Christian Pieter Hoffmann

bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com British Journal of Clinical Psychology | Wiley Online Library Objectives The aim of the current review was to comprehensively synthesize the evidence for the relationship between social media use and anxiety and depression symptoms in young people using data...

Rolf Degen Verified account @DegenRolf · Oct 9

First meta-analysis of the most authoritative studies: Adolescents' use of social media accounts for less than 1% of their subsequent symptoms of depression and anxiety.
Most of the empirical investigations into social media use and mental health symptoms have utilized cross-sectional designs or have shown small effects, leading to scepticism in the field. More conclusive evidence could be synthesized from the full range of more robust longitudinal and experimental designs. Experimental designs are required to draw conclusions regarding causal relationships. Longitudinal designs afford conclusions regarding the direction of effects over time.
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first review [and meta-analysis] to comprehensively synthesize longitudinal and experimental evidence on the association between time and frequency of social media use and mental health symptoms. We identified a considerably higher number of longitudinal papers than in a previous review.
The key findings of this review and meta-analyses were that the relationships effects between time and frequency of social media use and depression and anxiety symptoms were statistically significant but relatively weak The time spent by young people using social media accounts for less than 1% of their subsequent symptoms of depression and anxiety. There is no evidence that this effect increases as age decreases. Reducing time spent on social media by young people is unlikely to be effective in preventing the worsening of their symptoms of depression and anxiety.
Given the very weak relationships between social media use and the severity of anxiety and depression symptoms, social media use is unlikely to account for the contemporary youth mental health crisis. In relation to policy implications, a relationship between duration and frequency of social media use on subsequent anxiety and depression is not a solid basis for the rationale for age-related legal restrictions on social media.

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD Verified account @jayvanbavel · Aug 12

I was just asked by a media outlet about this paper. Here are my answers:

1) I was not surprised by these results. There is considerably more empirical evidence that peers and the general college social environment shape undergraduate political and social ideology than there is showing direct ideological persuasion or indoctrination by their professors. You can do a google search for the research on this yourself if you wish and it will turn up papers like this other one: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC78…
2) Recent large-scale empirical studies find no causal link between faculty political leanings and changes in student partisanship. Research comparing student political attitudes before and after semesters finds that faculty political orientation does not shift student party identification or ideology. Instead, studies utilizing randomized roommate assignments demonstrate clear, measurable peer effects on undergraduate political orientation (frontiersin.org/journals/educa…). This means that ideology can and does change during college, but it's usually due to peer-to-peer influence. This is quite obvious once you think about it--are teenagers more likely to adopt the beliefs of their roommates and friends or their much older professors? You see the same thing with teenagers in high school adopting the beliefs and practices of their peers.  This social contagion effect is often robust because college typically involves intense immersion in peer networks, group living, and extracurricular socialization rather than formal classroom lectures.
3) When students take classes with left- or right-leaning professors, it is usually because students actively choose majors and courses that already align with their pre-existing worldviews. People underestime the impact of these selection processes, but there tend to be the strongest factor in this area.
This doesn't mean that faculty aren't ideological or (on average) left-leaning, it's just that they aren't that influential in changing the ideology of their undergrads.

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