Study Shows Excessive Social Media Use Harms Mental Health

A global team led by the University of Oxford, writing in the World Happiness Report released on Thursday (March 19), analyzed data from the American polling firm Gallup and other sources and found that excessive social media use may reduce well-being.

Professor Nuff, an Oxford economist who contributed to the report, told reporters that although the relationship between social media and well-being is complex, the combined data show that 15-year-old girls who spend more than five hours a day on social media have lower life satisfaction than peers who spend less time online.

Excessive social media use markedly reduces real-world social support, itself one of the strongest predictors of well-being. In the age of big data, the "information cocoon" created by algorithmic feeds also affects mental health; much of what people get from social media is one-sided or extreme to varying degrees, which distorts users' cognition.

In our time it is unrealistic to cut oneself off from social media entirely, but being addicted to it means being surrounded by a stream of filtered information that inevitably affects our real-world social life. Much of the content on social media is inflammatory and tends to provoke anxiety and depression in its audience.