Is Social Media causing depression?

We have been through these debates of how social media affects us on a psychological level. But, how much truth do these arguments really hold?

According to Pittsburgh's Centre for Research on Media, Technology and Health, the more time young adults spend on social media, the more likely they are to become depressed. The 1,787 US partakers of 19-32 years of age, used social media for an average 61 minutes every day, visiting accounts 30 times per week, were 2.7 times more likely to develop depression than those who checked least often. A division of these people were also found to have high symbols of depression.

Dr. Brian Primack who led the study, "As it was a cross-sectional study, directionality is not clear from these results. One strong possibility is that people who are already having depressive symptoms start to use social media more, perhaps because they do not feel the energy or drive to engage in as many direct social relationships."

The study examined 11 most popular social media platforms at the time: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Vine and LinkedIn. Currently, there are over a billion people actively using Facebook daily while Twitter draws 320 million active users every month.

Out of many reasons for why increased usage of social media could lead to more depressive thoughts, "Facebook Depression" is one of them which are also the leading reasons for depression in the young generation. "People who engage in a lot of social media may feel they are not living up to the idealized portraits of life that other people tend to present in their profiles. As with many things in the social sciences, it may also be that both of these directions are accurate. This would be disturbing because it would imply that there is an inherent vicious circle: people who become depressed may turn to social media for support, but their excessive engagement with it might only serve to exacerbate their depression."

Dr. Primack is trying to portray, social media - as a weapon to tackle the problem. "We hope that this research may provide one piece to the puzzle of how we can best use powerful tools such as social media to our advantage and not our disadvantage. Social media is obviously an extremely important part of modern-day society and has many important functions; we do not recommend that people stop using social media,”

The knowledge that there can be emotional risks associated with its use can help individuals to make better choices about the extent to which they use social media.

He also mentioned, "these findings do not suggest that every person who engages with more social media use is depressed in fact there are groups of people who find solace and lessening of their depression through social media resources and relationships,"

According to WHO October 2015 report, depression is now the principal cause of disability worldwide. So, is it time to curb on those long hours on social media? Will you  spend less time on twitter or Facebook if you got to know that they are affecting your health?