A brand new Curtin College examine has challenged the notion heavy social media use has a big influence on psychological well being, discovering little to no relationship between the 2.
The truth is, not solely does the analysis point out the period of time spent on social media has a negligible impact on psychological well being indicators equivalent to melancholy, nervousness and stress — the consequence is not all the time damaging, both.
Research lead and PhD candidate Chloe Jones stated it was vital to emphasize the findings do not counsel social media use is innocent or has no influence on psychological well being, nonetheless the connection between the 2 seemingly has many complicated layers.
“For instance, a connection to a supportive on-line group may very well be a lifeline for folks residing in isolation, however hours of scrolling Instagram influencers may very well be actually unhelpful you probably have physique picture issues,” Ms Jones stated.
Whereas most earlier research on social media use have relied on self-reported estimates from contributors, researchers from the Curtin College of Inhabitants Well being collected cell phone knowledge from greater than 400 folks starting from 17-53 years previous, to precisely measure how a lot time they spent on social media prior to now week.
The workforce then in contrast the utilization knowledge in opposition to the contributors’ ranges of melancholy, nervousness, stress and attentional management.
They discovered social media use was very weakly related to nervousness and never related to melancholy or stress.
It was additionally discovered to have a weak constructive affiliation with attentional management, suggesting elevated social media use is linked with barely higher efficiency in sustaining consideration.
“If we’re going to make well-informed selections on this area, it must be based mostly on high quality knowledge and our analysis demonstrates whenever you objectively measure time spent on social media, the consequences are tiny or non-existent,” Ms Jones stated.
Supervising creator Affiliate Professor Patrick Clarke stated the examine may very well be the place to begin for future analysis investigating how customers work together with social media and what private traits might affect the consequences of social media use on psychological well being, for higher and for worse.
“For instance, whereas the entire associations have been weak at greatest, the examine discovered totally different platforms recorded totally different results: TikTok utilization noticed a small constructive affiliation with attentional management, whereas Fb utilization noticed a small affiliation with misery amongst customers,” Affiliate Professor Clarke stated.
“We did think about the age of customers — we thought possibly TikTok customers are simply youthful and that is why they’ve higher attentional management — however even when permitting for age that affiliation was nonetheless there.
“This examine solely thought of the period of time contributors spent on social media, so what this analysis may very well be flagging is how lengthy we spend on social media may matter much less for psychological well being, versus how we’re utilizing it and interesting with it.”
“Investigating the hyperlinks between goal social media use, attentional management, and psychological misery” was printed in Social Science & Medication.
