Majority of studies regarding social media, have always been tied to teenagers and how the constant use of social media can be linked to mental health and it could be linked to depression. Social media has also been tied to rising anxiety among teenagers. On Tuesday, JAMA Network Open, published new findings in a study that showed a series of surveys from around 5,400 adults. The age of these adults also averaged around 55-56 years of age. The main purpose of the study was to see how adults were coping during the pandemic. It was a year long study from May of 2020 to May of 2021. The researchers of these studies slowly switched to see whether or not social media use is directly tied to changes in mental health.

“People who were using Facebook, people who were using TikTok, and people who were using Snapchat were substantially more likely to come back and tell us they felt depressed the next time they filled out the survey,”

Perlis, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard.

The purpose of the study was not to see whether social media directly causes these changes in mental health but it does show that people who have these changes are more likely to log in to these sites. This study shows the bigger issue however, and that there is a rising mental health crisis going on in the United States. Nearly 1/3 of Americans have reported that they are feeling depressed which is up 8.5 percent from October 2020. The study also showed that if individuals had minimum symptoms of depression they would worsen over time if they used social media regularly. Previous studies also show that social media activity is increasing as time goes on.