There was a time, and perhaps it is not yet over, when many stopped watching the news on television because it made them feel bad, whether from the sadness of disasters or the anger at cases of corruption. Today, a split in this group has emerged, brought to the digital sphere: those who don't go on social networks so as not to get angry. This is a real perception which can now be supported by studies analyzing the impact of networks on our mood.
It was the medical journal JAMA Network which, after studying the behavior of more than 40,000 adults, discovered that access to social networks causes a higher level of anger by the type of content that is consumed there.
There is a relationship between social media and irritability
The JAMA Network study addresses the irritability implications of social media use for adults. To do this, they took into account the number of times each of them accessed the platforms and to what extent this affected their emotional state.
There were exactly 42,597 people surveyed, 78.2% of whom confirmed using at least one of the main social networks (X, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok) daily. 6,037 access it once a day, 16,678 access it several times a day and 10,610 are on the networks most of the time.
Those who spend most of the day on social media and also post several times a day they tend to feel angry or upset. They feel this way 1.4% more than those who access social networks several times a day, while the percentage rises to 3.4% compared to those who only enter a few times a day. day.
The main social networks were taken into account in the study: X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Interestingly, experts have found that they are X and TikTok the platforms that cause the most irritability awaken among individuals.
And why can this irritability arise? Experts suspected that political discussions might be the cause and this certainly appears to be one of them. Those who felt most irritated after using social media tended to consume information related to politics there and were frequently confronted with discussions about this area on the networks.
“It’s a health problem”
Roy Perlis, director of the Center for Quantitative Health at Massachusetts Hospital and responsible for this study, emphasizes that with this they cannot “conclude that the use of social networks makes us more irritable”. On the other hand, yes reports finding a “clear relationship between irritability and interaction” with these platforms.
However, there are other studies like the one done by Nature that specifically focus on social media discussions and the fact that as they get longer, they tend to become more toxic. This is something that experts point out and which can negatively affect mental health users, particularly among young people and adolescents, which can go so far as to lead to physical health problems.
By | The country
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