this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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It's not false, but it is exactly the same kinda bullshit that tobacco always uses. Science fundamentally cannot establish a causal relationship between social media usage and depression, because the experiment to do so would be unethical. You can't knowingly force people to use social media in the hope that they gain depression, but academically speaking that is the only way to prove a causal relationship.
Yes, we have lots and lots of evidence indicating a strong correlation between the two, certainly enough to legislate and certainly enough to casually discuss it as a given, but the bar for something to be considered proven in science is a much higher bar. Slimy ratfuckers like the Zucker love abusing that higher bar.
True, I'll cede you that technicality.
My main point is that it's virtually common sense nowadays that too much social media consumption is going to have a negative impact on mental health, similar to how it became common sense that smoking is bad. I don't think there's any point in conducting a study where you take a normal baseline person and then forcefeed them social media until they're depressed, as we're already seeing it play out in the real world with countless people. Similar to smokers getting lung cancer or heart disease at a higher rate than non-smokers.