Scrolling for Connection: Social Media, Loneliness, and the Long Shadow of Childhood

For much of the past two decades, social media has been framed as a technological answer to an old human problem: social connection. Platforms promised to compress distance, multiply relationships, and soften the isolation of modern life. For younger generations in particular, digital networks have become a default social infrastructure, woven into education, leisure, and identity formation. Yet alongside this expansion, a quieter and more troubling pattern has emerged. Loneliness has risen, emotional distress has intensified, and heavy social media use has increasingly appeared less like a cure than a coping mechanism.

Recent European evidence suggests that this tension cannot be understood by looking at screens alone. The effects of social media on well-being are deeply shaped by who is using it, how it is used, and, crucially, by experiences that long predate the first smartphone. Adverse conditions in childhood appear to leave durable imprints on how individuals engage with digital platforms later in life, particularly in ways that heighten loneliness rather than alleviate it.

When More Connection Feels Like Less

Across Europe, young people are among the most intensive users of social media, especially social networking sites.

Figure 1: Share of intensive users of social network sites and instant messaging tools in the EU, by age cohort.

Source: d’Hombres et al., 2024.

This pattern is clear. What is less obvious is that intensive use does not carry uniform consequences. Evidence from EU-wide data shows a consistent association between heavy engagement with social networking platforms and higher levels of loneliness and emotional distress among young people, while excessive use of instant messaging tools plays a far more limited role. The distinction matters. Messaging tools are primarily interactive: they involve direct exchanges, reciprocity, and conversational feedback. Social networking sites, by contrast, blend active participation with large amounts of passive consumption—scrolling through feeds, watching videos, and observing curated representations of others’ lives. It is this passive mode of engagement that appears most strongly linked to loneliness and emotional strain, particularly among younger cohorts. This pattern complicates simple narratives of “screen time.” The problem is not merely how long individuals are online, but how digital spaces are used and what psychological needs they are asked to satisfy.

Childhood Adversity and Digital Coping

To understand why some individuals are more vulnerable to harmful patterns of social media use, it is necessary to look beyond contemporary behavior and into earlier life experiences. New evidence from the EU Loneliness Survey shows that adverse childhood conditions, such as growing up with close relatives suffering from mental health problems or alcohol abuse, or experiencing weak emotional bonds with parents, are strongly associated with excessive and passive social media use in adulthood.

Individuals exposed to these adversities are significantly more likely to engage in social media in ways that interfere with daily functioning, including neglecting work or family responsibilities. The association is particularly pronounced for passive consumption of social networking sites, the very mode of use most closely linked to loneliness and poorer mental health outcomes.

This is not simply a story of habit formation or technological dependence. Adverse childhood environments can erode trust, weaken social confidence, and foster long-lasting feelings of insecurity. In this context, social media may serve as a low-cost, readily accessible coping strategy, offering distraction, emotional regulation, or a sense of presence without the risks of face-to-face vulnerability. Over time, however, this substitution can become self-reinforcing, deepening isolation rather than resolving it.

Loneliness plays a role in linking childhood adversity to problematic social media use. Evidence shows that a substantial share of the association between early-life trauma and excessive digital engagement is mediated by loneliness and social isolation in adulthood. Individuals who experienced mental illness or substance abuse in their household as children are more likely to feel lonely later in life, and that loneliness, in turn, increases the likelihood of passive and compulsive social media use.

Notably, younger individuals appear particularly vulnerable. The combination of formative exposure to digital platforms and unresolved emotional scars from childhood creates a fertile ground for maladaptive engagement. Rather than supplementing offline relationships, social media becomes a substitute for them, one that rarely delivers the depth of connection it implicitly promises.

Unequal Effects in a Digital World

The consequences of these dynamics are not evenly distributed. Gender, age, and geography matter. Evidence indicates that men, younger cohorts, and individuals living in Northern and Eastern European countries are more likely to exhibit strong links between childhood adversity and harmful patterns of social media use.  These differences suggest that cultural norms, labor market pressures, and social safety nets interact with personal histories to shape digital behavior.

What emerges is a form of digital inequality that mirrors older social divides. Those who enter adulthood with fewer emotional resources are more likely to rely on platforms that amplify comparison, passivity, and withdrawal. Over time, this may compound disadvantages in mental health, productivity, and social integration.

Much of the current policy debate focuses on regulating platforms, limiting access for minors, or restricting screen time. While such measures may address part of the problem, they risk overlooking its deeper roots. Harmful social media use does not arise in a vacuum; it is often layered on top of earlier vulnerabilities that technology did not create but can intensify. A narrow focus on digital behavior alone may therefore miss the broader public health challenge. Addressing excessive and maladaptive social media use among young people requires attention to childhood environments, emotional development, and the social conditions that foster loneliness long before the first account is created.

A Symptom, Not Just a Cause

Social media is often portrayed as a driver of loneliness. The evidence suggests a more complex reality. For many, especially those shaped by adverse childhood conditions, intensive and passive social media use is less a cause than a symptom - a modern response to older wounds. Platforms offer immediacy without intimacy, presence without reciprocity, and distraction without resolution.

If these patterns persist, digital environments may increasingly function as sites where earlier inequalities in emotional resources and social capital are reproduced rather than mitigated. This perspective implies that policy responses focused narrowly on platform regulation or usage intensity are unlikely to be sufficient on their own. Instead, the relationship between social media use and well-being should be situated within a broader life-course framework, in which contemporary digital behaviours reflect longer-term trajectories, shaped by childhood environments, loneliness, and social integration. From this viewpoint, concerns about social media and mental health cannot be disentangled from wider structural and developmental factors that precede and condition engagement with digital technologies.

References:

• d’Hombres, B., Kovacic, M., Schnepf, S. and Blaskó, Z. (2024). Loneliness and social media use in the European Union. Fairness policy brief 2/2024, European Commission – Joint Research Centre, JRC135806.

• Kovacic. M. and C.E.Orso, (2025). Wounds of the past, screens of the present: how childhood adversities shape adult social media behaviours? Review of Economics of the Household, doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-025-09796-z