The University of Pennsylvania has shown the use of a causal link between social media and well-being for the first time. In the past few years, the use of social media has been significantly increased. With the increasing use of gadgets and social media platforms has come high anxiety and depression levels.
The Associate Director of Clinical Training in Psychology Melissa G. Hunt has designed a special program under which she would be testing the psychological effects of more use of social media. The experiment would include letting people use more of social media while comparing the other group of people who were restricted from the use of such portals.
The first slot of people completed the surveys in order to measure their well-being at the beginning of the experiment. Then they were assigned to groups in a random manner. The two group has members who less or rarely used social media. The questions included sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat which are three of the most popular social media portals.
After a couple of weeks, the survey was repeated among the same group of people making use of the tools to measure their well-being. From the experiment, it was evident that the group of people who used social media in a limited amount had less or no signs of anxiety and depression.
A subject mentioned which described the matter personally- “Not comparing my life to the lives of others had a much stronger impact than I expected, and I felt a lot more positive about myself during those weeks.”
While a wide range of studies have proven that while looking towards well-being the use of internet it has been found that anxiety stricken people are the ones who strike the internet search very soon. The study was the first one to confirm the experiment. The researchers have suggested that one must not use social media for more than 30 minutes a day.
