How does social media affect mental health?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: How does social media affect mental health?
Position‹2 of 2: Social media is bad for your mental health

This position holds that social media seriously harms mental health. It argues that the dopamine hits of likes and notifications make platforms addictive, and that they push users into constant, damaging comparison of themselves against the curated lives of others.

Supporting arguments · 2

Social media makes us compare ourselves to others
The way social media portrays the lives of others as perfect means that it makes us compare ourselves to the people we see online.
Social media causes dopamine highs and is thus addictive
Social media induces a chemical change in our brains, damaging our mental capacity over time. With every like and follow, the brain releases the neurotransmitter dopamine, effectively causing the brain to rewire itself to constantly crave social media.