People Who Are Depressed Are More Vulnerable to Social Media Likes, Study Finds

The findings highlight how visible metrics and unpredictable rewards may shape posting behavior and keep users engaged.

Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock

Receiving likes feels good and may encourage users to post more. A recent study suggests that people with more depressive symptoms may be more sensitive to this social media effect.

People who are depressed may be using social media to compensate for a lack of real-life social interactions, the researchers wrote in the study’s discussion.

Using three different datasets of posts on X (formerly Twitter), researchers analyzed the posting behavior of more than 7,000 users based on their most recent 3,200 posts.

Going Online May Feel Easier

People with depression are usually reluctant to expend effort, Yael Niv, the senior author of this study and a computational neuroscientist at Princeton University, told The Epoch Times. However, the social need is still there. Going online might feel easier for them and become their only social contact—“it’s available all the time. It doesn’t require getting out of bed or getting dressed.”

Connecting with people online can feel less dangerous, Niv added, “I can always turn off the phone. I can be anonymous—depending on what I put in my handle, people might not even know who I am. The threshold for interacting online might be a lot lower.”

While this study did not investigate whether social media use reinforces depression, a review found that heavy social media use was associated with depression and other mental health problems, particularly among people who are already vulnerable. Previous studies have also linked social media use to a higher risk of developing depression.

‘Likes’ Are More Visible and Easier to Track

In real life, people need to navigate social cues to figure out what others think of them. By contrast, it is easier to track how well-liked you are by looking at the number of likes.

In-person social cues, such as smiles or frowns, can make people feel accepted or rejected, but they are difficult to quantify. Social media makes that feedback explicit by attaching a number to it. “But with social media, we can—we get an actual number,” Niv said.

People with depression can have trouble correctly interpreting social cues, which can make social media’s instant feedback and quantifiable metrics more appealing.

However, “those numbers are not as meaningful as we think,” Niv emphasized. “If I got 10 likes today, and eight yesterday—it’s not a real difference, even though it might feel like a difference.”

The Addictive Nature of Social Media 

Most of the time, users get few or no likes or reactions on social media—but because of how social media algorithms work, every so often, a post goes viral. “It tends to work like a gambling machine; once in a while it gives you really high rewards, and these occasional really high rewards keep us engaged,” said Niv.

“They are actually really reinforcing,” Claire Gillan, the coauthor of the study and a professor of psychology at Trinity College Dublin, told The Epoch Times. “In intermittent schedules you get these big surprising wins, and those are highly rewarding to chase.”

Several studies have found that people with depression are especially susceptible to the intermittent rewards associated with gambling. For example, studies from Thailand and Norway found a higher association between depression and gambling disorder.

“You can think of that as if your brain is basically starved for rewards,” Niv said, “and maybe you get into this regime where you take risks to get the chance of a really high reward.”

Break the Habit of Unhealthy Social Media Use

“I think an important step is to take a moment and actually write down what the value of your time on social media is. Am I getting something out of this? Is it enriching my life? Am I having fun? Is it connecting me to people in a useful way?”

If social media is not adding value to your life, you can consider what you want from it and set new goals, Gillan said. This could involve deleting apps, reducing social media use, or making other changes that bring value back into your life.