Research from University of Galway suggests that the impact of social media on the health and well-being of teenagers is less than is often feared.  While the study recognises that time spent on social media is linked to a range of health outcomes, the analysis reveals that its influence is relatively modest and smaller than what we assume. The analysis of surveys of teenagers also showed that the impact of social media was relatively small when compared to other social and environmental factors in young people’s lives. Professor Eoin Whelan, who led the research at University of Galway’s J.E. Cairnes School of Business and Economics, said the study highlights the limitations of attributing teenage mental health and well-being primarily to social media use. Professor Whelan said: “The findings of this study are consistent with other prior studies which report that overall, the harmful effects of social media use on adolescent well-being may be smaller than often assumed.” The research, published in Acta Psychologica, shows that factors such as feeling safe in school, supportive relationships with parents and caregivers and financial ability to participate in activities are more important predictors of adolescent health outcomes. The study used data from almost 3,000 teenagers aged 15-16 who were living in the West of Ireland and who completed the Planet Youth survey. The analysis involved an advanced method known as specification curve analysis to examine more than 50,000 possible links between social media use and health outcomes. The study found that: Social media use is associated with small differences in adolescent health outcomes. Associations between social media use and mental health outcomes tended to be higher for girls, though the overall effect remained small. Spending more time on social media was most strongly linked to higher levels of anger difficulties in boys, and to alcohol use and vaping in both boys and girls, though these links were still relatively modest. Overall, social media use was not among the strongest predictors of adolescent health outcomes. Unlike much previous research, the study directly compares social media use with other known influences on adolescent health, such as school safety and parental support, allowing the relative importance of these factors to be assessed more clearly. The findings suggest that policymakers and caregivers may benefit from focusing on a broader range of factors affecting young people’s health, rather than treating social media as a primary cause of harm. The study also aligns with a recent consensus report from the American National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, which found insufficient evidence to conclude that social media causes changes in adolescent health across the wider teenage population. Professor Whelan continued: “While analysis of information reported by teenagers shows that the negative impact of social media may be overstated, this does not mean that social media is harmless or without risk. Social media can present risks for young people, and those do deserve attention.             “Although there have been thousands of studies investigating the impacts of social media on the lives of young people, we do not have a complete picture. Most research, like my own, has to rely on self-reported data, which has limitations. “To really find out how social media is impacting young people, researchers need access to data on how teenagers are actually using social media. The EU Digital Services Act requires online platforms to make this data available to vetted researchers.  However, the data held by social media companies is difficult to obtain, and when provided, is often incomplete. This hampers the independent scrutiny of the impact of social media platforms - one of the central goals of the Digital Services Act.” The full study, published in Acta Psychologica, is available to read here Ends

Researchers have solved a long-standing mystery about why physical forces slow cancer growth – and the answer could reshape how the disease is treated.  A multidisciplinary team from University of Galway, CÚRAM, the Taighde Éireann-Research Ireland Centre for Medical Devices, and KU Leuven in Belgium built an innovative AI accelerated computational model to test the theory.  The research findings suggest that learning to harness the pressure of physical force on a tumour could open an entirely new role for treatments known as mechanotherapies in the fight against cancer.  The study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences at https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2523159123  Dr Irish Senthilkumar, postdoctoral researcher and a lead on the study, said: "Cancer cells are known to bypass many of the body's normal growth controls, but tumours still respond to mechanical pressure. Until now we haven't understood why this happens, so our aim was to investigate the underlying mechanics at a cellular level."  Dr Eóin McEvoy, senior researcher with CÚRAM and Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at University of Galway, said: "As we understand more about how cell compression and compaction affect things like drug penetration and efficacy, the work has important implications for improving drug responses and designing new mechanotherapy treatment regimens.”  The research highlighted how, for decades, scientists have noticed that tumour cells seem to respond to one thing that chemicals cannot easily override, physical pressure - put enough physical pressure on a tumour, and its growth slows down. But the reason was not fully understood.  The key lies in how cells grow in the first place. Before a cell can divide, it has to get bigger. It does this by manufacturing complex biological molecules (proteins, lipids, and other building blocks) which draws water into the cell through osmosis, inflating it like a tiny balloon. Once the cell reaches a critical size, it can split in two. Under normal circumstances, this swelling process works smoothly. But when a tumour becomes physically confined by the surrounding tissue pressing in on it, something disrupts that process. The external mechanical load creates high hydrostatic pressure, that fights against the osmotic swelling from the inside. The result? Cells can no longer reach the size needed to trigger division. Growth stalls. In other words, the physical architecture of a tumour is not just a passive backdrop, it's an active participant in the disease.  Dr McEvoy added: “The implications stretch well beyond explaining an interesting biological process. Many cancer drugs work by targeting cell division. If a tumour's mechanical environment is already suppressing growth, understanding that interaction could reveal why some drugs work better in certain tumour types or locations, and why others fail.”  The AI accelerated computational model developed by the research team runs complex calculations, simulating how thousands of individual cells collectively grow and reorganise under mechanical stress or the pressure of having no room to grow bigger. Without the AI model, simulations would be impossibly slow.  The researchers validated the model’s predictions against real laboratory experiments using breast cancer spheroids - small, ball-shaped clusters of cancer cells grown in 3D cultures that closely mimic how tumours behave inside the body.  The results showed that the predictions matched the experimental results, giving the scientists confidence that they had identified the genuine mechanism underlying how pressure slows cancer growth.  Ends

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