[UPI] THURSDAY, Dec. 20, 2018 -- Facebook, Twitter, Instagram -- the list of popular social media outlets is long and always expanding. But could staying connected through them lead to depression?That's the question posed by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
Nearly 1,800 Americans, aged 19 to 32, answered questionnaires about their activity on 11 popular social media sites. On average, the participants spent just over an hour a day in total on social media, and went to their accounts 30 times a week.
Whether engagement was measured in time or number of visits, the people in the top 25 percent of social media users had significantly higher odds of depression than the bottom 25 percent, between 1.7 and 2.7 times the risk.