Facebook and Campus Mental Health
Mental health declined on campuses after the introduction of Facebook
If you’ve seen the movie The Social Network, you probably know a bit about the creation of Facebook. It was invented in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg while he was a student at Harvard, and it was first deployed on college campuses around the country before being made available to the general public. Around this time, other early social media websites, such as Myspace and Friendster, were gaining popularity, but none took off as decisively and as sharply as Facebook did.
As Facebook’s popularity grew, the reported mental health of young people began to worsen. Are the two trends linked? The common assumption is that Facebook - and social media in general - has directly caused a decrease in mental health among its users, particularly young people, who are still forming their identity and finding their place in the world. However, it’s also possible that the relationship between Facebook’s popularity and the decline in mental health is merely a correlation, and they’re perhaps both caused by some third factor.
Facebook’s quick but staggered introduction to college campuses across a 2-year period, along with the long-standing collection of mental health data among college students, make it a promising avenue to investigate whether Facebook actually caused a decline in the mental health of young people. Researchers at Bocconi University in Italy, Tel Aviv University in Israel, and MIT in the US used mental health data from the National College Health Assessment (NCHA), as well as data about the introduction of Facebook to specific college campuses, to answer this question.
The NCHA is administered to college campuses across the country twice per year and contains a wide range of questions about physical and mental health, although it does not ask about social media use. The researchers created an index of overall mental health based on questions about symptoms of depression and use of mental health services.
Using a mathematical model that tracks responses over time and accounts for the introduction of Facebook, the researchers determined that mental health among college students worsened after the introduction of Facebook to their college campus. This effect is especially noticeable when one considers that average mental health didn’t change much in the years before Facebook’s introduction. The researchers also compare their model to models used in other studies, and find a similar trend.
Since the researchers were able to account for the exact date of Facebook’s introduction to each college campus, they were able to conclude that Facebook is at least partially the cause of reported mental health trends among college students. They also estimate that the amount that mental health decreased is equivalent to about 22% of the mental health decrease that comes from losing one’s job. The researchers also report that the students who were at the highest risk of mental illness were the ones most impacted by Facebook’s introduction to their campus. Finally, they found that Facebook was also linked to other factors often associated with poor mental health, such as decreased academic performance.
The researchers’ best guess as to why Facebook caused a decline in the mental health of college students? An increased ability to make social comparisons. Having constant access to the social lives of one’s peers, coupled with people only posting content that puts them in a favorable light, might make people believe that others are having more fun or are happier than they actually are. This conclusion is bolstered by the researchers’ finding that also around this time, college students began to think their peers were consuming alcohol more than they actually were.
Of course, Facebook’s introduction to college campuses wasn’t all bad: It made it easier to make friends with people both within one’s school and at other schools. It created a sense of community and decreased barriers to access information. These positives may mitigate some of the negative effects on mental health. In addition, social media has changed greatly in the past 20 years, and college students are only one small sliver of the greater population who now uses social media. Even so, the authors of this research demonstrate a semi-causal relationship between Facebook and mental health, one that goes above a mere correlation.
