Negative effects of social media use11/24/2023 "But right now, I wanted to get the word out there that social media use may have a link to important physical health outcomes." ![]() "There's still work to be done," said Lee. "In our previous research, we found those high in self-esteem benefited from using social media, but people low in self-esteem did not. Lee says the aphorism could hold true with social media use and physical health: The rich get richer while the poor get poorer. "By looking at a biological marker in the blood, we were able to find a relatively more objective association between social media usage and physical health, but this correlational finding can't rule out the possibility that poor health impacts social media usage," said Lee. Lee says this study is just the beginning of understanding the relationship between social media and physical health. They also showed higher levels of chronic inflammation." "The more participants used social media, the more somatic symptoms they experienced and visits to the doctor they reported. "We were able to establish a correlation between the amount of social media use and these physical health indicators," said Lee. ![]() Those responses were crosschecked with another survey that measured validity by determining the degree to which participants took their role in the study seriously. ![]() Blood samples were collected through finger sticks, and participants also completed questionnaires on physical health and social media usage on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram, the most popular platforms at the time the data were collected in 2017. Researchers recruited a diverse sample of 251 undergraduate students between the ages of 18 and 24 for the study. "Our goal was to extend prior work by examining how social media use across several platforms is associated with physical health outcomes measured with biological, behavioral and self-report measures," said Lee, an expert on health outcomes related to social interactions. And though a few studies have found links between social media usage and physical health, that research relied largely on self-reporting or the effects of usage with exclusively one platform. Recent surveys indicate social media usage is particularly high for people in their late teens and early 20s, a population that spends about six hours a day texting, online or using social media. The findings appear in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.įor decades, researchers have devoted attention to how social media engagement relates to users' mental health, but its effects on physical health have not been thoroughly investigated. "It's critical that we understand how engagement across these platforms contributes to physical health." "Social media use has become an integral part of many young adults' daily lives," said David Lee, PhD, the paper's first author and assistant professor of communication in the UB College of Arts and Sciences. In addition to elevated CRP levels, results suggest higher social media use was also related to somatic symptoms, like headaches, chest and back pains, and more frequent visits to doctors and health centers for the treatment of illness. ![]() Research participants who used social media excessively were found to have higher levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a biological marker of chronic inflammation that predicts serious illnesses, such as diabetes, certain cancers and cardiovascular disease.
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