Excessive Social Media Scrolling Leads to Anxiety, Depression, Study Reveals

NEW DELHI: Take a break if you frequently find yourself mindlessly scrolling through social media. A recent study found that active users who contribute their own content on social media are less likely to experience anxiety, despair, or stress than young adults who only view other people's content.

Internet users now find temporary joy in quick videos, memes, and other social media content. Users are entertained by the amusing, clever, or innovative material and are kept glued to the app for hours. While you might believe that laughing at memes or sharing videos with friends can improve your relationships, skimming through social media can really make you feel stressed, anxious, and depressed.

Social media use, loneliness, and psychological distress in emerging adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis find that people who use social media passively (only consuming content created by others) are more likely to feel lonely and experience psychological distress than people who use it actively (sharing their own content and interacting with others).

In order to better understand how different social media engagement modalities affect psychological discomfort, researchers conducted research among 288 adults between the ages of 18 and 34.

Three categories of social media users were examined for the study that was printed in the journal Behaviour and Information Technology.

There were three types of users: passive (those who exclusively view content posted by other users), active non-social (those who publish their own content but do not directly connect with other users), and active social (those who submit their own content and engage with other users' posts).

The research found that more passive social media use was associated with higher levels of anxiety, sadness, and stress, while active non-social use—creating and sharing information without directly engaging with people online—had a beneficial effect on stress.

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