Open Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member Institutions. No external funding was received for conducting this study. The Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, provided a small amount of funding to cover participant incentives.

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Tanja Russell was the sole investigator and author of this research, conducted during her Master of Climate Change degree program. She was responsible for project administration, data collection and analysis, and writing the paper.

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Russell, T. A ‘greenhouse affect’? Exploring young Australians’ emotional responses to climate change. Climatic Change 177 , 75 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-024-03737-y

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