Social Media and Mental Health

We provide quasi-experimental estimates of the impact of social
media on mental health by leveraging a unique natural experiment:
the staggered introduction of Facebook across US colleges. Our
analysis couples data on student mental health around the years of
Facebook’s expansion with a generalized difference-in-differences
empirical strategy. We find that the rollout of Facebook at a college
had a negative impact on student mental health. It also increased the
likelihood with which students reported experiencing impairments
to academic performance due to poor mental health. Additional evidence
on mechanisms suggests the results are due to Facebook fostering
unfavorable social comparisons.