Dear colleagues and friends
A question that surely crosses the minds of many of us is: how is social media affecting our lives? In this regard, a dear colleague shares this article written by Alexa Battler, published on March 14, 2024 in the U of T News bulletin of the University of Toronto (U of T) and translated by us for this space. Let's see what it's all about...
Researchers at the University of Toronto have confirmed what many had long suspected: the use of X (formerly known as Twitter) affects our well-being, although the social media platform itself cannot be attributed all the blame.
Published in the journal Communications Psychology, the study found that, while initiating sessions on X generated a greater sense of belonging for some users, it was associated with an immediate drop in positive emotions such as joy and an increase in indignation, political polarization and boredom.
The study also suggested that a person's reason for opening X in the first place (to watch the news or out of boredom) plays an important role in determining whether they will tweet, retweet, “like”, review information or otherwise use the platform's functions, which are also linked to emotional impacts.
“We couldn't find any positive effects on well-being,” says Victoria Oldenburgo de Mello, a doctoral student at the U of T in Scarborough who is one of the co-authors of the study. “Even when some of the things people did made them feel a greater sense of belonging, that didn't translate into an increase in positive emotions,” she explained.
As part of the study, researchers tracked the emotions of 252 users in the United States to determine when X was having an impact on them. While the study participants were demographically diverse, the researchers' findings were consistent regardless of age, political loyalty, ethnicity, or other factors.
Those who reported using the site as a way to escape their problems scored lower in well-being both after using X and generally, and were people who were increasingly angry and unhappy. Frequent X users were, on average, more bored and more alone. In addition, they felt more bored immediately after using X, although not more alone.
“I can identify with these findings in the sense that I tend to open up social networks if I feel momentarily frustrated,” says Oldenburgo de Mello. “When I approach it with this mentality of escapism, it will generally be worse because I already have a problem with me.”
Meanwhile, people who were more politically polarized tended to retweet a lot. And the study described as “puzzling” a state when users felt increasingly polarized when using X for entertainment, which generally led to searching for and rereading previous communications and feedback from the current thread. Users often shut down X with an increase in their anger levels. They also became angrier when they used X to find information, although this was not linked to any specific action.
When people accessed X in search of social interaction, they tended to reply to tweets and visit profiles, and felt a reinforcement in their sense of belonging. The researchers said that the same thing happened when people were consulting current issues.
Extensive research has quantified the extent to which interacting with another person increases well-being, including positive emotions such as joy. X, on the other hand, seems to be dragging users into feeling bad or worse in relation to their position before the consultation.
“Just imagine the magnitude of how it feels when you meet someone and talk to them for a while, it lifts your spirits a little,” says Oldenburgo de Mello. “Two-thirds of that magnitude is how bad you feel when you use X.”
The action in X most associated with a lower state of well-being was scrolling through the thread of a topic, which is the most common activity in X and consumes 74% of the time that participants spend on the platform. (Eighty percent of X content is created by 10% of users.)
The researchers also found some surprises. For example, there was no apparent impact on anxiety and interaction with people who held different political views; it did not increase user polarization, perhaps, the researchers said, due to the effect of “echo chambers” that make users lean more toward a stance on a certain opinion.
Data from the study was collected in 2021 before tech mogul Elon Musk bought Twitter and implemented several changes that caused advertisers to withdraw from the platform amid concerns about an increase in extremism and hate speech. However, Oldenburgo de Mello says that the findings about passive use and the fact that the impact of social networks is related to motive and behavior are still broadly valid to the current situation.
“I would expect people to come to social networks perhaps with a different motivation and different behavior patterns,” he says. “Maybe we should all be more intentional about using social media, avoiding them when we're bored or frustrated.”
