Study finds no evidence linking social media platform's penetration and psychological harm

The largest scientific study ever conducted, published today [9 August], investigating the spread of Facebook across the globe found no evidence that the social media platform’s worldwide penetration is linked to widespread psychological harm. Published by the Royal Society, the Oxford study used well-being data from nearly a million people across 72 countries over 12 years and harnessed actual individual usage data from millions of Facebook users worldwide to investigate the impact of Facebook on well-being. Despite popular claims about the impact of social media on well-being, the Oxford Internet Institute research, led by Professor Andrew Przybylski and Professor Matti Vuorre, found ‘no evidence’ that Facebook’s spread was consistently linked negatively to well-being – quite the opposite. The research paper states, ‘Although reports of negative psychological outcomes associated with social media are common in academic and popular writing, evidence for harms is, on balance, more speculative than conclusive.’ We examined the best available data carefully – and found they did not support the idea that Facebook membership is related to harm, quite the opposite. In fact, our analysis indicates Facebook is possibly related to positive well-being.” Professor Andrew Przybylski Working with massive amounts of information, the Oxford team did not
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