ArticleHealth economics2024
The effect of social media use on mental health of college students during the pandemic.
Article in Health economics, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Designing Social Media Health Warnings for Teenagers and Young Adults: A Randomized Clinical Trial.JAMA health forum · 2026Trial
- A Shelter for the Heart: The Impact of Teacher Quality on Students' Mental Health.Health economics · 2026Article
- The impact of social media use on college students' mental health: a narrative review.Frontiers in public health · 2026Review
- Mental health of medical students who took a leave of absence during the 2024 medical crisis in South Korea.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Reducing Social Media Use Decreases Depression Symptoms: A Meta-Analysis of Randomised Controlled Trials.European journal of investigation in health, psychology and education · 2025Review
- Mental health risks of pandemic-related media communication: The mediating roles of distinct types of perceived threat.Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2025Article
- A Scoping Review of the Use and Determinants of Social Media Among College Students.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Finding Peace in Pixels: Exploring the Therapeutic Mechanisms of Virtual Nature for Young Adults' Mental Well-Being.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The relationship between physical exercise and psychological capital in college students: the mediating role of perceived social support and self-control.BMC public health · 2025Article
- A cross-sectional study on the impact of physical exercise on mobile phone addiction: the chain mediating role of perceived stress and self-acceptance.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- University student wellbeing during COVID-19: associations with infection prevalence and social gathering restrictions in an observational study.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Social media is viewed to be a key contributor to worsening mental health in adolescents, as most recently reflected in a public health advisory by the US Surgeon General. We provide new evidence on the causal effects of social media on mental health of college students during the Covid-19 pandemic, exploiting unique, longitudinal data collected before the Covid-19 pandemic began and at two points during the pandemic. We find small insignificant effects of social media 4 months into the pandemic during a period of social distancing, but large statistically significant negative effects 18 months into the pandemic when colleges were mostly back to normal operations. Using rich data on substance use, exercise, sleep, stress, and social support, we find some evidence of substitution away from activities that better support mental health at later stages of the pandemic but not at early stages. We find that the negative effects of social media are mostly concentrated among socially-isolated students. Both social support and resilience protect students from the negative effects of social media use. Policy implications include regulating social media while also bolstering social support and resilience as important protective factors.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.