Heterogeneity in Youth Social Media Engagement and Its Pathways to Mental Health and Wellbeing

Introduction Social media is a central part of young people's lives, yet research on its mental health effects remains mixed. We posit that these inconsistencies stem in part from treating youth as a homogeneous group, obscuring distinct behavioral patterns associated with divergent mental health and wellbeing trajectories. Objectives This study aimed to: (1) explore heterogeneity in social media engagement styles among U.S. youth aged 15-24; and (2) examine how these engagement styles are embedded within a broader system of mental health, wellbeing, emotional regulation, belonging, family and neighborhood context, and stress and adversity. Methods Data were drawn from a 2024 nationally representative cross-sectional survey of 2,563 U.S. youth, conducted as part of the Youth Mental Health Tracker initiative. We employed unsupervised clustering to identify five distinct social media engagement profiles. Subsequently, we used Bayesian network-based causal discovery to examine (a) upstream factors that emerge as drivers of engagement styles and (b) downstream outcomes influenced by profile membership in the learned system. Results Five profiles were identified: the Perpetually Plugged-In (31.3%), characterized by near-constant multifaceted social media use, for both positive and negative purposes across multiple domains of life; the Burned-Out Browsers (21.9%), with high exposure to negative and comparison-based content with frequent attempts to disengage; the Practical Navigators (20.7%) who engage in structured, goal-oriented use focused on learning, hobbies, and maintaining connections; the Positive Engagers (13.6%) with high social and identity-driven engagement; and the Light Touch Users (12.5%) who have low overall engagement and limited reliance on social media for connection, identity, or support. Causal analyses revealed that the Perpetually Plugged-In and Burned-Out Browsers had the worst mental health and wellbeing, with their engagement driven by different reasons. While both engagement profiles were influenced by similar psychosocial risk factors, they were distinguished by their dominant drivers: contemporaneous social stressors (bullying, discrimination, and emotional dysregulation) for Perpetually Plugged-In youth, versus adverse childhood experiences for Burned-Out Browsers. In contrast, Positive Engagers reported high social media engagement alongside the highest levels of social wellbeing, using social media for identity exploration and social support within a context of low cumulative stress and adversity. Conclusions Findings suggest that youth social media risk is not driven by intensity of use alone, but by the interaction between engagement style and offline emotional and social conditions. Policies focused solely on restricting access risk overlooking these differences and may inadvertently sever important sources of connection for many youth. Strategies should identify experiential risk signals while strengthening supportive contexts that enable healthier engagement. Overall, youth social media use is best understood as part of a broader psychosocial system, and recognizing this heterogeneity is essential for designing more targeted, equitable, and evidence-based interventions.