Does Social Media Cause Depression?

a post by Christian Waldemar for the World of Psychology blog

Social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and more have become an icon of modern times alongside the internet itself, Facebook being the largest social media platform in the world with nearly a third of the world’s population having profiles on the website.

As the popularity of the internet grew, depression and mood disorders among adolescents have steadily risen, becoming the most lethal affliction to young people in the developed world. Research on social media use has concluded over and over again that as social media use rises, so does the number of cases of depression and mood disorders.

The correlation is clear, however the unanswered question remains: Why?

Does excessive social media use cause depression, or do depressed people tend to use social media excessively? In order to attempt to answer these questions, we must look at how social media applications hijack human psychology.

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I was taught that statistical correlation did not necessarily mean causation.

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