The report also found a U-shaped, curvilinear relationship between the amount of time spent on digital media and with risk of depression developing, at both the low and high ends of Internet use.
[23] Instagram users who partake in looking for social media status and compare themselves to others tend to have an increase in negative various psychological effects including body image issues and eating disorders.
[28] Addictive social media use will look much like that of any other substance use disorder, including mood modification, salience, tolerance, withdrawal symptoms, conflict, and relapse.
They are at a disadvantage to almost need social media as a currency to fit in at school and make their life presentable enough to be assumed as attractive, interesting, or likable just off their feed.
[35] It is important to consider that disapproval of using social media for too long could also be related to capitalism, reduction in productivity of employees when people constantly scroll, and difficulty governing populations because of the content they consume.
This lowered self-esteem is due to a variety of factors including but not limited to objectification, body image stereotypes, and more that has been projected from current culture into social media.
[48] Furthermore, Pezzi and colleagues pointed out that beyond loneliness (which has been summatively considered by the literature to date), no other solitary experience has been investigated in relation to problematic social media use in young adults.
A 2017 review article noted the "cultural norm" among adolescents of being always on or connected to social media, remarking that this reflects young people's "need to belong" and stay up-to-date and that this perpetuates a "fear of missing out".
[50] Mark D. Griffiths, a chartered psychologist focusing on the field of behavioural addictions, also postulated in 2014 that social networking online may fulfill basic evolutionary drives in the wake of mass urbanization worldwide.
[52] A secondary analysis of a large English cross-sectional survey of 12,866 13 to 16-year-olds published in Lancet found that mental health outcomes problematic use of social media platforms may be in part due to exposure to cyberbullying, as well as displacement in sleep architecture and physical exercise, especially in girls.
[57] The “Evolutionary Mismatch” hypothesis holds that modern digital platforms amplify social competition and comparison in ways our ancestors never faced, possibly triggering maladaptive patterns such as anxiety, depression, or compulsive use.
Similarly, some scholars compare social media to “junk food”:[58] it over-stimulates primal urges (for connection, reputation, mate selection, and so on) but can yield negative consequences in the contemporary environment.
[83][84] In the United Kingdom, a study of 1,479 people between 14 and 24 years old compared the psychological benefits and deficits of the five largest social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and YouTube.
The study concluded that YouTube was the only platform with a net positive rating based on 14 questions related to health and well-being, followed by Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and finally Instagram.
The conclusion of the study revealed that limiting social media usage on a mobile phone to 10 minutes per platform per day had a significant impact on well-being.
Studies have suggested that many individuals feel that smartphones are vital for their career planning and success, but a pressure to connect with family and friends via social media becomes an issue.
[87] This is reinforced by further studies suggesting that middle aged people feel more isolated and lonely due to the use of social media, to the extent of diagnosis of anxiety and depression with excessive use.
Surveys suggest that a pressure to perform and feelings of inferiority due to observing others lives through social media has caused depression and anxiety amongst middle class individuals specifically.
They are being exposed to addictive stimuli which allows the brain to be better at skimming through information rather than understanding it[92] In another study, the results showed that social media effects academic performance negatively.
[51] While the extent of social media use and addiction are positively correlated, it is erroneous to employ use (the degree to which one makes use of the site’s features, the effort exerted during use sessions, access frequency, etc.)
These findings suggest that interventions aimed at modifying the web browsing environments may be effective in reducing excessive time spent on social media and other leisure-oriented websites.
Senator Josh Hawley introduced the Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology (SMART) Act which is intended to crack down on "practices that exploit human psychology or brain physiology to substantially impede freedom of choice".
Active mediation involves direct parent-child conversations that are intended to educate children on social media norms and safety, as well as the variety and purposes of online content.
[113][114] When parents openly express that they are supportive of their child's autonomy and provide clear, consistent rules for media use, problematic usage and aggression decreases.
The Social Networking Activity Intensity Scale (SNAIS) was created to look at the frequency of use of several platforms and investigated three facets of engagement with a 14-item survey.
[129] In November 2017, a fourteen-year-old British girl from Harrow, London, named Molly Russell, took her own life after viewing negative, graphic, and descriptive content primarily on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
[130] It was revealed in the court that six months prior to Molly's death, she had accumulated a total of 16,300 pieces of negative content on Instagram such as topics of self-harm, depression, and suicide.
Technology companies such as Pinterest and Meta (which owns Instagram) were considered to be at fault for the lack of policies and regulations that were not already set into place prior to Molly's death.
[137] The overall hope and goal of these new laws, policies, and regulations set into place is to 1) ensure that a case such as Molly's never happens again and 2) protects individuals from harmful online content that can lead to mental health problems such as suicide, depression, and self-harm.
In 2022, a case was successfully litigated that implicated a social media platform in the suicide of a Canadian teenage girl named Amanda Todd who died by hanging.