Contrary to popular belief, UK study says there's 'no evidence' Facebook harms mental well-being
Facebook across the globe, a University of Oxford study claims on Wednesday that it found no evidence that the social media platform's worldwide penetration is linked to adverse mental health impact. The study by the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) used wellbeing 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 on wellbeing of the platform, now branded as Meta.
Despite several claims about the negative psychological impact of social media on wellbeing, the research found no evidence that Facebook's spread was consistently linked negatively to mental health. «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,» the research paper notes.
Working with massive amounts of information, the Oxford team led by Professors Andrew Przybylski and Matti Vuorre did not find evidence to support popular misconceptions associated with Facebook use. «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 wellbeing,» said Prof. Przybylski, from the OII — a multi-disciplinary research and teaching department of the University of Oxford dedicated to the social science of the Internet.
«This is not to say this is evidence that Facebook is good for the wellbeing of users. Rather, the best global data does not support the idea that the expansion of social media has a negative global association with well-being
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