Heavy Social Media Users 'Trapped In Endless Cycle of Depression' (independent.co.uk)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Independent: The more time young adults spend on social media, the more likely they are to become depressed, a study has found. Of the 19 to 32-year-olds who took part in the research, those who checked social media most frequently throughout the week were 2.7 times more likely to develop depression than those who checked least often. The 1,787 US participants used social media for an average 61 minutes every day, visiting accounts 30 times per week. Of them a quarter were found to have high indicators of depression. "One strong possibility is that people who are already having depressive symptoms start to use social media more, perhaps because they do not feel the energy to drive to engage in as many direct social relationships," said Dr. Brian Primack, director of Pitt's Center for Research on Media, Technology and Health. "People who engage in a lot of social media use may feel they are not living up to the idealized portraits of life that other people tend to present in their profiles. [...] This would be concerning, because it would imply that there is a potential vicious circle: people who become depressed may turn to social media for support, but their excessive engagement with it might only serve to exacerbate their depression."

Comments

chicken

[turkeydance]

or egg?

Ignorance

[messymerry]

Ignorance is the best therapy for depression. Turn off the TV, kill the Internet for an evening, sit down with a good book or a movie (no ads!!!!) or play a board game with the kids. Orrr, go outside to a dark place and look at the sky. There's a million things to do that don't involve being in everybody's face constantly.

Also, FB is a feedlot. What happens at a feedlot? The sick get weeded out and the rest get slaughtered.

Be warned...

Lack of hobbies

[pak9rabid]

I'd be willing to bet that the correlation here is due to these people not having many, if any, hobbies, so they spend a lot of their days browsing social media and not getting out a whole lot. This, combined with the likelihood of seeing their friends on social media going out and doing fun and interesting things probably compounds the problem.

See? Told you so!

[kheldan]

So-called 'social media' is no substitute for actual interaction, preferably face-to-face, and is just enabling socially avoidant people from getting over their awkwardness and anxiety of social situations. Also, your ten-thousand 'friends' on Facebook? They are not your friends. Do yourself a favor and get some real, living, breathing, live-in-person friends that you actually connect with on a personal level.

Be sure to read my sigline before commenting, you'll save you and me both time and energy better spent doing something else.

Re:See? Told you so!

[supremebob]

It also doesn't help that everyone seems to post an idealized Brady Bunch version of their family on Facebook. The pictures of the kids are always clean and happy, and the adults are always promotions and shiny new cars. When the reader's lives can't live up to these unrealistic expectations, it just makes their depression worse.

Re:See? Told you so!

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

So-called 'social media' is no substitute for actual interaction, preferably face-to-face, and is just enabling socially avoidant people from getting over their awkwardness and anxiety of social situations.

^^^^THIS.

"Social" media seems to be creating a generation of emotionally inept and insecure people who simply do not know how to interact with others except on the most shallow of levels. Most millennials seem to hate talking on the phone and the reason they often give is that it's "too immediate and too personal". They want to avoid human-to-human interaction and send a tweet instead. Anything to create some emotional distance. No wonder their relationships are all fucked up and mostly short-lived and shallow.

It should really be called "anti-social" media or maybe "contra-social" media, because it's anything but social as far as I can tell.

Re:See? Told you so!

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

It also doesn't help that everyone seems to post an idealized Brady Bunch version of their family on Facebook.

Exactly. Everyone is showing their highlight reels publicly but privately living their real life from the bits on the cutting room floor.

Internet Depression

[JWSmythe]

In other news, people who frequently use the Internet see how stupid most other people are.

Representatives from the National Institute of Health (NIH), United States Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) all recommend avoiding interactions with stupid people.

Most importantly, avoid places both real and online, where they may congregate. Specifically mentioned as such dangerously stupid locations are Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Vine and LinkedIn.

"While you may think that you can help guide some stupid people away from their stupidity, it will only hurt you. Many very intelligent people have tried, driving them to believe this planet is occupied by absolute morons. There are other studies being performed to determine if we have passed the point of idiocracy."

Not surprising

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

All of the oversharing of the faux 'my-life-is-super-awesome" lifestyles portrayed would be enough to depress anyone, and add to that the sheer volume of brain-numbing bullshit ("press 'Like' to get this child a new kidney!") and it's no wonder that many people's mental processes become clogged with Facebook sludge.

I noticed this effect years ago when I realized that many of the Facebook addicts I knew were constantly being "one upped" by the constant stream of useless crap and downright false garbage that they tuned in to read on a minute-by-minute basis. Facebook didn't make them feel better, it made them feel worse- lonely, boring, and mundane. They couldn't brag hard enough to make themselves feel good.

I called this effect "Facebook Psychosis", and now it seems I was on to something.

If everyone you know is constantly bragging about how AWESOME and FANTASTIC their life is and they have pictures to "prove" it, who wouldn't be discouraged by the "ordinary" life that you, a mere mortal, seems to lead?

But it's not Facebook's fault per se, any more than it's the bottle of Tequila's fault when someone gets drunk and then crashes their car. It's a contributing cause, but the drunk driver is the one who fucked up.