Background and aims
- The problem: earlier research on social media and depression was contradictory, with some studies finding a link and others finding none.
- Tandoc et al. proposed that the link is indirect and runs through envy.
- Envy is a social rank mechanism, because Facebook invites comparison with the best bits of other people's lives.
- Comparing their own life with those posts can leave a person seeing themselves as lower in rank than the people they know.
- Aims: whether depression is linked to Facebook usage, and whether Facebook use leads to envy which can then lead to depression.
- Hypothesis 1: heavy Facebook users would report higher envy than light users.
- Hypothesis 2: the larger the friend network, the greater the envy.
- Hypothesis 3: higher envy would be associated with more symptoms of depression.
Key Idea
- Facebook use is linked to depression only through envy, because comparing your own life with other people's posts can leave you feeling lower in rank.
- Heavy users reported more envy, and more envy went with more symptoms of depression.
- Neither how often Facebook was used nor the size of the friend network predicted depression on its own.
Method
Definition
Correlation
A relationship between two variables, where a change in one tends to go with a change in the other. It does not on its own show that one variable causes the other.
- Design: a questionnaire, or survey, conducted online.
- Responses were coded into quantitative data and analysed correlationally.
- Nothing was manipulated, so there is no independent variable and this is not an experiment.
- Sample: a self-selecting sample of 736 students from an American university, average age nineteen.
- They were all journalism students, which limits how far the results stretch to anyone else.
Note
- A questionnaire with nothing manipulated produces a correlation, so the results can show a pattern without showing a direction.
- A sample of 736 is large, but it is still one narrow group of nineteen year olds at a single university.
The measures
- Facebook usage: how much and how often participants used the site, including time spent looking at other people's pages.
- That second measure is Facebook surveillance, the habit of scrolling through other people's profiles rather than posting their own material.
- Envy: levels of envy were measured on a rating scale.
- Depression: symptoms of depression were measured by self-report in the same online questionnaire.
Example
- Picture a student scrolling through other people's holiday photos and results posts, and concluding that everyone else is doing better than they are.
- That feeling is what the study measured as Facebook envy.
- It is the step that connects the site to low mood.
Results
- Heavy Facebook users did report higher envy than light users, so hypothesis 1 was supported.
- Network size was not related to envy, so hypothesis 2 was not supported.
- Facebook envy was a significant positive predictor of depression, so hypothesis 3 was supported.
- There was no relationship between how frequently Facebook was used and how depressed people felt.
- Facebook surveillance did not predict depression directly either.
Conclusions
- Facebook use is linked to depression indirectly, by causing envy, so envy is the step in between.
- Link to the theory: this supports social rank theory, because participants who saw themselves as lower in rank than the people they compared themselves with reported more symptoms of depression.
Common Mistake
- The link the study found was an indirect one that runs through envy, and Facebook use did not predict depression directly.
- A survey shows a correlation, so it cannot show which variable came first.
- For depression the biological explanation is social rank theory and the psychological explanation is the ABC model.
Criticisms
- Strength, the sample size: 736 participants reduces the influence of a few unusual individuals on the overall pattern.
- Strength, the measures: standardised rating scales are easy to replicate and quantify, and asking about real everyday habits gives reasonable ecological validity.
- Cultural bias: every participant was a well-educated American journalism student, which may shape both how they use Facebook and how they handle their feelings.
- Sampling: an online, self-selecting survey over-represents people comfortable with technology, which matters when the topic is technology use.
- Social desirability: participants may have understated their social media use, their envy and their symptoms, which would make the results invalid.
- Construct validity: complex feelings were reduced to numbers on a rating scale, so the measure may not capture envy or depression well.
- Cause and effect: Facebook may increase envy, or envy may draw people towards Facebook, and a correlation cannot tell the two apart.
Note
- The study measured symptoms reported on a scale rather than a clinical diagnosis, so it is evidence about low mood rather than about diagnosed depression.
- It dates from 2015 and names one site, so the finding is really about comparison rather than about Facebook in particular.
Turning this into marks
- When two criticisms are asked for, make them genuinely separate rather than one criticism rephrased.
- Name the envy measure and the correlational survey, because a general reference to a social media study does not secure the knowledge mark.
- Say which hypothesis a result belongs to, since one of the three was not supported.
- The mark most often lost is writing that Facebook use causes depression, when the study found the link runs through envy.
Self review
- State the aims of Tandoc et al. (2015) and the method used.
- Describe the sample and the three things the questionnaire measured.
- Which of the three hypotheses was not supported?
- Why is the link between Facebook use and depression described as indirect?
- Explain how the study supports social rank theory, and give two criticisms of it.
