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Social media fundamentally changed the way the Internet functions in ways that would take me thousands of words to even start to begin to explain here. In many ways social media has been good for society by connecting us all in ways that weren’t previously possible but the bad, ohhhhhh the bad.
Giving every person on plant earth a megaphone and reinforcement that their opinion matters no matter how misguided or demonstrably wrong has been disastrous for society. How that has been exploited through algorithmic feedback loops and bad actors introducing misinformation to ratchet up emotions online and drive a wedge between society. All of that has led to untold numbers of families and friendships fractured over social media posts but on a micro level, social media has really left us in a pretty crummy and irritable mood each day.
A new study delving into this was published this week on the peer-reviewed JAMA Network journals. ‘Irritability and Social Media Use in US Adults’ found that daily use of social media led to heightened levels of irritability that could not be explained away through anxiety or depression.
The study included 42,500 US adults whose social media usage was tracked by “less than once a week, once a week, several times a week, about once a day, several times a day, or most of the day” and by how often they post on social media including “never, less than once a month, about once a month, about once a week, about once a day, or multiple times a day.” For this study, they analyzed use of Instagram, X/Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok.
What they found was not surprising to anyone that spends a lot of time on social media… The study’s discussion states that they found “frequent users of social media experienced increased levels of irritability, above and beyond that explained by depression or anxiety. A dose-response pattern was particularly apparent when frequency of posting (ie, active rather than passive engagement) was considered, although the particular pattern and magnitude varied by platform.”
On an irritability scale devised for this experiment, respondents who use social media ‘more than once a day’ scored 1.43 points higher than those who don’t and those who use social media ‘for most of the day’ scored 3.37 points higher than those who don’t. A chart on how impactful those scores are can be seen here.
While they note that more research is needed to address the association between daily social media use and irritability, the conclusion states “our results suggest an association between high levels of social media use, particularly posting on social media, and irritability among US adults.”
Will this revelation about irritability stop anyone from using social media entirely? Likely not. Anyone who spends time on X, formerly Twitter, already knows that their algorithm does this to us. The same can be said of any social network but for the most part, these networks still continue to grow.
With Meta/Facebook’s announcements about Community Notes and the reintroduction of political content promoted into feeds, now would be as good of a time as any to at least be aware of how each of us feel after using social media. If that worsens in the days ahead, maybe take action.