A study that collected 11 years’ worth of data from 183,000 adults, with findings published in npj Mental Health Research, found something studies keep finding again and again: The more we’re on it, the worse our mental health.
How much is too much? The researchers say there is an upper time limit you should try to avoid unless you want your brain to unravel into a depression spiral. About 150 minutes a day.
Researchers from the University of Cincinnati and Northwestern University analyzed surveys from American adults ages 18 to 70 collected between 2014 and 2024. Social media use consistently ranked as one of the strongest predictors of self-reported depression, only becoming an even more prominent predictor in the surveys’ latter years.
More Than 2.5 Hours of Social Media a Day May Be a Mental Health Red Flag
When people crossed the threshold of 2 ½ hours of daily social media use, depression rose, and continued to rise by about 17 percent with every additional hour. This is all after researchers accounted for factors like education, age, and income. No matter the year, no matter the person, social media was very clearly linked to depression every time.
The instinct for some might be to treat 150 minutes as the exact moment their brain deteriorates into a depressive funk, but keep in mind that the study doesn’t definitively prove that social media causes depression.
The researchers weren’t following the same people for 11 years, and depression was not clinically diagnosed but rather self-reported by the study’s participants. This means it’s entirely possible that depressed people can spend more time online, which feels like a safe bet, because, I mean, have you seen some of the people who are spending entire days posting nonstop?
What matters here is the consistency of the findings. The pattern appeared across all 11 years, with a wide variety of people from all over the socioeconomic spectrum. In that time, social media showed a stronger and more consistent relationship with depression than stuff like TV, general internet use, gaming, and email.
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