- I’m about to blow your mind. You’ll never believe this.
- Heavy social media use correlates to higher irritability, according to a study from Northeastern.
- I’m truly shocked, SHOCKED!
Have you felt irritable lately? Cranky? Been bothered by other people? Felt like snapping at someone?
Let me ask, have you, by any chance, logged onto Facebook lately?
A new study by Northeastern University found there’s a strong association between irritability and heavy social media use.
Researchers surveyed over 40,000 adults about their social media use and then had them take a five-question test about their current level of irritability. What they found will probably not shock you: people who used various social media apps several times a day reported the highest scores on the irritability test.
As a heavy social media user myself, who is totally zen and never cranky — Why do you ask? Ugh, please leave me alone. GOD, what is wrong with you? — I wanted to know more. So I talked to David Lazer, one of the study’s coauthors and a professor of political science and computer sciences at Northeastern University.
Lazer was quick to point out (who does this guy think he is anyway, correcting me? ) that this study shows a correlation, not causation.
“I should be clear that we’re not making causal claims,” Lazer said. “We are showing that there’s this relationship between being online and irritable, but it could just be that irritable people get online. That’s also quite plausible, right? I’m cranky. I’m going to go get online and pick a fight with someone.”
Basically, it’s possible that spending hours doomscrolling makes you cranky, but it could also be that miserable bastards are the self-selecting crowd who tend to spend hours on social media. Both seem plausible to me!
The survey was broken down by demographics (age, income, etc.) as well as different social platforms.
I noticed a strange bump in the chart about X (previously called Twitter) — a platform that many people associate with cranks. Unlike other platforms, there was a strange positive blip for people who posted to X only once a month. They were the least irritable group of all, even less irritable than people who never used it.
Could it be that once a month tweeting is the secret path to happiness? This would be great news for me (who am I kidding, I’ll never cut down that much).
Lazer warned against taking that conclusion.
“It’s just very marginally statistically significant and negative,” he said. “So I’d really view that as just a funny thing, but probably it’s a zero.”
On the opposite end, it appeared that posting to TikTok multiple times a day was associated with the highest irritability. That might have something to do with the age breakdowns — the study found that we’re less irritable the older we get, and heavy TikTok users are more likely young.
Demographic-wise, women tended to be less cranky than men, and irritability decreased the richer and older someone got. City dwellers are less cranky than rural folks. Political affiliation doesn’t affect crankiness levels, but people who engage in political discussion more than once a day are way more irritable.
Irritability went up for both social media “use” and also “posting” — basically, both lurkers and posters were crankier the more time they spent lurking or posting. That’s interesting because, to me, there’s a big difference between the categories. Someone who looks at Instagram multiple times a day is different than someone who posts to Instagram multiple times a day.
Since most content on social media is produced by a small number of power users, it’s possible that the posts that dominate your social feeds are from the crankiest of people.
“What all that means is that the people who are online are more likely to be irritable people … that may tell us something about the discourse online,” Lazar said.
Read the full article here
