Here's how the effects of social media can affect mental health and boost loneliness

If you are someone who spends too much time on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram, you may be leading yourself into a life of loneliness. Today, we're here to talk about how social media can affect your mental health and millennials, we hope you are giving this a good read...

While billions of young people head to social media to curb and banish loneliness, you may, in fact, be doing just the opposite. Spending time on social media portals (like the ones we have mentioned above, among many more) can increase the risk of depression and loneliness. According to a study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania, lowering social media usage could help reduce depression and loneliness. "Ours is the first study to establish that reducing social media use actually causes reductions in depression," said study author Melissa Hunt. She is the associate director of clinical training in the department of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

"The main finding of the paper is that limiting your use of Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram to 30 minutes total or less per day result in reductions in depression and loneliness, especially for people who were moderately depressed to start with," Hunt said. "Our study cannot speak directly to why this happens," she stressed. "But prior research strongly suggests that negative social comparison -- my life is worse than other people's lives -- and feeling left out of activities and experiences shared by others probably explains a lot of it," she explained.

Post the study conducted, the research suggested that restricting social media usage had a "significant" and beneficial impact by reducing depressive symptoms, especially among those who had been moderately or highly depressed. Dr Brian Primack is director of the Center for Research on Media, Technology and Health at the University of Pittsburgh and he described the findings of this study as "important," noting that "because of its experimental design, this study goes an important step further (than prior research) in showing that actively reducing social media use can be helpful." "However, it is important to note that all social media use is not the same," said Primack. "Thirty minutes of use may be spent connecting with loved ones, or it may focus instead on having aggressive interactions about hot-button issues. So, future research might expand findings like this by exploring different contexts of social media use," Primack added.
The findings of this study will be published in the December issue of the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.