• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, August 10, 2015

At least, that’s how they feel about themselves, according to two new surveys from Canada and the UK. The findings add to the growing body of evidence linking social media to mental health issues .

While I very much doubt that anyone is going to stop using social media as a result, perhaps people will start to think about moderating their usage — and parents about imposing limits for their children.

The first study, published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, surveyed 753 high school students in Ontario and found that intensive social media use is correlated with teen depression. Specifically, teens who spend more than two hours per day on social media -- a quarter of the total survey group -- were significantly more likely to report poor mental health and psychological distress, including suicidal thoughts.

As always, it’s worth noting that simple correlation does not equal causation.

For example, it’s all too easy to imagine teens who are already depressed gravitating to social media for any number of reasons. However, the results of the second study suggest that exposure to social media can indeed contribute to depression.

The second study, by the Future Foundation, found that 56% of regular social media users feel they are not reaching their full potential, compared to 39% of people who don’t use social media. Their main self-perceived shortcomings fell in the areas of body image, career, energy levels, and mood (yes, apparently people are embarrassed because they don’t stroll around like Snow White, singing with little birds all day).

Young people were more likely to report feeling like failures, with 63% of British millennials saying they weren’t living up to their potential, compared to 57% of Generation X, 37% of Baby Boomers, and 26% of Brits ages 65 and up.

The study’s authors suggested that social-media users were more likely to doubt themselves because of their constant exposure to the idealized, carefully controlled images crafted by other social-media users, resulting in unrealistic expectations for their own lives.

Interestingly, there was also some acknowledgment that the images presented on social media do not, in fact, reflect reality: one-third of British men ages 25-34 said they wished they could be more like the image they present on social media.