Social media users number in the billions, and the most popular platforms include Facebook, X(Twitter), YouTube, WhatsApp, WeChat, and Instagram. Given the popularity of social media, numerous studies have attempted to document the effects of social media on users. As of January 2020, there were more than 110,000 publications with “social media” cited in the title.[1] Findings of these studies are controversial because they often present contradictory evidence.
Both positive and negative outcomes are attributed to social media use, including the ability to connect with friends and family separated by many miles. Conversely, extreme negative outcomes such as self-harm and suicide are also attributed to social media use.
Can we draw a causal link between social media use and negative outcomes? After reviewing the evidence, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina asserted: “from my reading of the scientific literature, I do not believe that the available evidence today supports the sweeping newspaper headlines.”
Confounding Correlations
As one type of evidence, Ortiz-Ospina presented a chart[2] documenting whether people are happy or unhappy with the amount of time they spend on social media:
The chart shows that the average amount of time people report being “happy with screen time” varies from 8 to 32 minutes, depending on platform. In contrast, the amount of time people report feeling “unhappy with screen time” varies from 9 minutes to over an hour. This measure, “happy with screen time,” seems relatively straightforward. But, if you make comparisons based on characteristics such as age, country, ethnicity, etc., you could get both positive and negative correlations with the “happiness” outcome.
And, this is the rub: researchers have at their disposal a variety of measures of possible outcome variables which they can analyze in very selective ways. “If you dig deeper, you find that comparisons across individuals with different levels of social media use can yield conflicting results – depending on how you slice the data you get a different perspective.”
Evidence from Longitudinal Studies
Ortiz-Ospina reviewed findings from several longitudinal studies. These studies can document changes over time in well-being indicators.
Shakya and Christakis (2017) tracked 5,208 Americans over a 2-year period. They found that, over time, increased Facebook use correlated with decreased mental health.
A larger study of 12,672 adolescents (Orben, Dienlin, & Przybylski, 2019) found a reciprocal relationship between social media use and life satisfaction. “When looking at the results from all their thousands of tests, they concluded that social media effects were nuanced, small at best and reciprocal over time.”
Another longitudinal study of young adults (Coyne, et al.) published in 2020 (read more about this study here: question #4) found that increasing social media use was not connected to decreasing mental health.
Small But Significant Effects
Quitting Facebook for a few weeks has been a ploy used by some researchers to determine if mental well-being improves as a result. Ortiz-Ospina shared the results of two such studies in which Facebook users were incentivized to quit Facebook, and their well-being was compared against a control group that continued using Facebook.
Although both studies found statistically significant results, the “effect sizes” were quite small. In one study, the increase in happiness scores was only .12 on a happiness scale of 1-7. “If they had used sample sizes similar to those from previous experiments in this field the effect sizes would not have been detected at all.”
Ortiz-Ospina added that feeling happier may not be a result of quitting Facebook at all: it could be the reduction in news exposure (two-thirds of users get their news from social media) that makes a difference!
Conclusion
Can we draw broad generalizations about the benefits and costs of social media generated from over 100,000 studies? Should restrictions be placed on adolescents’ use of social media given the number of conflicting findings and often small effect sizes? According to the author: “overall, the evidence does not support the sweeping newspaper headlines. There is much to be learned about how to make better use of these complex digital platforms, but for this we need more granular data to unpack the different effects that certain types of content have on specific population groups.”
Citation: Ortiz-Ospina, E. (2019). Are Facebook and other social media platforms bad for our well-being?. Our World In Data. Retrieved from: https://ourworldindata.org/social-media-wellbeing [Online Resource]
©Jennie Dilworth, Ph.D
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8064945/
[2] Note: charts are open source and used with permission of author. https://ourworldindata.org/social-media-wellbeing?ref=socialmediawatchblog.de#article-licence