Although
experts have debated the potential link between social media use and decreased
well-being for years, a new study adds more fuel to the fire.
According to the first author of the new study, which featured in the Journal of Social & Clinical Psychology, no scientific study has proven a causal connection between the
two until now.
University of Pennsylvania psychologist Melissa G. Hunt believes
that her team is responsible for the first experimental study of Facebook,
Snapchat, and Instagram use.
She argues that previous studies were either limited in scope or
used "unrealistic situations," such as monitoring participants for
only brief periods in laboratory settings.
"We set out to do a much more comprehensive, rigorous study
that was also more ecologically valid," says Hunt.
Why Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram?
Hunt's team focused on Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram because
they are the social media platforms that are most popular with undergraduates.
The study included 143 undergraduates at the University of
Pennsylvania who each completed a survey to determine their baseline mood and
well-being at the start of the study. They also all supplied a week's worth of
data from their smartphones to demonstrate their current social media habits.
Hunt's team randomly assigned each participant into one of two
groups. They instructed the undergraduates in the first group to continue using
social media as usual and asked those in the second group to limit their use of
Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram to just 10 minutes a day for each platform.
Over 3 weeks, the participants made their smartphone data
available to the researchers and completed surveys that examined a range of
factors, including the participants' anxiety, depression, loneliness, and
fear of missing out.
The results showed that the group who reduced their social media
use experienced significant decreases in depression and loneliness. These
effects were "particularly pronounced for folks who were more depressed
when they came into the study."
The study only investigated three social media platforms, so it
is not yet possible to determine whether the findings might also apply to other
social media platforms. However, Hunt intends to investigate this in future
studies, one of which will focus on college students' use of dating apps.
Should you quit social media?
Based on these findings, Hunt offers some advice for social
media users who may be worried about the effect that these platforms could have
on their well-being:
"When you're not busy getting sucked
into clickbait social media, you're actually spending more time on things that
are more likely to make you feel better about your life. In general, I would
say, put your phone down and be with the people in your life."
"It is a little ironic that reducing your use of social
media actually makes you feel less lonely," she says. "[...] When you
look at other people's lives, particularly on Instagram, it's easy to conclude
that everyone else's life is cooler or better than yours."
However, although Hunt believes that there is a strong case for
limiting screen time on these apps, she emphasizes that her team's study does
not conclude that young people should give up social media entirely.
In February of this year, Jeffrey Hall, an associate professor
of communication studies at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, claimed that
two of his studies had
debunked the "social displacement" theory that the more time people
spend on social media, the less likely they are to devote time to socializing
with people in "the real world."
"I'm trying to push back on the popular conception of how
this works," Medical
News Today quoted Hall as saying. "That's
not to say overuse of social media is good, but it's not bad in the way people
think it is."
Source: Medical News Today
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