Social Media Use: A Real-Time Look at Teens' Emotional Ups and Downs

Researchers have been quick to blame social media for negative impacts on teens' mental health, but is it the whole story? A recent study decided to find out by tracking 154 teenagers aged 12 to 15 every four hours for two weeks. They wanted to see if using social media causes more negative emotions, or if feeling gloomy makes teens more likely to get online.

It turned out that scrolling through social media, also known as browsing, could lead to more negative emotions a few hours later. This effect was small but stuck even when researchers considered how teens felt before they started scrolling. Interestingly, posting updates didn't seem to have much of an impact either way. This could mean that just looking at other people's perfect lives online might not be great for our feelings. But the results weren't super strong, so there's probably more to the story. Maybe sometimes social media is fine, sometimes it's not, and it depends on other factors we don't know yet.

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