According to a survey conducted in 2022, 46 percent of teenagers in the United States said that social media had a positive effect on them personally due to being able to connect and socialize on such services. Overall, six percent of respondents reported feeling that social media provided benefits to their well-being and mental health.

According to an online survey conducted in 2022 in the United States, 87 percent of journalists said that social media had a very or somewhat positive impact on promoting stories, whilst 79 percent said that it helped them to connect with their audience. Overall, three-quarters of U.S. based journalists said that social media enabled them to identify which stories to cover. However, 67 percent of journalists in the U.S. said that social media had a negative impact on journalism.

Introduction

Social Media Mental Health Statistics: Social media has many uses, but it often causes the most harm to younger users. Teens face significant mental health issues due to social media, and the COVID-19 pandemic made things worse by increasing screen time and social media use. This created more opportunities for teens to encounter online problems, worsening the situation.

Teens also use social media to find communities and interest groups, watch live streams, and support good causes. It’s important to US teens that they feel welcome and safe online. Despite some problems, social media offers many chances for connection and entertainment. We shall shed more light on the Social Media Mental Health Statistics through this article.

According to a March 2024 survey conducted in the United States, 32 percent of adults reported feeling that social media had neither a positive nor negative effect on their own mental health. Only seven percent of social media users said that online platforms had a very positive effect on their mental health, while 12 percent of users said it had a very negative impact. Furthermore, 22 percent of respondents said social media had a somewhat negative effect on their mental health. Is social media addictive? A 2023 survey of individuals between 11 and 59 years old in the United States found that over 73 percent of TikTok users agreed that the platform was addictive. Furthermore, nearly 27 percent of those surveyed reported experiencing negative psychological effects related to TikTok use. Users belonging to Generation Z were the most likely to say that TikTok is addictive, yet millennials felt the negative effects of using the app more so than Gen Z. In the U.S., it is also not uncommon for social media users to take breaks from using online platforms, and as of March 2024, over a third of adults in the country had done so. Following mental health-related content Although online users may be aware of the negative and addictive aspects of social media, it is also a useful tool for finding supportive content. In a global survey conducted in 2023, 32 percent of social media users followed therapists and mental health professionals on social media. Overall, 24 percent of respondents said that they followed people on social media if they had the same condition as they did. Between January 2020 and March 2023, British actress and model Cara Delevingne was the celebrity mental health activist with the highest growth in searches tying her name to the topic.

An online survey conducted in November 2023 in the United States found that 56 percent of internet users aged 18 to 29 years thought that social media was a good thing for society. In contrast, 22 percent of respondents between 30 and 44 years felt that social media had a bad impact on society, as did 38 percent of those aged 45 to 64. Overall, only 12 percent of survey respondents aged 65 years and over thought that social media was a good thing for society.

The Impact of Social Media on Mental Health: A Comprehensive Literature Review Research Hypothesis

Our research hypothesis is that excessive social media use is associated with negative mental health outcomes, particularly depression, anxiety, and sleep disturbances. This hypothesis is based on the growing body of literature suggesting a link between social media use and mental health issues, particularly among adolescents and young adults. Data and Findings

This comprehensive literature review synthesized findings from numerous studies investigating the relationship between social media use and mental health. The data was gathered through a systematic search of major databases, including PubMed, PsycINFO, Scopus, and Web of Science. The search strategy employed a combination of keywords and Boolean operators to identify relevant studies, focusing on research published within the past 10 years.

The review revealed a complex and multifaceted relationship between social media use and mental health. While some studies suggested a positive association, the majority of research indicated a negative correlation, supporting our initial hypothesis.

Notable Findings:

• Increased risk of depression and anxiety: Multiple studies found a positive correlation between excessive social media use and depressive symptoms, including feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and low self-esteem. Similarly, social media use was linked to increased levels of anxiety, potentially due to social comparison, cyberbullying, and fear of missing out (FOMO). • Sleep disturbances: Excessive social media use can disrupt sleep patterns, leading to insomnia, reduced sleep quality, and shortened sleep duration. Sleep deprivation can further exacerbate mental health issues, including depression and anxiety. • Social isolation and loneliness: While social media platforms aim to connect individuals virtually, they can paradoxically contribute to increased feelings of loneliness and social isolation. Excessive social media use can lead to a decrease in face-to-face interactions, resulting in a sense of isolation. • Cyberbullying: Social media platforms can facilitate cyberbullying, which can have severe psychological consequences, including increased anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. • Body image concerns: Social media platforms often present idealized and unrealistic portrayals of physical appearance, which can contribute to body image concerns and dissatisfaction.

I’ve compiled a list of the latest social media user statistics showing just how big social media has become and where it’s likely to go in the future.

Introduction: Social media has become an integrated part of daily life, with an estimated 3 billion social media users worldwide. Adolescents and young adults are the most active users of social media. Research on social media has grown rapidly, with the potential association of social media use and mental health and well-being becoming a polarized and much-studied subject. The current body of knowledge on this theme is complex and difficult-to-follow. The current paper presents a scoping review of the published literature in the research field of social media use and its association with mental health and well-being among adolescents.Methods and Analysis: First, relevant databases were searched for eligible studies with a vast range of relevant search terms for social media use and mental health and well-being over the past five years. Identified studies were screened thoroughly and included or excluded based on prior established criteria. Data from the included studies were extracted and summarized according to the previously published study protocol.Results: Among the 79 studies that met our inclusion criteria, the vast majority (94%) were quantitative, with a cross-sectional design (57%) being the most common study design. Several studies focused on different aspects of mental health, with depression (29%) being the most studied aspect. Almost half of the included studies focused on use of non-specified social network sites (43%). Of specified social media, Facebook (39%) was the most studied social network site. The most used approach to measuring social media use was frequency and duration (56%). Participants of both genders were included in most studies (92%) but seldom examined as an explanatory variable. 77% of the included studies had social media use as the independent variable.Conclusion: The findings from the current scoping review revealed that about 3/4 of the included studies focused on social media and some aspect of pathology. Focus on the potential association between social media use and positive outcomes seems to be rarer in the current literature. Amongst the included studies, few separated between different forms of (inter)actions on social media, which are likely to be differentially associated with mental health and well-being outcomes.

Which countries spent the most and least time on social media?

While work on the relationship between social media use and adolescent mental health has allowed for some progress, research in this area is still relatively new and shows mixed evidence. This is partly the consequence of a rapidly changing field, resulting in conceptualisation and measurement issues that hinder progress. Given the need for robust conceptualisation, the present study included five focus groups with a total of 26 adolescents aged 11-15 in Northwest England, to understand their experiences, motivations, and perceptions of social media use, relating to mental health and wellbeing. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyse the transcripts. We developed three themes and 14 sub-themes. Young people discussed key motivations for using social media (theme 1) relating to social connections, keeping up-to-date, mood management, the ‘default’ activity, freedom to express and develop myself, and fitting in. They shared some of the benefits and positive experiences of social media use (theme 2) such as feeling connected, validation and reassurance, and enjoyment and supporting a sense of self, and finally, they talked about negative experiences of social media use (theme 3), including platform risks, loss of control, social conflict, social comparison, and self-presentation management. Our findings have contributed to our understanding of the salient dimensions and language to inform the development of an adolescent social media experience measure related to mental health.

How much time do people spend on social media? As of 2025, the average daily social media usage of internet users worldwide amounted to 141 minutes per day, down from 143 minutes in the previous year. Currently, the country with the most time spent on social media per day is Brazil, with online users spending an average of 3 hours and 49 minutes on social media each day. In comparison, the daily time spent with social media in the U.S. was just 2 hours and 16 minutes. Global social media usageCurrently, the global social network penetration rate is 62.3 percent. Northern Europe had an 81.7 percent social media penetration rate, topping the ranking of global social media usage by region. Eastern and Middle Africa closed the ranking with 10.1 and 9.6 percent usage reach, respectively. People access social media for a variety of reasons. Users like to find funny or entertaining content and enjoy sharing photos and videos with friends, but mainly use social media to stay in touch with current events friends. Global impact of social mediaSocial media has a wide-reaching and significant impact on not only online activities but also offline behavior and life in general. During a global online user survey in February 2019, a significant share of respondents stated that social media had increased their access to information, ease of communication, and freedom of expression. On the flip side, respondents also felt that social media had worsened their personal privacy, increased a polarization in politics and heightened everyday distractions.

This database is comprised of 951 participants who provided self-report data online in their school classrooms. The data was collected in 2016 and 2017. The dataset is comprised of 509 males (54%) and 442 females (46%). Their ages ranged from 12 to 16 years (M = 13.69, SD = 0.72). Seven participants did not report their age. The majority were born in Australia (N = 849, 89%). The next most common countries of birth were China (N = 24, 2.5%), the UK (N = 23, 2.4%), and the USA (N = 9, 0.9%). Data were drawn from students at five Australian independent secondary schools. The data contains item responses for the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (SCAS; Spence, 1998) which is comprised of 44 items. The Social media question asked about frequency of use with the question “How often do you use social media?”. The response options ranged from constantly to once a week or less. Items measuring Fear of Missing Out were included and incorporated the following five questions based on the APS Stress and Wellbeing in Australia Survey (APS, 2015). These were “When I have a good time it is important for me to share the details online; I am afraid that I will miss out on something if I don’t stay connected to my online social networks; I feel worried and uncomfortable when I can’t access my social media accounts; I find it difficult to relax or sleep after spending time on social networking sites; I feel my brain burnout with the constant connectivity of social media. Internal consistency for this measure was α = .81. Self compassion was measured using the 12-item short-form of the Self-Compassion Scale (SCS-SF; Raes et al., 2011). The data set has the option of downloading an excel file (composed of two worksheet tabs) or CSV files 1) Data and 2) Variable labels. References: Australian Psychological Society. (2015). Stress and wellbeing in Australia survey. https://www.headsup.org.au/docs/default-source/default-document-library/stress-and-wellbeing-in-australia-report.pdf?sfvrsn=7f08274d_4 Raes, F., Pommier, E., Neff, K. D., & Van Gucht, D. (2011). Construction and factorial validation of a short form of the self-compassion scale. Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, 18(3), 250-255. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpp.702 Spence, S. H. (1998). A measure of anxiety symptoms among children. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 36(5), 545-566. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0005-7967(98)00034-5

Global ad spend were expected to reach over $134 billion in 2022. This means that it has increased by over 17% yearly.

The present study sought to investigate the magnitude of body image dissatisfaction (BID) among adolescent athletes in Sri Lanka and to explore its relationship with selected activities on social media. A total of 478 adolescents (53.7% male), aged 13 to 19 years, who were currently engaged in athletics, were recruited. BID was assessed using the Adolescent Body Image Satisfaction Scale. Time spent on social media, and the frequency of selfie-taking, selfie-posting and photo manipulation were assessed using ordinal scales. Weight and height were measured and body mass index was calculated. In the sample, 51.3% were reportedly active on social media. Social media use was higher among boys and older adolescents. While 20.9% of the adolescents articulated a positive body image, almost all the others (78.7%) reported mild BID. Higher body mass index was associated with greater BID, after adjusting for age and gender. Gender and age were not significant predictors of body image concerns. Among the social media activity parameters, only selfie-taking frequency was positively correlated with BID. Photo manipulation was significantly associated with body image concerns, only among girls.

Social media addiction statistics show that over 210 million people worldwide suffer from social media addiction.

Dataset: Sentiment Analysis for Social Media Posts in Arabic Dialect

Overview

This dataset contains a labeled collection of approximately 50,000 social media posts in various Arabic dialects. Each post has been manually annotated with sentiment labels, providing a rich resource for natural language processing and sentiment analysis research.

Dataset Owner

UM6P College of Computing

Content

• Posts: The dataset includes raw text data of social media posts written in different Arabic dialects.
• Sentiment Labels: Each post is labeled with one of the following sentiment categories:
  • Positive
  • Negative
  • Neutral

Features

• Post ID: A unique identifier for each social media post.
• Text: The content of the social media post in Arabic.
• Sentiment: The sentiment label assigned to the post (Positive, Negative, Neutral).

Format

The dataset is provided in a CSV format with the following columns: - Post_ID: Integer - Text: String - Sentiment: String (Positive, Negative, Neutral)

Usage

This dataset is ideal for tasks such as: - Training sentiment analysis models - Studying sentiment trends in Arabic social media - Exploring the linguistic characteristics of Arabic dialects - Benchmarking sentiment analysis tools

Example Data

Licensing

Please refer to the dataset license included in the dataset files for information on usage rights and restrictions.

Citation

An open access NLP dataset for Arabic dialects: data collection, labeling, and model construction, Elmehdi Boujou, Hamza Chataoui, Abdellah El Mekki, Saad Benjelloun, Ikram Chairi and Ismail Berrada MENACIS 2020 conference, In press.

This data depicts young adults' reflections on their experiences of social media use during adolescence with the goal of better understanding the effects of social media use on a sample of South African adolescents. The study formed part of a group research project in which several researchers conducted individual studies countrywide on the topic. The goal of the study was to explore and describe young adults’ reflections on their experiences of social media use during adolescence, and the research question for the study was 'what are young adults’ reflections on their experiences of social media use during adolescence?'. The following research methodology was employed, a qualitative research approach; an interpretivist paradigm; the research was regarded as applied research and was guided by an instrumental case study design. The sample was selected by means of snowball and purposive sampling; data was collected by means of a semi-structured interview, with the use of an interview schedule; and thematic analysis was utilised to analyse the data that was obtained. The theoretical framework for this study was Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory. The researcher interviewed 10 participants who fit the specific criteria for inclusion; the sample consisted of young adults living in South Africa, within the geographical area of the City of Tshwane. Participants were between the ages of 19 and 25 and gave an account of their reflections on their social media use between the ages of 11 and 18. Participants were also affected in terms of their biological development (i.e., physical, cognitive, emotional, social, moral as well as their identity development).

TikTok comes in 6th position in a list of the world’s most-used social media sites today.

Facebook is fast approaching 3 billion monthly active users. That’s about 36% of the world’s entire population that log in and use Facebook at least once a month.

According to a survey conducted in March 2024, 56 percent of Instagram users felt that the social media platform had no impact on American democracy, while 49 percent of TikTok users felt the same about TikTok. Overall, U.S. users of X (formerly Twitter) were the mostly likely to say that the service had a mostly good impact on democracy, with 38 percent of X users feeling this way.