Dr Amelia Burke-Garcia on How Social Media Impacts Mental Health

Dr Amelia Burke-Garcia is an expert in health communication science, with a focus on the intersection between digital media and mental health. Her experience includes acting as campaign director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the CDC Foundation's ‘How Right Now’ campaign, seeking to improve mental health coping mechanisms. She is also the Program Area Director at NORC at the University of Chicago, conducting numerous research programs. We met with Dr Burke-Garcia to discuss how social media impacts mental health and how we can respond to this

What sort of impact do you think social media has on people’s mental health?

Social media presents us with a lot of good, Dr Burke-Garcia explains. It can help foster new opportunities for learning, building connections and finding communities. This is especially supportive to those who do not know others like them in their physical communities, meaning social media spaces can be valuable in combating loneliness and finding support, she explains.

But there are also many negative implications of social media. The ability to subscribe and follow creators who provide us with information supporting what we already believe contributes to our confirmation bias, making it hard to break through such echo-chambers with alternative sources of information and beliefs. “These echo chambers can create environments that enable and strengthen biases, prejudices, and hate speech” according to Dr Burke-Garcia.

She goes on to explain that “more work is needed to understand the broader implications of this.” For instance, most research currently is limited to examining the effects of social media use on depression and anxiety, rather than taking a more holistic approach.

Are there any particular groups more or less affected?

There are numerous groups that are particularly vulnerable because of these echo-chambers created on digital platforms. This includes the impact of digital microaggressions and exclusionary attitudes against the LGBTQIA+ community, as well as the impact of hate speech and racist attacks against people of colour. This also includes social media’s impact on young people’s body image, although there is limited data on this subject, especially for young men.

What are some potential problems of the increasing presence of social media in our lives?

Dr Burke-Garcia emphasises especially the emerging privacy issues as social media continues to play a prominent role in our lives. This can come in the form of oversharing, firstly by young people themselves, which can land them in dangerous and compromising situations with strangers online but also in terms of ‘sharenting.’ She explains that ‘sharenting’ is an emerging area of research, considering how parents oversharing information and photos of their children affects those children later in life.

There are also risks associated with AI usage online, with people creating content or imagery as their own. This could allow people to use the likeness of an individual to make content without their consent, harming one’s self-image and mental health. For now, AI continues to operate relatively unrestricted, blurring the line between reality and the online space. “Who is authoring something and what information is true? I think it will be increasingly complex to disentangle those things, especially with AI.” She also emphasises the difficulty of understanding what you are being exposed to online, which is supported by early data on the impact of Instagram filters on young girls’ body image and the spread of misinformation online.

Social media algorithms create an insulated space for users. How do you think this affects people’s mental health?

With social media we have seen the rise in individuals being exposed to massive amounts of information. Naturally, Dr Burke-Garcia explains, people then rely on heuristics to make sense of such overwhelming amounts of content. These result in irrational or inaccurate conclusions, or cognitive biases. This means we tend to remember things better that fit what we already understand. This creates “a self-reinforcing cycle where we tend to share narratives that we like and resist information that doesn’t fit within our worldview.” So it is no wonder that such insulated spaces potentially aggravate risks of real-life violence, aggression, cyberbullying and hate crimes. And though this is happening now, it is only likely to be exacerbated with time, she explains.

One UN SDG is to improve mental health. Can you see social media as being a tool or hindrance to achieving this?

Social media can be a tool and hindrance in meeting this goal. “I don’t think getting rid of social media is realistic or feasible,” says Dr Burke-Garcia. And with the sheer speed of communication, it is very hard to get in front of these issues. But, she elaborates, the main solution we can implement is by considering “how can we use online spaces for good and how can we then fill in gaps where they lead to negative mental health impacts?”

Mainly though, the issue that we are facing now is transparency. For example, many young people are heavy TikTok users which, like other platforms, does not make its data easily available. Similarly, there has been a substantial rollback in access to Twitter data, with the researcher API going away from that platform. “We need to understand what is actually going on… some of these platforms are those we don’t have much visibility into, yet that is where a lot of impressionable youth are participating.”

Might policy changes or shifts on these platforms help support this goal?

This is a complex question, since these platforms are incentivised to bring in more users, which makes this “a conversation that platforms may not be excited to have.” Dr Burke-Garcia suggests this could be resolved by reframing the conversation. “This is an opportunity for leadership to stake a claim in this space, and for these platforms to ultimately be good stewards for their users.” In terms of policy-makers, some national power-structures might limit certain countries from advocating for themselves and their citizens, so it’s important that this becomes a widespread conversation, including research, policy and supportive resource aspects.

Interviewed by Nargis Babar