Social Media and Mental Health Concerns

In 2008, the average time spent on social media for people over the age of 18 was less than three hours. Fast forward ten years to 2018, and the average time spent a day on social media has more than doubled to over six hours a day. This number is still increasing today. In 2005, 5% of adults in the US used social media. In 2019, that would increase to 80%. Today, around 90% of adults in the US use social media in some way. The average American will check their phone around 159 times per day. Social media is one of the fastest-growing social changes that the US has seen to date. In 2024, it is estimated that all Americans combined will spend about four trillion hours on social media.

The chronic use of social media and social media addiction can have negative effects on an individual's mental health. Large amounts of social media use have been linked to anxiety, depression, poor sleep quality, self-harm, higher stress levels, low self-esteem, and other mental health issues. Recent scientific studies have shown that it is possible that 10% of Americans could be considered clinically addicted to social media. The prevalence of mental health issues has also increased significantly alongside the growth of social media in the last decade. 

Depression is one of the most common mental health concerns regarding the overuse of social media. This happens primarily because users are not satisfied with the amount of followers they have or the responses they are receiving. This can lead to overall lower self-esteem. People get caught up in a cycle of feeling like they are not good enough. Another factor is that the more one uses social media, the fewer face-to-face interactions that one participates in. When a person does not have a lot of face-to-face interactions, feelings of loneliness can set in and lead to depression. Social media can also noticeably worsen already present depressive symptoms for these same reasons. The risk of cyberbullying is also increased when someone puts themselves out on social media. Social media does not directly cause depression, but it can increase one's risk of developing it when used in excessive amounts. 

Social media is also a contributor to the rising number of people with anxiety. A notable example of this is a fairly new medical term called phantom vibration syndrome, or PVS. The more one uses and becomes involved with social media, the more likely one is to experience PVS to some extent. PVS begins with symptoms like thinking one's phone vibrates when it actually did not, but it can progress into more severe symptoms like obsessive and/or compulsive behaviors. If severe enough, PVS can also lead to generalized anxiety. The fear of missing out, or FOMO, also plays a role in anxiety. People tend to want to try to "one up" one another in the way that they live and the activities that they show themselves doing on social media. Anxiety comes into play because individuals become so caught up in making sure that what they post is only the latest and greatest of what they have to show, which becomes taxing on the mind. Misinformation that is put out on social media could also play a factor. Social media does not directly cause anxiety but can worsen already present symptoms or increase the risk of the development of it. 

These issues are preventable as long as individuals are cognisant of their time spent on social media. There is also so much productivity and time lost to social media, especially in the US. Studies show that Americans on average have about an hour of wasted productivity a day due to social media. That’s one hour (or likely much more) every single day that could've been used to be productive, wasted. This happens because it takes an average of 23 minutes to refocus on the tasks at hand after one stops scrolling or participating in other social media actions. 

Staying under 30 minutes a day yields the most benefits. This is the happy medium according to researchers. For the majority of people, this is enough time to fulfill their wants, but not such an excessive amount that mental health starts to be put at risk. 

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Author links open overlay panelCarol F. Scott a, a, b, AbstractStudies of youth social media use (SMU) often focus on its frequency, Best, P., Borsari, B., Davis, K., Kaplan, A. M., Khang, H., Malik, A., Marshall, S. J., Moreno, M. A., Nadkarni, A., Pempek, T. A., Pittman, M., Steinfield, C., Subrahmanyam, K., Tosun, L. P., Wang, Z., … Ellison, N. B. (2017, May 18). Time spent online: Latent profile analyses of emerging adults’ social media use. Computers in Human Behavior. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563217303382

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