Mark Zuckerberg launched TheFacebook in February 2004 at Harvard University. A few days later, 650 students had created accounts. Currently, there are approximately 2 billion daily active users.
The rapid expansion of Facebook has coincided with growing concerns about the mental health of adolescents and young adults. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the suicide rate for people ages 10 to 24 remained stable from 2000 to 2007. It then increased by 57% between 2007 and 2017.
Given these parallel trends, it is important to understand the relationship between mental health and technology use, particularly how young people use social media. However, little research has been conducted on causal relationships.
“While there may be hundreds of papers showing the correlation between social media and happiness, many of which are excellent and informative, we still know little about how the effects ripple. No,” he said. Assistant Professor at MIT Sloan. People who use social media more may be more depressed, or conversely, people who are more depressed may use social media more actively. “Evidence of true causation is lacking.”
Macarine and his colleagues, Luca Braghieri of Bocconi University and Lowy Levy of Tel Aviv University, aim to fill this gap in their new paper. American Economic Review. Researchers combined the gradual rollout of Facebook at colleges and universities with 430,000 responses from the National College Health Assessment, a biannual survey of mental health and well-being on campuses across the country. Researchers (who have also investigated other aspects of student health) found a significant association between Facebook presence and poorer mental health among college students.
Facebook access linked to increased anxiety and depression
When Facebook started, access was limited to people with Harvard email addresses. Within a month, the website expanded to include Columbia University, Stanford University, and Yale University. This gradual opening continued until September 2006, when anyone over the age of 13 could create an account.
Researchers found that university-wide Facebook access led to a 7% increase in severe depression among students.
Macarine said: “We can use the fact that Facebook was rolled out at different universities at different times, and the fact that there is this large-scale study that has already been conducted at universities, to explore the causal effects of Facebook on student mental health.” I was able to understand that,” Macarine said.
Most broadly, the researchers found a significant increase in the number of students who reported psychological distress at some point in the previous year. As a result of his access to Facebook throughout college, severe depression increased by 7% and anxiety disorders increased by 20%. Beyond these results, a larger proportion of the most susceptible students treated their symptoms with psychotherapy or antidepressants. In total, Facebook’s negative impact on mental health appears to be around 20% of the impact experienced by people who have lost their jobs.
The researchers hypothesize that social comparisons with peers are behind these results, and that the effects appear to be stronger the longer people are exposed to Facebook. “The effects seem to be increasing over time,” Macarine said. “In late fall 2004, if Harvard University allowed freshmen to use Facebook for their first semester and sophomores for their second semester, the effect seemed to be stronger for sophomores who had more exposure. .”
Trying to resolve a “really bad” situation
Macarine and his coauthors face questions about the salience of these findings because they are investigating an early form of Facebook. “People are wondering how much this says about Facebook and Instagram at this point,” Macarine said. “That’s a valid criticism, but there are some things we can defend.”
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First, Macarine points out that there is reason to believe that the effects of social comparison have not diminished to the extent that they cause these outcomes. Seeing and interpreting other people’s curated posts remains a fundamental operating principle on Facebook and other similar forms of social media. (Macarine also believes that the proliferation of smartphones could further strengthen this channel of influence.)
Second, even if the research is about a specific time period, there is a lack of experimental data on how social media affects users, so any contribution needs to be considered valuable. there is. “Whatever evidence of causation we can provide is inherently useful,” he said.
Macarine and his co-authors are also careful to delimit the scope of their research. Facebook users’ mental health is just one aspect of his measuring the overall effectiveness of social media. People may receive total benefits that outweigh their costs, such as connections with old friends, like-minded groups, and product deals.
But even so, Macarine believes social media companies and policymakers should work to reduce the potential negative effects on mental health. As of 2021, 4.5 billion people, more than half of the world’s population, have social media accounts.
“When I took this job, I knew mental health was an important issue, but to be honest, I thought it was just another outcome to study in a social media challenge. ” he said. “But when I started really looking into the trend of poor mental health among young people, I started to realize how bad the situation was, and that stuck with me. The insights this and other papers can provide into what’s behind this will be of great value to society.”
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