Confirming the long-held suspicions of many, recent research has shown that using X (previously called Twitter) is associated with significant decreases in positive emotions, detrimental effects of wellbeing, and surges in outrage, political polarisation and boredom.
Researchers at the University of Toronto published their findings in the journal Communications Psychology, sharing that logging on to Twitter was likely to exacerbate feelings of loneliness, boredom, outrage and political polarisation. The study states that “people who used Twitter a lot were lonelier and more bored; people who retweeted a lot were more polarised; people who used Twitter to avoid their problems (escapism) had lower wellbeing and higher outrage levels; and people who used Twitter for social interactions had a higher sense of belonging”.
These findings were consistent, even when accounting for demographic and personality traits, highlighting that experiencing a decrease in joy and wellbeing after using Twitter is not a bug or user error, but a feature.
The study does note that two key factors can influence users’ experience on the platform – their motivations and how they engage on the platform. In terms of engagement and behaviour on X, passive scrolling (colloquially called ‘doomscrolling’) was associated with the worst outcomes and the lowest states of wellbeing – an important finding given that scrolling the feed is the most frequent type of activity on Twitter, consuming 74 per cent of the time participants spent on the platform. Frequent retweeting was strongly tied to heightened polarisation among users, which is consistent with previous findings that most Twitter usage data is produced by a minority of users who tend to be more politically engaged than the average user who may simply scroll without actively engaging on the platform.
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Some people can experience an increased sense of belonging when actively engaging on the site by replying to others’ tweets and perusing other user profiles, or exploring the Trending Topics which can connect users with cultural moments and introduce them to in-groups all discussing the same topic. However, the researchers say it is “puzzling” that this increased sense of belonging did not result in increased feelings of joy or wellbeing.
Victoria Oldemburgo de Mello is a PhD student at the University of Toronto and is one of the study’s co-authors. “I think that’s interesting as well, and that’s definitely something I would expect in this data set that increased sense of belonging would correlate with increased well being, but that’s not what we found.”
Instead, findings consistently showed a decrease in overall wellbeing. “Imagine the magnitude of how you feel when you meet someone and you talk to them for a while, you get a little bit of a mood boost,” says Oldemburgo de Mello. “Two-thirds of that magnitude is how bad you feel when you use X.”
The study focused on 252 participants from a representative sample of users in America, charting their daily Twitter use and getting participants to self-report on both their motivations for using the social media site and monitoring their emotional state for 30 minutes after each use. The study resulted in more than 6,000 observations, allowing researchers to examine motivations for using the site, level and forms of engagement on the site, and emotional state after use.
Researchers were interested in how people’s motivations for using Twitter shaped their psychological and emotional experience of it, identifying five main reasons people use Twitter. Participants reported having used social media for “entertainment” purposes most of the time (66 per cent), followed by “information seeking” (49 per cent), “interacting with others” (23 per cent), “escapism” (18 per cent) and “self-promotion” (2 per cent). Researchers then analysed how these reasons and their behaviours online affected participants’ wellbeing, polarisation levels and moral outrage.
For Oldemburgo de Mello, the results of the study show the importance of both tech companies and individual social media users being aware of the specific ways that engaging with social media can impact our emotions and psychology
Focusing on these motivational reasons proved illuminating, as researchers discovered that using X as an escape from reality correlated with decreased wellbeing and heightened outrage. Conversely, utilising X for entertainment purposes was linked to greater polarisation. “That’s definitely something we did not expect. I did not expect that people looking for entertainment will go there to be more polarised”, says Oldemburgo de Mello. Meanwhile, users who prioritised social interaction on the platform experienced a heightened sense of belonging, but participants who primarily used X for consuming news and gathering information exhibited an unexpected increase in outrage over time.
For Oldemburgo de Mello, the results of the study show the importance of both tech companies and individual social media users being aware of the specific ways that engaging with social media can impact our emotions and psychology.
“A lot of people have been highlighting the main findings that focus on the relationship between Twitter use and the main outcome variables, but for me, what I really think are the main findings here is about people’s specific uses of Twitter and the relationship between their motivations, behaviours and how they feel. I think that’s more important because that’s more informative. People are not going to just ban social media platforms based on my findings, but they are going to create policies or create rules for platforms and companies themselves, like going to create maybe incentives for people to behave in a certain way.
“And it seems to be the case that the more passively you use Twitter, the more detrimental effects you have on your wellbeing. So that’s the main finding for me, in that I would say people need to use it more intentionally, interacting with people and doing more active behaviours, rather than just passively absorbing everything that’s out there.”
Remaining aware of our motivations for turning to social media could also lessen any negative impacts on our wellbeing. Mindlessly opening X when feeling lonely or bored may compound these feelings, and looking to be entertained or informed may have an unwelcome side effect of leaving you feeling outraged and more polarised.
“I think what people should do to avoid that is being more intentional,” says Oldemburgo de Mello. “Maybe instead of opening it when you’re lonely or annoyed at something that you set up a time during the day and specifically say, ‘Now I have 20 minutes when I’m going to actively use Twitter’ and then you plan your usage as opposed to just reacting to your emotions during the day to use Twitter. I also think it’s interesting to think about aim and impact because all social media platforms were created with beautiful purposes, right? So Facebook was created to try help people make friends. And then Twitter was created saying, ‘Oh, we want to be the public square where everyone has a voice.’ And although like it’s really debatable whether those companies really achieved what their mission statements are saying that they are trying to do, we can still get the most out of them by using them more intentionally and actively.
“It seems that interacting with others on Twitter gives you this boost of insights of belonging. So replying to other tweets and visiting Twitter profiles was two of the things that were positively related to sense of belonging. Visiting the Trending Topics page was also related to increases of belonging. And when people used it with a motivation for having some social interaction, they were more likely to experience a sense of belonging effect that boost. So maybe as we avoid using Twitter as a mechanism to scapegoat our frustration or boredom, and more as a tool to connect to others.”
Veronica Walsh is a cognitive behavioural specialist (CBT) based in Dublin and says that many people find that doomscrolling is an unaddressed bad habit in their lives, and that many people aren’t consciously aware of how much it is impacting them. “There’s this idea that Twitter is constantly giving us doses of dopamine,” says Walsh, but it’s cortisol, and cortisol is the main stress hormone. It is a fact that too much exposure to stress every day can dysregulate you – like boiling a frog – it becomes normalised very quickly to be ‘trippy’ and alert in a negative way – physically emotionally and cognitively. So mindful regulation would seem to be a skill we should all be learning and applying in our daily lives.”
Walsh recommends building awareness exercises such as journaling to chart how using social media is making you feel
According to Walsh, CBT can be helpful for people looking to change their social media habits. “CBT is a psycho educational model that teaches us how to build skills in awareness and self-regulation and can be helpful specially when we have bad habits that are self-sabotaging, self-limiting, self-defeating – and too much Twitter may come under that category for many of us. Building awareness is really helpful because some people might not realise what a negative effect it’s having on them.”
Walsh recommends building awareness exercises such as journaling to chart how using social media is making you feel. “We like writing things down and doing CBT journaling, to literally catch, to learn by discovery, to get a pause and to be mindful. Asking: why am I on Twitter? What am I looking for? What did I do today? What did it give me? Good or bad? Positive or negative? So we’re learning to journal and CBT would have that approach.”
Walsh also recommends introducing some friction or interruption to phone use, such as turning off notifications, setting a phone wallpaper that reminds you to get off their phone, getting a watch so you’re not constantly checking your phone for the time and getting distracted, and having mantras to say out loud when you find yourself mindlessly doomscrolling to refocus your attention.
Like Oldemburgo de Mello, Walsh also recommends focusing on interaction and connection. “If you met new buddies there and feel a community connection that’s not invalid. Exploit that. Meet in real life.”
The study was undertaken before Elon Musk took over Twitter, changing its name to X. Among many controversial changes to the site, Musk also ended Twitter’s highly-celebrated free access to the site’s API, which allowed researchers and third parties to gather data from the site. Under Musk, Twitter ended this free access in March 2023, instead launching expensive paid tiers including enterprise accounts. Unsurprisingly, these costs have proven prohibitive to most researchers and academics, severely curtailing any scientific research into the impact of social media on human psychology and behaviour.
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