Entering X is associated with an immediate drop in positive emotions

Researchers at the University of Toronto have confirmed what many have long suspected: using X (formerly known as Twitter) is affecting our well-being – although the social media platform itself isn’t entirely to blame.

Published in magazine Psychology of communicationsthe study found that while logging into X led to a greater sense of belonging for some users, it was associated with an immediate drop in positive emotions such as joy and a surge of outrage, political polarization and boredom.

The study also suggests that a person’s reason for opening X in the first place—to check the news or out of boredom—plays an important role in determining whether they will tweet, retweet, like, scroll, or otherwise use the platform’s features, which are also related to emotional impacts.

“We couldn’t find any positive effects on well-being,” says Victoria Oldemburgo de Mello, a doctoral student at U of T Scarborough who co-authored the study. “Even when some of the things people did made them feel like they belonged more, it didn’t lead to increased positive emotions.”

As part of the study, researchers tracked the emotions of 252 consumers in the United States to determine when X had an effect on them. While the study participants were demographically diverse, the researchers’ findings were consistent regardless of age, political allegiance, ethnicity or other factors.

Those who reported using the site as a way to escape their problems had a lower well-being score both after using X and overall, and were angrier and unhappier people. Frequent X users were, on average, more bored and lonelier. In addition, they felt more bored immediately after using X, though not more lonely.

“I can relate to these findings in the sense that I tend to open social media if I’m momentarily frustrated,” says Oldemburgo de Mello. “When I approach it with that escape mindset, it’s going to be worse overall because I already have a problem.”

Meanwhile, people who were more politically polarized tended to retweet a lot. And the study called it “puzzling” that users feel increasingly polarized when using X for entertainment, which usually means scrolling through your feed. Users often close X with a spike in their anger levels. They also became angrier when they used X to find information, even though it wasn’t related to any specific action.

When people continued X, seeking social interaction, they tended to reply to tweets and visit profiles—and felt a boost in their sense of belonging. The researchers said the same was true when people checked out trending topics.

Extensive research has quantified the extent to which interaction with another person enhances well-being, including positive emotions such as joy. X, on the other hand, seems to be dragging users down.

“Imagine the scale of how you feel when you meet someone and talk to them for a while, you get a little bit of a mood lift,” says Oldemburgo de Mello. “Two-thirds of that magnitude is how bad you feel when you use X.”

The X action most associated with decreased well-being was feed scrolling, which is X’s most frequent activity, taking up 74 percent of participants’ time on the platform. (Eighty percent of X’s content is created by 10 percent of users.)

The researchers also found some surprises. For example, there was no apparent effect on anxiety, and interacting with people who held different political views did not increase user polarization—perhaps, the researchers said, due to the effect of “echo chambers” that make users more politically opinionated.

The survey data was collected in 2021, before tech mogul Elon Musk bought Twitter and triggered several changes that led to advertisers pulling from the platform amid fears of a rise in extremism and hate speech. However, Oldemburgo de Mello says the findings about passive use and the fact that the impact of social media is related to motive and behavior are broadly applicable.

“I would expect people to come to social media with maybe different motivations and different behavior patterns,” she says. “Maybe we should all be more conscious of our social media use, avoiding it when we’re bored or frustrated.”

Reference: Oldemburgo De Mello V, Cheung F, Inzlicht M. Twitter use (X) predicts substantive changes in well-being, polarization, sense of belonging, and resentment. Commun Psychol. 2024; 2 (1): 15. doi: 10.1038/s44271-024-00062-z

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