Harvard research shows that people over 40 who use Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok are more likely to feel down

A long line of research suggests that spending too much time on social media is harmful to children’s developing brains.

But a new study has warned that even middle-aged adults are also “significantly” more likely to be depressed if they are social media users.

Harvard University researchers found that adults feel even more sad when they use platforms preferred by young people, such as TikTok and Snapchat, possibly because it makes them feel old.

They surveyed 5,400 American adults with an average age of 56 years, twice, once in May 2020 and again a year later.

Participants were asked to complete a nine-question mental health questionnaire about which social media they used.

Lead author of the study, Professor Roy Perlis, said: NBC News: “People who used Facebook, people who used TikTok, and people who used Snapchat were significantly more likely to come back to tell us they felt depressed the next time they took the survey.”

But the researchers couldn’t rule out the possibility that depressed people are more likely to log onto social media, perhaps as an escape.

Participants were polled during the coronavirus pandemic — when depression rates were rising anyway.

One year after the initial study, 482 (9 percent) of the participants showed a clinically significant deterioration in their mental health, scoring higher for possible signs of depression.

Publish their findings in the medical journal JAMA network opened, the researchers found that people who used Snapchat, Facebook and TikTok were generally more likely to report feelings of depression compared to the previous year.

Middle-aged Snapchat users were almost twice as likely to feel depressed compared to their peers who weren’t using the photo-sharing platform.

Older TikTok users feel more than one and a half times lower compared to their peers.

But the reverse was true for Facebook, where people under 35 were more than two and a half times more likely to feel depressed.

The exact reasons why different age groups were more likely to report feeling depressed based on the social media platform they use is unknown.

One theory is that people feel more out of place using social media that doesn’t match their age profile, making them feel out of place.

Snapchat is mainly populated by young people under the age of 35, and TikTok’s main demographic is even younger, with most users in their 20s.

Facebook, one of the original social media giants, has more older users.

However, the study’s findings are limited because it doesn’t measure how often people used social media and what kind of content they used.

Professor Perlis, a psychiatrist at Harvard, added that instead of social media causing depression, using it could be a sign that you are prone to depression.

“Social media use, in particular, may simply be a sign of underlying vulnerability to depression,” he said.

The study authors said their findings add to previous work related to social media use and youth mental health by extending these findings to older demographics.

However, they added that more research needs to be done on the relationship between social media use and mental health.

Social media platforms have come under increasing scrutiny in recent years for the negative effects they have on people’s mental health and body image, especially for young children.

Facebook recently came under fire after it was revealed that the company knew its platform Instagram had been toxic to young girls since 2019, after an internal survey leaked that showed 13 percent of British teens blamed it for suicidal thoughts.

The company’s whistleblowers have also sounded the alarm about the company’s algorithms that send young users down a rabbit hole of harmful content, even if they only innocently interact with content about feeling sad.

The dangers of social media for young people were highlighted following the tragic death of Molly Russel in 2017 after the schoolgirl committed suicide after viewing graphic images of self-harm and suicide on Instagram.

TikTok has also faced its own accusations that neurological disorders such as autism and ADHD are being branded fashionable and leading to an epidemic of involuntary “ticks” among teens as young people want to imitate their favorite social media stars.

The government has repeatedly called on the social media giants to do more to protect their users, both from potentially harmful content and anonymous abuse.

A draft government bill on online security is currently under examination by a committee of MPs, scheduled to meet and discuss it tomorrow.

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