Doomscrolling Through Social Media Feed Could Be A Cause For Depression

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Doomscrolling Through Social Media Feed Could Be Cause For Depression

Social media addiction is often associated with several issues, including mental health problems. Well, compelling new evidence hints that using social media could be a reason behind depression. A new public policy study suggests young adults who use social media for five hours or more everyday are likely to develop depression within six months.

 

The study by researchers at the University of Arkansas, the University of Alabama, and Oregon State University details “problematic social comparison,” a bad feeling people get when their life isn’t quite matching other people’s glamorous lives on social media. The study is published in the Journal of Affective Disorders Reports.

 

Is Social Media Isolating People?

A press release from the University of Arkansas reads this phenomenon "can enhance negative feelings of oneself and others, which could explain how the risk of depression increases with increased social media use."

Moreover, the study suggests that overuse of social media tends to isolate people. This is because scrolling through social media "reduces opportunities for in-person interactions and activities outside of the home."

The researchers used a sample of 1,000 American adults aged between 18 and 30 obtained from a survey conducted in 2018 by one of the paper’s authors, Brian Primack. The survey’s personality portion was measured using the Big Five Personality inventory. It measured how open participants were towards others, their extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

As per the analysis by Primack and his team, respondents who use social media heavily and have high neuroticism are twice as likely to develop depression. However, people exhibiting low levels of neuroticism seemed to have experienced elevated depression when using social media for five hours or more each day.

Striking The Right Balance Should Be Paramount

"Connecting to people virtually may increase the risk of miscommunication or misperception that leads to relationship difficulties and potential risk for developing mental health problems," said Renae Merrill of the University of Arkansas.

To curb these grave consequences of using social media, Merrill and her fellow researchers suggest developing a great awareness of its ill effects on people’s relationships and emotions.

While the study was conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic crippled the world, its analysis shows the mental health issues linked to the overuse of social media in the past three years, especially during lockdowns. Although social media will continue to be a great tool to connect to the outside world, as studies like this one suggest, we need to strike the right balance between the online and offline worlds.

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