Data and Code for: Social Media and Mental Health

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Luca Braghieri, Bocconi University, CEPR, and CESifo; Ro’ee Levy, Tel Aviv University; Alexey Makarin, MIT Sloan School of Management, EIEF, and CEPR

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
Code			07/16/2022 05:58:PM
Data			07/18/2022 09:15:AM
Exhibits			07/18/2022 09:16:AM
Temp			07/18/2022 09:15:AM
README.pdf	application/pdf	196 KB	09/13/2022 08:10:AM

Project Citation:

Braghieri, Luca, Levy, Ro’ee, and Makarin, Alexey. Data and Code for: Social Media and Mental Health. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2022. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2022-10-19. https://doi.org/10.3886/E175582V1

Project Description

Summary: The diffusion of social media coincided with a worsening of mental health conditions among adolescents and young adults in the United States, giving rise to speculation that social media might be detrimental to mental health. In this paper, we provide quasi-experimental estimates of the impact of social media on mental health by leveraging a unique natural experiment: the staggered introduction of Facebook across U.S. colleges. Our analysis couples data on student mental health around the years of Facebook's expansion with a generalized difference-in-differences empirical strategy. We find that the roll-out of Facebook at a college increased symptoms of poor mental health, especially depression. We also find that, among students predicted to be most susceptible to mental illness, the introduction of Facebook led to increased utilization of mental healthcare services. Lastly, we find that, after the introduction of Facebook, students were more likely to report experiencing impairments to academic performance resulting from poor mental health. Additional evidence on mechanisms suggests that the results are due to Facebook fostering unfavorable social comparisons.

Funding Sources: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, CRC TRR 190 (280092119); Foerder Institute for Economic Research

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: Social media; mental health; Facebook; social comparisons

JEL Classification:
      D12 Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
      D72 Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
      D90 Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: General
      I10 Health: General
      L82 Entertainment; Media
      L86 Information and Internet Services; Computer Software

Geographic Coverage: USA

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Published Versions

V1 [2022-10-19]

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