Social Media Usage and the Level of Depressive Symptoms in the United States

Abstract

The use of social media can either decrease the level of depressive symptoms by providing support or increase the level of depressive symptoms by putting social pressure on users. This paper leverages fixed effects and instrumental variable models to find that using social media (Twitter and Facebook) decreases the level of depressive symptoms on average. This result explains why social media usage in the US grows steadily even though most studies find that more usage correlates with higher levels of depressive symptoms. Three explanations reconcile the negative causal effect and positive correlation: confounder, social media improvement, and heterogeneity.

Keywords: Social Media, Depressive Symptoms, Twitter, Facebook, Causal Effect, Fixed Effects, Instrument

JEL Classification: I12, I31, O33