You’re probably not worried about the role that Strava is playing in the teen mental health crisis. But you should be.
Strava seems extremely benign — especially compared to an app like Instagram or TikTok. It simply “lets you track your running and riding with GPS, join Challenges, share photos from your activities, and follow friends,” in the company’s own words. Yet we recently heard a high school track coach point to Strava as an example of how tech can contribute to the pressure teens face. Even during the off-season, teens see how their runs compare with those of their peers three towns over or three states away. Competition isn’t confined to competitions; it’s accessible and quantifiable all year long.
Here’s why it matters: our new data found that more than 1 in 4 teens are struggling with burnout. Burnout is typically associated with adults in high pressure workplaces, but it’s plaguing our youth as well. One 10th grader recalled his older brother’s description of burnout: “I feel like a train who’s burnt off every ounce of fuel that’s left, but still hasn’t reached the station.” Concerned adults should be asking ourselves, “Why are our teens running out fuel? And what is this ‘station’ they’re exhausting themselves to reach?”
One thing is clear: We can’t pin all the blame for teen mental health on social media, and school phone bans can’t fix it.
In our nationally representative survey of over 1,500 teens, more than half of American teens reported negative pressure to have a clear game plan, or future path for their life. This experience went hand-in-hand with achievement pressure — to excel in current pursuits or be the most impressive. Grind culture also came through in negative pressures felt by teens related to their appearance, their activism, even their social lives and friendship.
The answer is not to simply get teens off of Strava. Unless we’re content to play an endless game of whack-a-mole with new technologies, we need to look deeper. These pressures stem from a number of sources. For example, teens most often said that their game plan pressure came from teachers, guidance counselors, coaches, and other school adults (47%), from themselves (44%), and from their parents and family members (39%). These were the top three sources reported by those feeling achievement pressure, too (38%, 48%, and 34%, respectively).
Social media was fourth on the list of sources of both game plan and achievement-related pressures. It clearly amplifies pressures in real ways for meaningful proportions of teens. As one 10th grade girl said, “Social media — based off my feed — who I’m seeing is all of these really successful people … like people my age and all of their achievements. So then I just feel like I end up comparing myself even more and with personal friends or classmates.”
But when it comes to tech’s influence, there is no simple headline. The complex reality is this: Some teens said social media only makes things worse, some said it only helps, some said it does both, and still others said it does neither. They more often pointed to social media as worsening rather than helping. Social gaming was different, acting as a kind of pressure release valve or at least a temporary distraction. The negative influence of social media was most pronounced for appearance pressure, which is not surprising since many apps foreground visual content and ready-made filters. There are other kinds of downstream issues too, given the landscape of mis- and disinformation online. We’re at historical lows when it comes to people’s faith in U.S. institutions. It’s worth noting that cynicism is a hallmark symptom of burnout.
When they aren’t crowded out, healthy habits seem to offer the protective buffer one would hope. We also asked about self-care practices, like how often in the past week they had at least seven hours of sleep, gotten an hour of physical exercise, spent time outside, had meaningful conversations with friends, engaged in creative activities, helped others, or done something “just for fun” or relaxation. Most teens had done each of these things at some point over the course of the prior week, but they were not something they reported to have done “most days.” One in seven did not engage in any self-care practice on most days. Teens with low self-care were 5.6 times more likely to say they’re experiencing burnout (34%) compared with those with high self-care (6%).
In focus groups, teens described barriers to self-care, including putting away tech, but also — notably — constraints on their time, and beliefs that self-care isn’t “productive.” One teen reflected about feeling guilty when she reads a book for pleasure; another explained that spending time in nature has “no visible product.” Getting teens off their devices won’t be a cure-all for teens who told us plainly, “if you’re not constantly performing at an amazing rate, you’re not doing enough. You’re not enough.”
Social media can be like gasoline on the fires that are burning some teens out. Big tech may deserve the attention it’s getting, particularly as some companies resist changes that would benefit teen well-being at the expense of “time spent” on apps.
But to fix mental health trends, we also need to widen our lens beyond Instagram and TikTok: to other technologies, and even to the Strava-fication of school in the form of educational technology platforms that continually pressure students and parents with endless performance updates. We need to contend with the pressures outside of social media, too. LGBTQ+ teens are struggling with more negative pressure in every area we studied, and with more burnout as well.
We also need to deepen our focus: to get at the roots of young people’s different worries and concerns. Game plan and achievement pressures may be driven in part by families’ concerns about ensuring their children have stable, secure economic lives, especially in light of dramatically increasing costs of housing and tuition across generations. Some teens are over-scheduled; some are juggling high school alongside schedules packed not with activities, but by long work hours and intense adult responsibilities.
The best way to tackle the current crisis is to make sure debates over social media’s mental health impacts don’t distract us from clear thinking and good problem-solving. Teens have insights that can light the path forward, but only if we’re willing to listen.
Emily Weinstein is a social scientist and researcher at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she co-founded the Center for Digital Thriving. With Carrie James, she wrote the book “Behind Their Screens: What Teens Are Facing (And Adults Are Missing).” Sara Konrath is a social psychologist at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, where she directs the Interdisciplinary Program for Empathy and Altruism Research.