Q. We often hear that social media harms us by letting us see the best moments in our friends’ lives, while obscuring what is wrong with them… You write that these social comparisons can also be positive.
R. Research shows us that seeing people recount their successes, vacations, and leisure activities on social media can trigger a brief feeling of envy in users. But envy is a complex emotion: when I go to a social network and see a person succeeding, I can be happy for them and even be motivated and want to emulate them. This is called benign envy. I may also hold a grudge for this person, wanting to “put them down” or avoid them. This is called malicious envy.
Several cultures have different words to designate these two emotions (for example, in German, we have “beneiden” and “missgönnen”). Research shows that both types of craving manifest on social media, and some studies suggest that mild urge might even be the most common reaction. Research has also shown that social comparison and benign envy lead to positive outcomes, such as feeling inspired by others on social media.
Q. We recently read several articles about teenage girls who visit Instagram say they have a bad self-image, which comes straight from internal research by Facebook, which owns Instagram. But you add that these same teenage girls also feel that Instagram as a whole brings them a net profit. Are we exaggerating the threat Instagram and other platforms pose to adolescent mental health?
R. Facebook’s internal research (or Meta, its parent company) consisted of opinion polls and user interviews. Essentially, teens were asked what concerns and benefits they associate with using Instagram. This gives a good overview of how teens feel about it, but it shouldn’t be our benchmark for establishing negative or positive effects of using Instagram on mental health.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY UNIVERSITY OF ERLANGEN-NUREMBERG
Adrian Meier, Assistant Professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany
You wouldn’t rely on people’s assumptions to determine the effectiveness of a drug or medical therapy. We have high scientific standards for claims regarding such causal effects. The same should be true of studies claiming that social media affects our mental or physical health. Facebook’s studies should therefore not be overinterpreted. Still, there is plenty of independent academic research that confirms that Instagram use, especially related to appearance – seeing idealized body images – can become problematic for some teens.
However, for the average user, teenager or adult, hundreds of independent studies suggest that general “screen time” spent on social media does not substantially harm or benefit well-being.
Q. Social networks are accused of having a detrimental effect on their users. Do you think we should take a more nuanced view?
R. I do think we should take a more nuanced view on the issue of social media. We won’t learn much more by researching or discussing “screen time,” or equating social media use with social comparison that produces nasty urges. User experiences are more diverse, more nuanced, and so should our research and public discourse. Personally, I think social media can have both positive and negative effects on mental health. When it comes to understanding how, and under what conditions, users are affected, we’ve only scratched the surface.
In numbers
1.1 billion
Number of Instagram users worldwide in 2021
53 minutes
Average time spent on Instagram per day per user
2.91 billion
Number of Facebook users worldwide in 2021
58 minutes
Average time spent on Facebook per day per user
10 to 15%
This is the proportion of adolescents who have experienced negative effects attributable to exposure to social media, according to a recent review of research by researchers at the University of Amsterdam. They also found that 10 to 15% of adolescents had experienced beneficial effects, while the majority had not experienced positive or negative effects.
Sources: eMarketer, Recode