Study: Social media use linked to decline in mental health in the United States. Really!

How does frequent human interaction via social media compare to the traditional human interaction via humans in the pre-Internet and smartphone era?

I would say the study is flawed in so far as it concentrates only on college students and on the early phase of Facebook's expansion. I suspect other factors may have influenced the observations. What about the ubiquity of smartphones and their use? 

"Concurrent with Facebook’s meteoric expansion has been growing concern over the mental well-being of adolescents and young adults. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control, the suicide rate among 10- to 24-year-olds was stable from 2000 to 2007; it then increased 57% between 2007 and 2017. ...
“There is a lack of true causal evidence.” ...
The researchers paired the staggered rollout of Facebook in colleges with 430,000 responses from the National College Health Assessment, a semi-annual survey of mental health and well-being on campuses across the U.S. (The survey looks at other dimensions of student health, as well, like substance use and exercise habits.) The researchers found a significant link between the presence of Facebook and a deterioration in mental health among college students. ..."

From the abstract:

"The diffusion of social media coincided with a worsening of mental health conditions among adolescents and young adults in the United States, giving rise to speculation that social media might be detrimental to mental health. In this paper, we provide quasi-experimental estimates of the impact of social media on mental health by leveraging a unique natural experiment: the staggered introduction of Facebook across U.S. colleges. Our analysis couples data on student mental health around the years of Facebook's expansion with a generalized difference-in-differences empirical strategy. We find that the roll-out of Facebook at a college increased symptoms of poor mental health, especially depression. We also find that, among students predicted to be most susceptible to mental illness, the introduction of Facebook led to increased utilization of mental healthcare services. Lastly, we find that, after the introduction of Facebook, students were more likely to report experiencing impairments to academic performance resulting from poor mental health. Additional evidence on mechanisms suggests that the results are due to Facebook fostering unfavorable social comparisons."

Study: Social media use linked to decline in mental health | MIT Sloan Researchers found a significant link between the presence of Facebook and increases in anxiety and depression among college students.

Social Media and Mental Health (open access)