Social Media Harms
The Dark Side of Social Media: Unveiling Harms through Peer-Reviewed Research
Exploring the Landscape of Academic Insights, Articles, Books, and References
In the history of technology, social media platforms have been around for a relatively short time. Per Sinan Aral in his book, “The Hype Machine”, digital social networks have been around since at least 2002 with the founding of Friendster. In the intervening 20+ years, social media platforms and the underlying technology and network strategies that these platforms use have changed radically –just look at the differences between MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, WeChat and TikTok to name a few. This technology is evolving rapidly, with little time to study its effects — unless those effects are profit margins.
Complicating matters, internationally, more people are connected to the internet than ever before. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), estimates that approximately 5.3 billion people — or 66 per cent of the world’s population — are using the Internet in 2022. This represents an increase of 24 per cent since 2019.
The academic community has been confounded by the many studies, with some researchers estimating that there have been over 825 studies regarding the effects of internet use (Duong, et al). Many academics simply throw up their hands and state that past studies report both positive and negative effects of social media use, disregarding the technology behind these systems, and advocate for more studies. (Kross, et al)
The tide appears to be turning. With the release of the U.S. Surgeon General’s Report on Social Media and Youth Mental Health and the American Psychological Association’s Health Advisory on Social Media Use in Adolescence prominent medical organizations are acknowledging that social media use may result in harms to at-risk children and adolescents.
Social media and other internet platforms have shown negative influences to adults, also. Social Media Harms now lists 94 peer-reviewed studies that demonstrate harmful effects of social media use. Eleven of these studies are randomized controlled experiments — the “gold standard” in medical research. One experiment, published by Luca Braghieri, Ro’ee Levy, Alexey Makarin in the American Economic Review, looked at the mental health impact of social media by analyzing the staggered implementation of Facebook from February 2004, when it was only available on college campuses, to September 2006 when Facebook became open for use by the public. The authors concluded:
“We find that the rollout of Facebook at a college
had a negative impact on student mental health. It also increased the likelihood with which students reported experiencing impairments to academic performance due to poor mental health. Additional evidence on mechanisms suggests the results are due to Facebook fostering unfavorable social comparisons.”
Still not convinced? Check out the additional 135 peer-reviewed studies looking at the effects of social media use on Teens, Tweens, Children and cyberbullying victims of all ages.
Social Media Harms (https://socialmediaharms.org/) was developed to provide a listing of peer-reviewed studies, books and articles from authoritative sources that document the negative effects of social media use. It is meant to be a tool to be used by people who are concerned about social media’s negative effects on people’s emotions, actions and lives. We do not solicit donations, however, we are asking for additions to our lists of peer reviewed studies and authoritative books and articles.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.
