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 Researchers focused on how often users of services like Facebook,
YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Vine and LinkedIn experienced
what’s known as social isolation - when a person lacks a sense of
belonging, connections with others and fulfilling personal
relationships.
Compared with people who spend no more than a half hour on social
media each day, people who devoted at least two hours daily to these
platforms were roughly twice as likely to report feelings of social
isolation, the study found.
“These results might be a bit of a cautionary tale,” said lead study
author Dr. Brian Primack, director of the Center for Research on
Media, Technology and Health at the University of Pittsburgh.
That’s because social isolation is associated with worse health
outcomes, including the potential for people to have worse symptoms
of certain diseases and worse survival odds.
The study doesn’t prove social media causes isolation, and it’s
possible that people who already felt less connected to other people
in real life spent more time on services like Facebook or Twitter,
researchers note in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
“It may also be that people who use social media a lot tend to feel
like everyone else is strongly connected to each other, because
everyone tends to put on their best face for social media,” Primack
added by email. “Then, in comparison, they might feel that they
themselves are more socially isolated.”
Primack and colleagues surveyed 1,787 adults aged 19 to 32 in 2014
about their use of the 11 most popular social media platforms at the
time: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, Snapchat,
Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Vine and LinkedIn.
About half of participants were men and half women, and they were
selected to be reflective of U.S. demographics, including ethnic and
racial groups, education and income levels. More than half were in
committed relationships.
Roughly 26 percent of participants said they spent more than two
hours a day on social media, and about 23 percent said they visited
these platforms at least 58 times a week.
When people visited this often, they had about triple the odds of
perceived social isolation compared to participants who said they
went to social media platforms less than nine times a week.
It’s hard to say exactly why this is the case. One possibility is
that people who spend hours a day on social media are not spending
as much time in real-world interactions with people, the researchers
speculate.
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It's possible, the authors admit, that survey participants didn’t
accurately report on their level of social media use or their
feelings of isolation. The findings for young adults also might not
reflect what would happen with older people.
Previous research looking at social media and wellbeing has had
mixed results, notes Holly Shakya, a public health researcher at the
University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, who wasn’t
involved in the study.
Another drawback of the current study is that it doesn’t look at how
close people are in real life with their social media friends,
Shakya added by email. There’s some evidence that social media use
among people who have close relationships in real life can help make
those human connections stronger.
“In that sort of case, the social media use is strengthening
strongly held legitimate relationships rather than replacing them,”
Shakya said. “When you have 500 Facebook friends, most of them are
not close friends, so you are bombarded with information and life
experiences of people you don’t know that well and with whom you
have little social capital.”
Rather than get rid of social media, the findings suggest that users
should be conscious of how much time they spend with virtual
friends, Primack said.
“Hopefully, (the study results) will help people to think about
their own social media use critically and make sure the ways they
use social media are truly making their lives better,” Primack said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2mjVBbe American Journal of Preventive
Medicine, online March 6, 2017.
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