Did you know that, that Instagram post of you in the Maldives, Seychelles having a good holiday time could be causing depression to one of your followers? Well, a University of Montreal research study has found out that screen time – the time spent using a device like a smartphone, TV or gaming console etc leads to depression but social media was strongly cited as a key cause of depressive symptoms among teenagers.
The study investigated the relationship between depression and screentime usage in adolescents for a period of 4 years.
The researchers studied the behaviour of over 3800 young people from 2012 until 2018 and among the recruited were adolescents whose behaviour they followed from Grade 7 until Grade 11 whose spent six to seven hours in front of a screen every day.
“What we found over and over was that the effects of social media were much larger than any of the other effects for the other types of digital screen time,” said Conrod, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Montre who led the researchers.
Social media was cited to promote upward social comparisons which make teenagers feel bad about themselves and thus exhibition of depressive behaviour.
Conrod and the team also found that depressive symptoms are linked to being active on platforms such as Instagram, where teens are more likely to compare their lives to glitzy images in their feeds.
“These sort of echo chambers — these reinforcing spirals — also continually expose them to things that promote or reinforce their depression, and that’s why it’s particularly toxic for depression,” said Conrad.
In a surprise turn of events, gaming was identified as one activity that wasn’t leading to depressive symptoms, with the study further suggesting that the average gamer is not socially isolated with over 70% of gamers playing with other person either in-person or online.
