Social media usage associated with depression: Research

Public policy and education researchers recently discovered that young adults who use more social media are significantly more likely to develop depression within six months, regardless of personality type. Published in the Journal of Affective Disorders Reports, the study. Among the study's findings was that people with high agreeableness were 49 per cent less likely to become depressed than people with low agreeableness. Additionally, those with high neuroticism were twice as likely to develop depression than those with low neuroticism when using more than 300 minutes of social media per day. More importantly, for each personality trait, social media use was strongly associated with the development of depression. Depression was measured using the Patient Health Questionnaire. Social media was measured by asking participants how much daily time was spent using popular social media platforms, and personality was measured using the Big Five Inventory, which assessed openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.