Twenty-five years after the website Sixdegrees.com began a revolution in the way people used the internet, a third of Americans say social media does more harm than good to their mental health. Nearly half said that social media has hurt society at large and 42 percent said it has hurt political discourse. This is according to the results of the American Psychiatric Association (APA)’s February 2022 Healthy Minds Monthly a poll conducted by Morning Consult, fielded Jan. 19-20, 2022, among a nationally representative sample of 2,210 adults.
The responses were slightly more positive when adults who indicated they use social media were asked how they personally felt while using it. Eighty percent of social media users said they felt interested while using social media, 72% felt connected and 72% said they felt happy, versus 26% who said they felt helpless or jealous (22%).
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many adults who indicated they use social media reported experiencing the positive side of it—80% of social media users say they used it to connect with family and friends, and 76% used it for entertainment. In general, they were also far less worried about their own usage of social media or their children’s. For instance, they said social media has helped (31%) or has had no impact (49%) on their relationships with friends and family. Parents polled said that social media had either helped (23%) or had no impact (46%) on their child’s self-esteem, although one in five indicated it had hurt their child’s mental health.
A promising result from the poll was that about two-thirds (67%) of Americans were confident in their knowledge of how to help a loved one if they indicated mental health challenges on social media.
