Social Media Effects on Mental Health

May 9, 2022 updated by: Yale-NUS College

How Do We Resolve the Social Dilemma? Facebook Features Use as a Moderator of Mental Health.

In the last decade, research on social media and mental health has produced mixed results. Overall, the current findings suggest that the negative effects on mental health are exacerbated by longer and more frequent social media usage, whereas the positive effects are bolstered when social media is used to connect with other people.

With the largest number of global users, Facebook is the most frequently studied social media network. Over the past few years, the increasing concerns about the risks associated with Facebook have even translated to wider pop culture conversations, as exemplified by the 2020 documentary The Social Dilemma. In response, Facebook has rolled out a series of features supposed to mitigate these risks and encourage responsible social media usage. These features include activity trackers and reminders, unfollow and snooze buttons, and data sharing regulators. Currently, there is no research done to address whether (1) these features are used at all, and (2) whether they are successful in moderating the negative mental health consequences of Facebook usage.

This study seeks to address the gap in literature through a survey done on the crowdsourcing platform Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk).

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Study Type

Observational

Enrollment (Actual)

608

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

21 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Sampling Method

Non-Probability Sample

Study Population

Recruiting a representative sample of 740 people on the crowdsourcing platform Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk).

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Healthy adult volunteers, aged 21 and above
  • English proficiency
  • Facebook users

Exclusion Criteria

  • Participants below 21 years old
  • Non-Facebook users

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Mental Health Scores
Time Frame: Once during the survey.
Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21), (measured on a 4 point scale: min = 0, max = 3; higher scores indicating higher depression, anxiety and/or stress).
Once during the survey.

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Yale-NUS College

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Tamara Barsova, Yale-NUS College

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

June 13, 2021

Primary Completion (Actual)

August 24, 2021

Study Completion (Actual)

September 19, 2021

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

June 16, 2021

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

July 18, 2021

First Posted (Actual)

July 20, 2021

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

May 10, 2022

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

May 9, 2022

Last Verified

May 1, 2022

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • SM245864

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

IPD Plan Description

Yale-NUS College regulations do not allow the sharing of private participant information.

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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