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

Maybe they are mixing up the cause and the effect

[dunkelfalke]

It could just as well be that depressed people feel lonely and try to connect to others at least this way.

Re:Lack of hobbies

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm willing to bet you've never been depressed and are just making random guesses. You're got it backwards. I've been so depressed I've attempted suicide twice (yeah, I failed at life and failed at death). When you're deeply depressed, nothing feels good. There is no such thing as happiness, at least none that lasts more than a single moment. Everything, everything takes far more effort to do and everything is pointless. Hobbies take too much work, too much effort, and you get no enjoyment out of them. Worse, you may remembering enjoying it but continuing those action no longer brings that enjoyment or excitement. If you used to have hobbies you won't continue them because they're all pointless extra work with no benefits.

Turning to social media makes you feel like you're doing something without having to spend any energy actually doing something. You can pretend you're being social (and why has society deemed that's the thing to be? Other cultures prefer quiet self-reflection rather than gossiping about nothing), catching up with people, making connections, etc... as you get further behind in whatever it was you actually need to be doing. Now you've got even more stuff that you've failed to do so you get more and more depressed. Maybe you're hoping one of your 'friends' will notice and help you out, but you don't have the willpower to ask directly and most people will say something insulting like "why don't you smile more" or "go have fun"*. When you're incapable of feeling any enjoyment you can't "go have fun" no matter what you try to do.

So yes, depressed people don't have hobbies. But they're not depressed because they don't have hobbies, they don't have hobbies because they're depressed. The world is better off without you, so where and why are you going to find and spend the energy to build something when you're just going to fuck it up anyway? At least on social media you could potentially help someone else. I wasted my time reading Facebook and trying to help people on r/depression and the suicide watch reddit forms instead of helping myself.

*Technically you do need to do those things, but simply stating them is fucking insulting as hell and most people don't tell you the how. Why aren't I smiling? Because I have nothing to smile about you asshole. I don't have some perfect happy little life like you do. Why should I have to put on a show for you just so you can pretend the world is a wonderful place full of happy people? Instead of telling someone to enjoy something, take them out to a park or a zoo, someplace outside during a sunny day. Don't ask them to go, plan the entire trip yourself then tell them you want them along and they're going and don't take any insults personally. Take them along for the ride and don't force them to make any decisions ("I've never eaten at XYZ, how about we eat there"? instead of "Where do you want to eat?"). If you just told someone to 'man up' you better have done the same.