These are powerful findings from a study on the use of social media. In short, the most people interacted with others on social media, the happier they were. The more passively they scrolled, instinctively comparing themselves with others selectively-published lives, the worse they felt.
Wirtz notes that viewing other people’s posts and images while not interacting with them lends itself to comparison without the mood-boosting benefits that ordinarily follow social contact, undermining well-being and reducing self-esteem. “Passive use, scrolling through others’ posts and updates, involves little person-to-person reciprocal interaction while providing ample opportunity for upward comparison.“
The more people used any of these three social media sites, the more negative they reported feeling afterwards. “The three social network sites examined—Facebook, Twitter and Instagram—yielded remarkably convergent findings,”…
Wirtz’s study also included offline interactions with others, either face-to-face or a phone call. Comparing both offline communication with online, he was able to demonstrate that offline social interaction had precisely the opposite effect of using social media, strongly enhancing emotional well-being.
The study was conducted across ten days of social media use. I iwsh I could find what the sample size was. The freely-accessible preview of the paper (link) does not state this.
However the conclusion is clear. If you use social media to stay in touch with people, form new connections, join and try out new communities, you will find it is energising. If you use it as an endless timeline of other people doing things you are not, it’s not hard to see that the experience would leach happiness from you.
I’ve always kept in touch with many friends over messaging apps and email. Anonymous interactions on my Reddit communities have been mostly rich and wholesome. So while I am not on Facebook or such social networks, while I’m on relatively few online groups, and while even before the pandemic I used to meet relatively few people in person, I’ve always felt connected and energized by my social interactions.