Title: Social media use can be positive for mental health and well-being | News | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Headings: Social media use can be positive for mental health and well-being
Social media use can be positive for mental health and well-being
What is healthy vs. potentially problematic social media use?

Content: Routine social media use may compensate for diminishing face-to-face social interactions in people’s busy lives. Social media may provide individuals with a platform that overcomes barriers of distance and time, allowing them to connect and reconnect with others and thereby expand and strengthen their in-person networks and interactions. Indeed, there is some empirical evidence supporting this. On the other hand, a growing body of research has demonstrated that social media use is negatively associated with mental health and well-being, particularly among young people—for example, it may contribute to increased risk of depression and anxiety symptoms. Our findings suggest that the ways that people are using social media may have more of an impact on their mental health and well-being than just the frequency and duration of their use. What disparities did you find in the ways that social media use benefits and harms certain populations? What concerns does this raise? My co-authors Rachel McCloud, Vish Viswanath, and I found that the benefits and harms associated with social media use varied across demographic, socioeconomic, and racial population sub-groups. Specifically, while the benefits were generally associated with younger age, better education, and being white, the harms were associated with older age, less education, and being a racial minority. Indeed, these findings are consistent with the body of work on communication inequalities and health disparities that our lab, the Viswanath lab, has documented over the past 15 or so years.