Social Media Effects on Mental Health

Mental Health Issue Clinical Trial

Official title: How Do We Resolve the Social Dilemma? Facebook Features Use as a Moderator of Mental Health.

Status Completed

Clinical Trial Summary

In the last decade, research on social media and mental health has produced mixed results. Overall, the current findings suggest that the negative effects on mental health are exacerbated by longer and more frequent social media usage, whereas the positive effects are bolstered when social media is used to connect with other people.

With the largest number of global users, Facebook is the most frequently studied social media network. Over the past few years, the increasing concerns about the risks associated with Facebook have even translated to wider pop culture conversations, as exemplified by the 2020 documentary The Social Dilemma. In response, Facebook has rolled out a series of features supposed to mitigate these risks and encourage responsible social media usage. These features include activity trackers and reminders, unfollow and snooze buttons, and data sharing regulators. Currently, there is no research done to address whether (1) these features are used at all, and (2) whether they are successful in moderating the negative mental health consequences of Facebook usage.

This study seeks to address the gap in literature through a survey done on the crowdsourcing platform Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk).

Clinical Trial Description

n/a

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Behavior, Addictive
• Internet Addiction
• Mental Health Issue
• Mental Health Wellness 1
• Mental Health Wellness 2
• Social Media Addiction

• NCT number: NCT04967846
• Study type: Observational
• Source: Yale-NUS College
• Status: Completed
• Start date: June 13, 2021
• Completion date: September 19, 2021