Social Media and Mental Health
Name
braghieri-et-al-2022-social-media-and-mental-health.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
802.02 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
b55c71ceb4ab63e30d1b0470b05ad67c
Author(s)
Braghieri, Luca
Levy, Ro’ee
Makarin, Alexey
Date Issued
November 2022
Journal
American Economic Review
Publisher
American Economic Association
Citation
Braghieri, Luca, Ro'ee Levy, and Alexey Makarin. 2022. "Social Media and Mental Health." American Economic Review 112 (11): 3660–93.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
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 US 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 rollout of Facebook at a college had a negative impact on student mental health. It also increased the likelihood with which students reported experiencing impairments to academic performance due to poor mental health. Additional evidence on mechanisms suggests the results are due to Facebook fostering unfavorable social comparisons. (JEL D91, I12, I23, L82)
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
10.1257/aer.20211218
