According to an Oxford Internet Institute (OII) study, there is no evidence that the global spread of Facebook is associated with widespread psychological harm. The study looked at how happiness changed in 72 countries as the use of the social media platform increased.
According to the researchers, this contradicts the widely held belief that social media is harmful to one’s mental health.
Facebook with widespread psychological harm
Several countries are considering legislation to protect social media users from online harms, including the United Kingdom.
Meta, which owns Facebook, has come under fire following whistleblower testimony and press reports based on leaks that suggested the company’s own research indicated negative effects on some users.
This study only looked at Facebook and did not include Meta’s other platforms, such as Instagram.
Prof Andrew Przybylski, of the OII, told the study tried to answer the question: “As countries become more saturated with social media, how does the wellbeing of their populations look?”
He said: “It’s commonly thought that this is a bad thing for wellbeing. And the data that we put together, and the data that we analysed didn’t show that that was the case.”
Prof Przybylski’s previous OII research also found no link between teenagers’ use of technology and mental health problems.
However, the report only examined the overall impact of Facebook use on a national scale. The broad-brush findings would not reveal the impact of Facebook use on specific groups of people.
Prof Przybylski admitted that it could miss negative effects on small groups of users if they were offset by positive effects on others. It also did not delve into the risks posed by specific types of content, such as material promoting self-harm.
The study’s main policy lesson, according to Prof Przybylski, was that researchers needed better data from tech firms to answer questions about the effect of social media:
“You know, we have a situation where a handful of people are cryin
And while the OSB prioritises protecting children – the research does not look at youngsters as a separate group and “by and large children are not using Facebook”.
“This reminds me of a conference I went to that asked, ‘what difference did half a century of television make?’. How can there be one answer?” she said.
g wolf, about social media. But we don’t actually have the data, we don’t have the materials we need to build a wolf detector,” he said.
The Online Safety Bill (OSB) in the United Kingdom is nearing the end of its parliamentary journey toward becoming law. It is intended to protect people from online dangers.
The London School of Economics’ Prof Sonia Livingstone, however, cautioned that the study’s relevance to the OSB was limited.
“The authors’ broad critique – that screen-time anxieties are not much supported by robust evidence – is fair. However, the study reported here is so general as to be of little use to current regulatory or clinical debates,” she told.
“This reminds me of a conference I went to that asked, ‘what difference did half a century of television make?’. “How can there be only one solution?” She stated. However, she agreed with the authors’ call for more data-driven research.
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