Is using Twitter a net negative for wellbeing?

Those who spend a lot of time online may have come across the phrase "touch grass", a saying that essentially exhorts someone to step away from the keyboard and go outside. Though clearly somewhat tongue in cheek, what underlies the phrase is a sense that being online too much is detrimental to someone's sense of reason and perspective, and that logging off and reconnecting with the 'real' world is likely to make them a lot happier. 

But how does social media really impact our happiness? Looking specifically at Twitter/X, a team from the University of Toronto explores this question in their new paper, asking whether the platform is overall beneficial or detrimental to wellbeing. They find (perhaps unsurprisingly to those of us who still use the site) that Twitter use is not only related to decreased wellbeing, but increases in political polarisation and outrage, too. 

Using Prolific, the team recruited 252 US-based adults who used Twitter at least twice a week. Reflecting the user base of Twitter itself, the majority of the sample identified as liberal. After joining the study via an online platform, participants first completed a baseline survey looking at the 'Big Five' personality traits of extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. 

They were then invited to join a sampling study, in which surveys were sent out at random times five times a day for seven days, asking them whether they had used Twitter in the last thirty minutes. If they had, participants reported on what they had been doing on Twitter (e.g. scrolling, liking, retweeting, or taking part in discussions) and whether they were using it for entertainment, escapism, social interaction, self-promotion, or information. 

They then reported on a number of other variables. First, they indicated the level to which they felt various different emotions in the last thirty minutes, and whether or not they felt the sense of belonging to an online community. The team also looked at polarisation, asking participants to indicate on a scale from 0 to 100 how warm they felt towards Democrats and Republicans at that moment. Finally, if participants had had any social interaction in the last half an hour, they indicated whether it had been online or in person, and how negative or positive it had been. 

Participants were fairly heavy Twitter users: they reported being on the site in 26.7% of the surveys they responded to. The majority of this Twitter use was passive, with active behaviours such as posting or retweeting reported in only 18% of these responses; most users were simply scrolling. In terms of why they were online, participants largely reported using it for entertainment (66% of surveys), then for information (49%), to interact with others (23%), for escapism (18%) and lastly for self-promotion (just 2%).  

And while having an in-person social interaction was related to a significant increase in subjective wellbeing, Twitter use had a nearly equal effect on users in the other direction — in fact, Twitter use was nearly as negative for people's wellbeing as a social interaction was positive. Twitter use also increased boredom and loneliness, though it did not significantly increase anxiety (though studies focusing on particular types of content consumption, such as doomscrolling, may yield different results). On a more positive note, participants did feel that Twitter use gave them a sense of belonging.

Twitter use was also associated political polarisation. Those who used Twitter more frequently were more likely to feel cold towards those with a different political ideology to them, though results were not able to show whether there was a relationship between this and encountering those with other views on the site. Relatedly, Twitter use was also associated with an increase in outrage, measured through how angry, disgusted, and repulsed users reported being; though again, the team was not able to find a relationship between this and interacting with others with different views. 

How people used Twitter was relevant, however. Passive scrolling was associated with decreased wellbeing, while replying to tweets and visiting other users' profiles was associated with an increased sense of belonging. Retweeting, interestingly, was highly associated with increases in polarisation, perhaps because users felt they were reiterating their own views by sharing concomitant content.

Clearly, Twitter use is not all bad: people felt an increased sense of belonging, particularly if they were interacting with others. However, the results of the study don't paint an especially positive picture of being on the site. People were more polarised, more bored, more lonely, and had overall felt worse for being frequent users.

As always, it's important to note the limitations of this study. The team shares that there may be "time-varying confounders" that impact the results — that is, people may be using Twitter more when their wellbeing is low, and are more likely to have their mood impacted by the site in turn. They suggest further research, looking for stronger causal inferences, to work out this relationship. When data were collected was also unspecified, meaning that these findings may not reflect the experience following more recent changes to the platform.

For those of us who are committed to continuing to use Twitter, the study does offer a practical solutions to the dower feelings it might bring: favour active chatting over passive scrolling. For those who are less dedicated to putting themselves in unhappy situations, however, it may be time to log off. 

Read the paper in full.