Are We Addicted to Social Media? Here is What Research Says.

In 2023, 33 states in the United States <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/24/technology/states-lawsuit-children-instagram-facebook.html" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">sued</a> Meta for using features to hook children to its platforms. Meta owns top social media platforms such as Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, Threads, and Instagram. In their lawsuit, the states blame the algorithm that drives infinite scrolling and pushes notifications to keep young users addicted to the platforms. Before that, in 2019, Sen. Josh Hawley <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/07/30/lawmaker-wants-end-social-media-addiction-by-killing-features-that-enable-mindless-scrolling/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">proposed</a> a bill to end social media addiction, which aimed to regulate the endless scrolling features, among others. Short-form videos on social media platforms have also been the center of heated discussions, and algorithmic design is believed to be the source of mental health issues as well as short attention spans. However, a study by <a href="https://www-sciencedirect-com.libezp.lib.lsu.edu/science/article/pii/S0747563219303723" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Coyne et al. (2020)</a> suggests that social screen time may not be the only force behind mental health problems. There may be a “moral panic” among the older generation about the youth being glued to their smartphones, but the longitudinal study by the authors shows that there is no direct causal relation between screen time and poor mental health. However, besides screen time, recent bills and lawsuits also focus on shorter attention spans and doomscrolling i.e. scrolling through endless amounts of negative news on social media as growing concerns, which the longitudinal study fails to address. <a href="https://medium.com/@nabila6478/are-we-addicted-to-social-media-here-is-what-research-says-d9e7734a0f39">Read More</a>