Long-term research has demonstrated that social media use is detrimental to children’s developing brains.
However, a recent study shows that heavy-users are’substantially” more likely to become depressed than middle-aged individuals.
Harvard University research found that older adults felt sadder when they used platforms such as Snapchat or TikTok. This is because it made them feel old.
They surveyed 5,400 American adults with an average age of 56 on two occasions, once in May 2020, and then again a year later.
Participants had to fill out a questionnaire about mental health, and they were also asked which social media sites they used.
Professor Roy Perlis was the lead author of this study. He stated: “People using Facebook, TikTok and Snapchat are significantly more likely to return and say they feel depressed when they fill out the survey again.”
However, the researchers couldn’t rule out the possibility that people with depression might be more inclined to use social media as an escape.
Participants were interviewed during coronavirus pandemic, when depression rates rose anyway.
Snapchat was the top-rated platform for depression risks, with its users being one-and-half times as likely to feel low than others. Facebook followed with only a half-point of users reporting depression symptoms.
One year after the initial survey, 482 (or 9%) of participants had a significant clinically-significant deterioration of their mental health. They scored higher for signs and symptoms of depression.
Publishing their findings in the medical journal JAMA Network Open, the researchers found that overall, people using Snapchat, Facebook and TikTok were more likely to report feelings of depression compared to the year before.
Snapchat users of middle age were twice as likely than their peers to feel depressed when compared with those who don’t use this photo-sharing platform.
TikTok users aged over one and a half years are more inclined to feel low than those who are younger.
Facebook, however, was not the reverse. Facebook users under 35 were twice as likely to be depressed than those over 35.
We don’t know why people feel depressed in different age groups based on their social media platforms.
According to one theory, people are more at ease using social media platforms that don’t correspond with their age profiles. This can lead them feel disconnected and out-of sync.
Snapchat is mostly populated by people under 35, and TikTok has a main demographic of younger users.
Facebook, the social media company that started it all, now has older users.
Although the results of this study were limited, they don’t provide any insight into how many people use social media.
Harvard psychiatrist Perlis stated that, rather than depression being caused by social media, it may just be that your use of it can indicate that you might be at risk for developing depression.
He said that “Notably, the use of social media may just be a sign of an underlying vulnerability for depression.”
According to the study’s authors, their results add to the previous research regarding social media use and mental health among young people. They also extended these findings to older populations.
The researchers added, however, that there needs to be more research on the connection between social media usage and mental illness.
In recent years, social media platforms have been under increased scrutiny for their negative effects on mental health and body images.
Facebook was recently under attack after being revealed to have known that its platform Instagram is toxic for young girls from 2019, following internal research which showed that 13 percent of UK teens blame it for suicide thoughts.
The company’s whistleblowers have raised concerns about the algorithm used to send users down the rabbit hole of dangerous content, even though they are only interacting with sad content.
After seeing graphic Instagram images showing self-harm and suicide, Molly Russel died tragically in 2017.
TikTok was also accused of making neurologic conditions like ADHD and autism fashionable, leading to an epidemic involuntary “ticks” in teenagers as they try to imitate their social media icons.
The government has called on social media companies to be more protective of their users from both potentially dangerous content and anonymous abuse.
A draft Government Online Safety Bill Draft is being reviewed currently by the committee of MPs. They are scheduled to next meet tomorrow and discuss it.