Social Media and Mental Health

Luca Braghieri, Ro'ee Levy and Alexey Makarin

No 17252, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: The diffusion of social media coincided with a worsening of mental health conditions among adolescents and young adults in the United States, giving rise to speculation that social media might be detrimental to mental health. In this paper, we provide quasi-experimental estimates of the impact of social media on mental health by leveraging a unique natural experiment: the staggered introduction of Facebook across U.S. colleges. Our analysis couples data on student mental health around the years of Facebook's expansion with a generalized difference-in-differences empirical strategy. We find that the roll-out of Facebook at a college increased symptoms of poor mental health, especially depression. We also find that, among students predicted to be most susceptible to mental illness, the introduction of Facebook led to increased utilization of mental healthcare services. Lastly, we find that, after the introduction of Facebook, students were more likely to report experiencing impairments to academic performance resulting from poor mental health. Additional evidence on mechanisms suggests that the results are due to Facebook fostering unfavorable social comparisons.

Keywords: Social media; Mental health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D72 D90 I10 L82 L86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-04
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Journal Article: Social Media and Mental Health (2022)
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Working Paper: Social Media and Mental Health (2022)
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