Social networking and mental health: looking beyond frequency of use and towards mechanisms of action

Over the past decades, there’s clearly been a dramatic increase in the amount of time people spend online using social networking sites. For instance, Facebook and Instagram have literally billions of users. At the same time, there’s been a rise in mental health issues for young people from teens through their mid 20s. The rise in these issues has been seen particularly for Millennials and the I generation, both of which grew up with increased access to and use of social networking sites. As a result, some have drawn the conclusion that perhaps the two are linked, and the rise in mental health issues is linked causally to the increase in time spent online, and so treatment should involve reducing social networking use. Dr. Kiara Timpano, associate professor at the University of Miami department of psychology, and Dr. Courtney Beard, co-director of the clinical research program in behavioral health at McLean Hospital and associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, reviewed the literature.

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