Is social media making you more irritable? According to research led by Northeastern University professor David Lazer, the answer is yes — but with some caveats. The study, published this year in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), found that social media use is correlated with higher rates of irritability — being prone to anger — among a broad swath of U.S. adults.
“Our results suggest an association between high levels of social media use, particularly posting on social media, and irritability among U.S. adults,” researchers wrote. “The implications of this irritability and the potential for interventions to address this association require additional investigation.”
