Commentary

Facebook Really Does Make Us Depressed

Whenever the subject turns to social media and mental health, the same caveats often apply: sure, research may link increased social media usage to negative mental health impacts, but generally these studies don’t address the issue of correlation versus causation.

In short, the question remains, does using social media actually make users depressed, or are people with depression simply more likely to use social media?

However a small but growing body of research is establishing causation, suggesting that social media really does contribute to negative mental health impacts in users.

One of the most stringent studies so far, titled “Association of Facebook Use With Compromised Well-Being: A Longitudinal Study” and published in the January issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology, examined three waves of data from 5,208 subjects in Gallup’s Social Network panel to determine that yes, Facebook can make you depressed.

The researchers analyzed the relationships between Facebook activity over time and other self-reported measures including physical health, mental health, and overall life satisfaction, as well as objective measures like body mass index.

The study found that respondents who increased their activity on Facebook were also more likely to report negative impacts on their well-being.

For example, users who clicked “like” more often, followed more links on Facebook, or updated their status more often (all within one standard deviation) showed an average decrease of 5%-8% of a standard deviation in their emotional wellbeing.

The authors note that the results were predictive, meaning that increased Facebook usage, measured in one wave, was followed by a decrease emotional and physical wellbeing in a subsequent wave with a high degree of reliability.

The relationship also applied when differing levels of initial Facebook activity and baseline wellbeing were taken into account, meaning people who went from light to moderate Facebook usage were prone to suffer negative mental health impacts similar to people who went from moderate to heavy usage.

Although the study seems to indicate that social media use may indeed contribute to negative mental health impacts, the researchers point out that it does not investigate specific mechanisms.

However there are a number of hypotheses, including (but not limited to) the possibility that social media usage comes at the expense of “real world,” face-to-face interactions.

It may also undermine self-esteem by encouraging users to compare their own lives with the carefully constructed images presented by their social media contacts.

The authors further note that negative impacts may simply result from increased screen time, leading to a sedentary lifestyle and decreased physical activity, with associated impacts on mental health.

1 comment about "Facebook Really Does Make Us Depressed".
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  1. Douglas Ferguson from College of Charleston, April 11, 2017 at 1:09 p.m.

    It's possible, but a single study proves nothing (even a well-done study). Someone has to replicate it with another longitudinal study before we have enough confidence. The field of psychology, for example, is undergoing a lot of churn in the last decade, with about half of their major findings incapable of being replicated. So much depends on how the questions were asked and how random the sample. Was it a panel study or a cohort study? We social scientists would like to settle these issues but it's trickier than journalists can imagine.

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