For many undergraduate students, college represents a drastic departure from their previous social settings. Often, they find themselves separated from their old friends and family and thrust into a new group with which they have never interacted before. Combined with busy schedules, difficult classes, and crippling schedules, this can lead college students to be exceptionally lonely. This loneliness can cause a number of negative outcomes, including decreased life satisfaction and impaired academic performance.

Our research team is interested in investigating how one particular aspect of modern life can affect their loneliness: social media. Most undergraduates use at least one social media site, and many use a combination, including Instagram, Tik Tok, and Snapchat. Based on the rates at which students use social media, it might be concluded that social media causes them to be lonely or at least is a contributing factor in most situations. Our research team hypothesized that social media site usage would decrease loneliness when used for contacting friends and family, while increasing loneliness when used to alleviate boredom. 

Procedure

The main tool of this study was a questionnaire given to assess the participants. Like with all Think Tank studies, participants were recruited by undergraduate students at the University of Alabama. The students completed CITI ethics training and were tasked with collecting data. This allowed us to collect almost 2000 participants, giving us great certainty when analyzing the data.

Because they were all undergraduates, the sample was made of mostly young adults around 20 years old. About 75% of our sample was female, which is not uncommon in psych survey studies. Additionally, the University of Alabama student body has about 5,000 more female students than male students, contributing to this trend.

The questionnaire contained questions that measure loneliness and personality factors, such as social skills and emotional regulation, as well as questions about childhood experiences and negative events. Participants listed their three most used social media sites as well as time spent on each site and their motivations for using them.

Results 

Interestingly, our hypothesis was mostly wrong. Only one of the reasons for using social media—keeping up with friends and family—had any effect on loneliness. Participants who listed “keeping up with friends and family” as a reason tended to be less lonely. However, our findings suggest that no, social media does not generally make people lonelier. Some social media sites that are based around direct conversation, such as Snapchat, Messages, GroupMe, and Discord, correlated with a reduction of loneliness. Other sites, like Instagram and TikTok, had no effect at all on loneliness.

Key findings

• Using social media to keep in contact with friends and family reduced loneliness, but other reasons had no effect.
• The strongest predictor of loneliness was poor social skills, not social media skills
• Users of the 3 most popular social media sites (Instagram, Tik Tok, and Snapchat) were less lonely on average than users of unpopular sites (such as Discord, YikYak, and Pinterest).
• Sites that reduce loneliness tended to be interactive, or based on conversations: Snapchat, Messages, Discord, GroupMe, and YikYak.
• Sites that had no effect on loneliness tended to be non-interactive, or based on scrolling through content: Instagram, Tik Tok, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter/X, and Pinterest.
• Like with other Think Tank studies, we used a Family Patterns component that assessed various aspects of participants' childhood living conditions. Various measures had beneficial and harmful effects on students' loneliness measures.
  • Good conflict resolution – beneficial
  • Good physical health – beneficial
  • Effective discipline – beneficial
  • Praise in the home – beneficial
  • Played outdoors – beneficial
  • Visitors in the home – beneficial
  • Conflict in the home – harmful
  • Criticism in the home – harmful

Implications

Unsurprisingly, social skills are extremely important. Having poor social skills is an obvious predictor of loneliness, regardless of social media usage. This provides a useful model for therapists, who can teach their patients social skills.

However, social media is neither inherently harmful nor causative of loneliness. When used to stay in contact with others, it can even decrease loneliness. However, it should be reiterated that not all social medias sites are equal. Sites designed for doomscrolling (like Instagram and Tik Tok) do not help with loneliness, but sites designed to facilitate conversations can help with loneliness. Students who are feeling lonely might be encouraged to reach out to peers on such sites to create social connections.