Two minutes on social media ‘ruins your mood’

JUST two minutes of social media doom and gloom can drag your mood down, a study has revealed.

Scientists found that scrolling through ‘bad’ news stories about coronavirus on Twitter or YouTube is enough to cause happiness levels to plummet.

A team of psychologists from the University of Essex set out to discover how long it takes for someone’s mood to drop after exposure to negative content.

In two studies, subjects were randomly assigned to spend a few minutes consuming Covid-related information, either by reading a real-time Twitter feed or watching a YouTube video of someone commenting on Covid news.

In both studies, participants reported ‘lower wellbeing’ compared to a control group, who had not been exposed to any Covid news. They found as little as two minutes of bad news about the pandemic was enough to have a powerful effect on their emotions.

More positive stories about random acts of kindness, for example, did not have the same negative effect.

This suggests that it is not simply time spent on social media that is problematic, but specifically the consumption of bad news. Dr Kathryn Buchanan, who led the study, said: ‘We wanted to test how quickly the negative impact was felt.

‘If even a mere few minutes of exposure to bad Covid-related news can result in immediate reductions to wellbeing, then extended and repeated exposure may over time add up to significant mental health consequences.

‘Our findings suggest the importance of being mindful of one’s own news consumption, especially on social media.’

She added: ‘In some countries, news consumption via social media is on the rise, even though people acknowledge that news on these platforms has lower quality, accuracy, trustworthiness and impartiality.’

Half of adults in the UK now use social media to keep up with the news, including 16 per cent who use Twitter, and 35 per cent who use Facebook.

Dr Buchanan said: ‘People seek out social media for many reasons, other than news consumption, and may not realise that minimal exposure to bad news on these platforms can have such negative consequences.

‘One strategy that individuals could employ would be to attempt to undo the negative by balancing it out with positive information.’