New research reveals how social media platforms like Facebook can greatly affect your mental health.
无论你今天在手机或电脑上做了什么，都有可能参与社交媒体。
Did you catch up with friends on Facebook, post photos of your dog on Instagram? Maybe a Twitter link brought you here.
In the United States today, you’re statistically more likely to use social media than not — by a lot. Approximately77 percent所有美国人都有一个社交媒体形象的某种。
Despite the popularity of social media platforms and the rapidity with which they’ve inserted themselves into nearly all facets of our lives, there’s a remarkable lack of clear data about how they affect us personally: our behaviors, our social relationships, and our mental health.
In many cases, the information that’s available isn’t pretty.
Studies have linked the use of social media to depression, anxiety,poorer sleep quality, lower self-esteem,inattention, and hyperactivity— often in teens and adolescents.
列表继续。
However, these studies are almost entirely of an observational or correlational nature, meaning they don’t establish whether or not one is causing the other.
A common argument against the theory that social media makes individuals more depressed and lonely is simply that perhaps those who are more depressed and lonely are more inclined to use social media as a way of reaching out.
Anew studyconcludes that there is in fact a causal link between the use of social media and negative effects on well-being, primarily depression and loneliness. The study was published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.
“What we found overall is that if you use less social media, you are actually less depressed and less lonely, meaning that the decreased social media use is what causes that qualitative shift in your well-being,” said Jordyn Young, a co-author of the paper and a senior at the University of Pennsylvania.
“Prior to this, all we could say was that there is an association between using social media and having poor outcomes with well-being,” she said.
研究人员说这是第一次在科学研究中建立了因果关系。
该研究包括来自宾夕法尼亚大学的143名学生。他们随机分配到两组之一：一个将像往常一样继续他们的社交媒体习惯，或者将大幅限制对社交媒体的访问。
For three weeks, the experimental group had their social media use reduced to 30 minutes per day — 10 minutes on three different platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat).
为了保留这些实验条件，研究人员看起来涉及电话使用数据，其中记录了每天使用每个应用程序的时间。所有的研究参与者必须使用iPhone。
但为什么让实验组甚至让实验组都使用社交媒体？
“We didn’t think [complete abstinence] was an accurate representation of the landscape of the world that we live in today. Social media is around us in so many capacities,” Young said.
The results were clear: The group that used less social media, even though it wasn’t completely eliminated, had better mental health outcomes.
Baseline readings for participants were taken at the beginning of the trial in several areas of well-being: social support, fear of missing out, loneliness, anxiety, depression, self-esteem, autonomy, and self-acceptance.
在试验结束时，实验组中的那些在孤独和抑郁的症状下降的下降，在那些报告更多抑郁症的人中发生了最大的变化。
“No matter where they started off, if they were told to limit their social media, they had less depression, no matter what their initial levels were,” Young said.
与此同时，两组的焦虑程度和恐惧失踪的恐惧率下降，这位研究人员通过参与试验，研究人员潜在地从用户身上发出一个人，这就是更加了解他们的社交媒体使用。
即使具有既定的因果关系，仍然存在较大，未经答复的问题：为什么？
系统如何旨在让我们更接近我们的朋友和家人对我们的心理健康感到糟糕？
Much like the algorithm that powers your Facebook feed, it’s complicated.
Some general theories have come to the forefront, some obvious and some not so much.
“在密歇根大学的心理学教授博士说：”当你登录时，发生了很多次的时候发生了很多时代的事情。““人们不一定必须超级意识到这是出现的，但它确实如此。您登录，您通常会在另一边处理非常策划的内容。“
Ybarra has published pieces on the relationship
He notes that even if individuals are aware of the “curated” nature of many online platforms, “they nevertheless feel like, ‘How am I stacking up?’ or ‘How is my life stacking up?’ compared to what these people are presenting. I think that what happens is that the more you use the platforms, the more social comparisons tend to induce, and that relates to these decrements in how people are feeling.”
These constant “upward social comparisons” can happen hundreds of times each day, depending on how frequently you check your social media feeds.
Fear of missing out, or FOMO, is another mental health effect that’s been strongly linked with the use of social media.
Although a relatively new phrase often attributed to millennial ennui, psychologists say it has real social significance.
Amy Summerville, PhD, a professor of psychology at Miami University in Ohio, is an expert on issues of regret and the psychology of “what might have been.”
她解释说，FOMO是包含和社会站立更大问题的延伸。她说，一旦我们的基本需求，就像食物，庇护所和水一样，她说，就像食物，庇护所和水一样，纳入和社会互动的需求就在那里。
“The FOMO experience specifically is this feeling that I personally could have been there and I wasn’t. I do think that part of the reason that’s really powerful is this cue that maybe we’re not being included by people we have important social relationships with,” she told Healthline.
现在无处不在的社交媒体和技术使用了一个世界，我们可以凝视我们自己的水晶球，看看我们的朋友在几乎在一天中的任何时间。这并不一定是好事。
So, should we all just be using less social media?
可能是。但ybarra和summerville都说没有足够的研究来设置任何类型的真正指导方针。
“在这一点上，我不知道我会说的那一点，这项研究必须说每个人都需要把应用程序阻挡者放在手机上，”Summerville说。“它对我来说，这表明这可能会有所帮助，特别是对于已经似乎争取负面情绪和归属感的人来说有用。”
Nevertheless, what’s clear is that social media isn’t going away. If anything, this kind of technology will likely only grow more pervasive.
像“神奇宝贝Go”这样的游戏改变了播放视频游戏意味着的社会氛围。像Strava这样的应用程序创建了一个社交网络，用户可以共享他们的健身目标和例程。LinkedIn已经从求职平台到了一个全面的社交网络，以获得职业生涯。
“Given how available these technologies are and continue to become, they are just going to be part of how we interact with our world and with people. There’s definitely a lot of work to be done in this area,” Ybarra said.
Social media use can harm your mental health, especially when it’s used more frequently.
Setting limits and sticking to them can help minimize these effects.