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Comment by igitur | Hacker News Reader

From what I gather this found only some correlation, not causation. So I might as well postulate that people with mental health problems are more likely to be on social media. That's not too difficult to believe.

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From the report: "One in six young people will experience an anxiety disorder at some point in their lives and identified rates of anxiety and depression in young people have increased by 70% over the past 25 years. Our own research has shown that young people themselves say four of the five most used social media platforms actually make their feelings of anxiety worse (See YHM survey - page 18)" [my emphasis ]

But you're right insofar as this doesn't appear to be a longitudinal study with a control group. But such a study would probably be pretty hard to pull off.

Maybe ESS[1] could help here if questions about social media habits were added - but we'd not see results until a few years hence, obviously.

[1] http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/

I put really little value on what surveyees think causes their anxiety. Epitome of anecdotal data.

If what you're trying to measure is how someone feels, it might be necessary to ask them how they feel - and what they feel influence that. If one person thinks job stress make them unhappy, that might be anecdotal - if seven hundred of a thousand say work makes them unhappy - that might be more towards the "data" end of the spectrum?

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