Does social media really make us unhappy?

It’s a well-known fact that social media makes you miserable. While Facebook forever abounds with people apparently having a marvellous time, in exotic climes, never without ubiquitous smiles and exclamations of delight, Twitter seems too often awash with malicious imbeciles, who even when they are right, still get on your nerves. At their worst, Facebook makes you hate people you do know; Twitter makes you hate people you don’t.

This, at least, is a popular opinion. And the consensus that social media makes us unhappy and lonely – in that it encourages us to unfavourably and unrealistically compare our lives to those of others – has been repeated this week in a Harvard study published in the journal JAMA Network Open. It links social media use with greater symptoms of depression. For instance, in its survey of 5,000 adults, it found that users of Facebook were 42 per cent more depressed than those who weren’t.