Can Social Media Cause Mental Health Conditions?

Legitimate questions have been asked for a long period concerning whether social media use causes particular mental health conditions. Mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder have been linked with overuse of social media. If the development of such conditions is demonstrated to be correlated with the usage of social media, then whether a causal relationship exists appears to be an important and sensible question. However, understanding any link between social media use and mental health conditions is far from straightforward and requires a subtle understanding of what the diagnosis of a mental health condition involves.

4 Possible Reasons

There are several plausible answers to the question of what underlies the correlations often seen in the literature. Firstly, it could be that social media use leads to the development of mental health conditions. This answer implies a causal relationship and suggests that something about social media use is damaging to mental health. Secondly, it could be that mental health conditions lead to social media use. This answer suggests that the presence of mental health conditions somehow makes a person use social media more often, perhaps as a coping mechanism or management strategy. Thirdly, it may be that some third variable leads to the development of mental health conditions and overuse of social media; for instance, an attachment problem may provoke mental health issues as well as using social media to gain attachment that cannot otherwise be found. Finally, it could be argued that social media use produces behaviours similar to those seen in mental health conditions but that are not really the same as a mental health condition. For example, heavy selfie-posting on social media may lead to behaviours similar to those seen with narcissism, but that are not really narcissism.

All these solutions to why a correlation exists between social media overuse and mental health problems are legitimate, in the sense that all have been posited and all fall within the realm of sensible scientific discourse. However, there is an issue that all such attempts to address this relationship must grapple with, which concerns the nature of a mental health problem. All the above solutions, although different in their particulars, share one thing in common—namely, they all assume that there is such a thing as a mental health condition that can be caused. They all assume some kind of relatively straightforward "billiard ball" model of cause and effect—that is, one thing (e.g., social media use) impacts upon another (e.g., mental health) and sets the second thing in motion.

It may be that this sort of causal model does not capture the relationship between a particular behaviour (overuse of social media) and a set of subsequently co-occurring behaviours (the mental health condition). The first can be regarded as a single sort of thing—the use of a digital device—and this sort of thing could easily be fitted into a billiard-ball model of causation. However, the latter (the mental health condition) is not a thing in the sense that there is an "it," but rather, this is a concept, and it is far from clear that a concept is a type of thing that can be caused in a billiard ball sort of way.

There are many everyday conceptions of what a mental health condition is; often, people think of these conditions as illnesses, like a cold, that have signs and symptoms (e.g., coughs and sneezes) resulting from an underlying viral infection. In this conception, the cause-effect relationship is somewhat difficult to specify, as the virus does not cause the cold, but the virus is identical to the cold (and so cannot be its cause in any ordinary sense). The virus might possibly be said to be the cause of the signs and symptoms associated with the cold (although, this is tricky), or some event could be said to have caused the virus to act on the person. If this view of a mental health condition is to be followed, then any of the first three explanations as to the social-media-use and poor-mental-health relationship, noted above, must be examined carefully for their precise view of what is being caused by what.

However, in mental health, there is an aspect of the above cold-virus-symptoms relationship that is missing: There is no thing (like a virus) that underlies the signs and symptoms of a mental health condition. A mental health condition is defined, in all recognised diagnostic manuals, only as a cluster of signs and symptoms that, when occurring together in the appropriate numbers, are termed a "mental health condition." For example, for depression, there must exist together a minimum of five out of a possible nine behaviours; there is no depression independent of these behaviours. In this sense, social media use does not cause a mental health condition like a virus causes the signs and symptoms in a physical illness. The mental health condition does not exist beyond the signs and symptoms; it is identical with those signs and symptoms—note the contrast between the nature of the identity present in physical and mental health—and so cannot be their cause.

Looking for the Relationship Rather Than Causation

It may be more proper to look for the relationship between social media use and particular behaviours, rather than a mental health condition, per se. Once this view is taken, then the fourth view, outlined above—that social media use is related to particular behaviours that look like, but are not, particular mental health conditions—cannot be correct. If the behaviours are those that tick the boxes for a mental health condition, and they occur together in the appropriate numbers, then it is that mental health condition.

The upshot of any such analysis is that talk of causation between social media use and mental health conditions can be confusing and can be misleading as to the nature of the exploration that needs to be undertaken. It may be much more profitable to examine the functional relationships between the behaviour of social media use and the behaviours that subsequently emerge. To start searching for things that do not exist outside those behaviours can produce much wasted time and effort. It can also allow a degree of misdirection in terms of the harms that can be done by social media, by obscuring the important relationships involved.