Media Release – June 24, 2024 – Guelph Police – Guelph Police Achi-News

You may have seen headlines linking social media to sadness and depression. Social media use goes up, happiness goes down. But recent studies suggest that those perceptions may not be so simple.

While it is true that people’s feelings of jealousy and depression are associated with high social media use, there is evidence to suggest that social media use may not cause that relationship. Instead, your mindset may be the biggest thing that affects how social media relates to your well-being.

People who feel they can use social media, rather than social media “using” them, tend to get more benefits from their online interactions.

Why do people use social media?

Social media encompasses a wide range of platforms: social networking, discussion forums, bookmarking and content sharing, news dissemination, media exchange such as photos and videos, and microblogging. These appeal to a wide range of users, from individuals of all ages to huge businesses.

For some, social media is a way to connect with people we might not see otherwise. In the US, 39% of people say they are friends with people they only interact with online.

For older people, this is particularly important for increasing feelings of connection and well-being. Interestingly however, for older people, social media contact with family does not increase happiness. Meanwhile, younger adults report increase happiness when they have more social media contact with family members.

Young people, in particular, find social media most useful for deepening connections and building their social networks.

With social media clearly playing such an important role in society, many researchers have tried to find out: does it make us happier or not?

Does social media make us happier?

Studies have taken a variety of methods, including asking people directly through surveys or looking at the content people post and seeing how positive or negative it is.

One survey study from 2023 showed that as individuals’ use of social media increased, life satisfaction and happiness decreased. Another found that less time on social media was associated with increased work satisfaction, work engagement and positive mental health – therefore better mental health and motivation at work.

Comparing yourself to others on social media is linked to feelings of jealousy and depression. However, there is evidence to suggest that depression is a predictor, rather than an outcome, of social comparison and envy.

All this shows the way you are feel about social media issues. People who see themselves as using social media rather than “being used” by it, tend to derive benefits from social media and not experience the harm.

Interviews with young people (aged 15-24) who use social media suggest that three characteristics have influenced positive mental health among that age group:

• connection with friends and their global community
• engage with social media content
• the value of social media as a means of expression.

There are also studies that look at the emotions expressed by social media users more often.

The so-called “happiness paradox” shows that most people think their friends on social media seem happier than themselves. This seems an impossibility that arises because of the mathematical properties of how friendship networks work on social media.

In one of our studies, Twitter content with recorded locations showed that residents of US cities who tweeted more tended to express less happiness.

On the other hand, in Instagram direct messages, happiness was found to be four times more common than sadness.

How does using the internet in general affect our wellbeing?

Some of the factors associated with poorer mental health are not just related to social media use.

One recent study shows that the path to reduced well-being is, at least in part, linked to general digital media use (rather than social media use specifically). This can be due to sleep disturbances, less face-to-face social interaction or physical activity, social comparison, and cyberbullying. None of these exist just for social media.

However, social media platforms are known to be driven by recommendation algorithms that could send us “rabbit holes” of the same type of (increasingly extreme) content. This can lead to a distorted view of the world and our place in it. The important point here is to maintain a varied and balanced information diet online.

Interestingly, interacting on social media is not the only thing that affects our state of mind. Rain influences the emotional content of the user’s social media posts experiencing rain, and parts of their extended network (even if they are not experiencing rain!).

This suggests that how we feel is influenced by the emotions in the posts we see. The good news is that happy posts are the most influential, with each happy post prompting close to two additional happy updates from a user’s friends.

The secret to online happiness may therefore not be to “delete your account” completely (which, as we have discovered, may not even be effective), but to be aware of what you are doing use online. And if you feel like social media is starting to use you up, maybe it’s time to change it up a bit.

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