Warning – the Negative Effects of Facebook ARE Real

By Sheri Jacobson, reviewed and updated September 2026 (originally published 2014)

Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning – released October 2026, and the companion piece to his 2010 film The Social Network – returns to the subject of Facebook. Where the first film told the story of Facebook’s founding, this one tells the story of its reckoning: how a young Facebook engineer, Frances Haugen, went to the Wall Street Journal with internal company research showing the platform’s own staff knew how much harm it was doing – particularly to teenage girls’ mental health and body image.

It’s a useful moment to revisit a question we first asked back in 2014, not long after Facebook turned ten and had already overtaken MySpace and Bebo to become the dominant social network on the planet: what does the research actually say about what Facebook does to our minds and moods? A decade on, and with Facebook’s own internal documents now part of the public record, the picture is clearer – and more sobering – than it was then.

What the early research found

It’s well established that new habits change us – the brain is plastic, and adapts to whatever environment and experience it’s given. So it was only a matter of time before a habit as widespread as social media use started showing up in psychological research, for better and for worse.

The early findings were fairly encouraging. A 2009 Cornell University study of 63 students found that spending time on Facebook, particularly editing one’s own profile, was linked to a rise in self-esteem.

photo by taylor smith

But the research that followed told a more complicated story. A study led by the University of Strathclyde with the Universities of Iowa and Ohio, looking at 881 female university students in America, found that the more time women spent looking at other people’s photos and posts, the worse they felt about their own appearance. A 2011 University of Gothenburg study of just over a thousand people found much the same pattern more broadly: as Facebook use went up, self-esteem went down, with women more likely than men to report feeling dissatisfied with their lives.

Separately, research has found a significant relationship between Facebook addiction specifically, as opposed to ordinary use, and low self-esteem, depression, and reduced social skills – with some people substituting cyber interaction for human interaction in a way that fails to satisfy the deeper need to belong.

It wasn’t only about self-esteem, either. A 2013 University of Michigan study tracked 82 young adults five times a day for two weeks, measuring both moment-to-moment mood and overall life satisfaction. The more people used Facebook, the worse they tended to feel in the moment – and the more they used it over the full two weeks, the more negative they felt about their lives overall. In-person interaction, by contrast, reliably left people feeling better.

There are also documented, if less common, cases of Facebook being used for cyberbullying, particularly targeting young adolescents, which can lead to depression and, in extreme cases, suicide. These incidents are serious, but they’re the exception rather than the norm for the majority of Facebook users.

What the Facebook Files added

Everything above was already known by 2014. What changed in 2021 – and what The Social Reckoning dramatises – is that Frances Haugen showed the world Facebook wasn’t just a subject of external research. It was doing its own, and not publishing what it found.

By: Kevin Dooley

The documents she took to the Wall Street Journal included Facebook’s internal study on teen girls and Instagram, now part of the same parent company, Meta. It put things in stark terms: the company’s own researchers had found Instagram made body-image issues worse for a meaningful share of teen girls, and that the app’s built-in social comparison was worse than on competing platforms. Other internal figures cited in the leaked material suggested that a notable minority of teen girls linked their Instagram use to worsening suicidal thoughts or worsening eating disorder symptoms.

It’s worth being precise about what this data does and doesn’t show, though. Journalists and researchers who scrutinised the leaked slides afterwards pointed out that the widely-quoted “30%” figure came from a small, self-selected subset of respondents who had already reported body image concerns – not a representative sample of teen girls generally. The underlying studies were opinion surveys, not the kind of peer-reviewed, controlled research that would settle the question scientifically. That doesn’t make the findings meaningless – a company sitting on evidence that its own product might be worsening some users’ mental health, and not acting on it, is newsworthy regardless of the sample size. But the honest picture is more nuanced than the headlines: the relationship between social media and mental health, particularly in teenagers, remains genuinely debated among researchers, even after the Facebook Files.

5 reasons Facebook (or social media generally) can be good for your mood

1. Less loneliness for some groups. Older adults in particular have reported that going online has helped curb isolation, with health bodies actively encouraging seniors to use platforms like Facebook to reconnect with old friends and make new ones.

2. Keeping families and friends connected. As more people move abroad for work or relationships, Facebook’s easy sharing of photos and daily life has made it simpler for separated families to stay in touch than letters or occasional emails ever did, offering emotional support during hard times through a quick, accessible channel. It’s also been found to ease the specific homesickness that comes with moving away from a close community – research points to university students living away from home for the first time as a group who benefit particularly from this.

By: Randy Greve

3. A boost to self-esteem for some entrepreneurs. Facebook has helped many small businesses grow, and for “mompreneurs” running businesses from home, it’s also become a source of peer support and community, not just clients.

4. Support for introverts. Research has found that introverts often use Facebook to make up for a lack of face-to-face social contact, taking advantage of the lower pressure of written, asynchronous communication.

5. A tool in some mental health treatment. One 2014 study of 60 patients with treatment-resistant depression found greater improvement among those who used a private Facebook support group for an hour a day over three months, particularly when their psychiatrist was part of the group. There’s a documented correlation more broadly between social media use and psychological wellbeing specifically for people who start out with low self-esteem and low life satisfaction – and status updates themselves can be revealing: research has found that university students commonly express symptoms associated with depression through what they post, meaning that, used thoughtfully, Facebook activity can sometimes be an early signal to friends, family or clinicians that someone needs support.

7 negative effects worth taking seriously

1. Facebook can also increase loneliness. As sociologist Sherry Turkle has argued, swapping real conversation for photo-and-chat exchanges can leave people with the appearance of many friends while actually feeling more alone.

2. It can make us lazier about relating to each other. Screen-based contact is easy to default to instead of meeting in person – a habit some researchers worry future generations may come to see as strange as we now see going without convenience food. That said, research on heavy internet users generally suggests they’re using social networking to maintain long-distance bonds, not to substitute for in-person relationships altogether.

3. It pulls us out of the present moment. Being preoccupied with capturing something to post can mean missing the experience itself – part of why practices like mindfulness, which trains attention on the present, have grown alongside social media use.

4. It can shorten attention spans. Studies have found that students who check Facebook even briefly during a study session tend to perform worse academically than those who don’t.

5. It may encourage narcissistic tendencies, particularly in teenagers – though it’s still unclear whether Facebook creates this tendency or simply attracts people who already have it.

By: istolethetv

6. It can fuel jealousy and distrust in relationships. Research has linked Facebook use to increased romantic jealousy, particularly among people who already felt insecure or anxious about their relationship.

7. It’s genuinely addictive. Like most things that offer a distraction from stress or emotional pain, Facebook can be hard to put down – even when the scrolling itself becomes a source of stress.

The verdict, a decade on

The core lesson from 2014 still holds, and The Social Reckoning only sharpens it: humans need connection, and for some people and some uses, Facebook genuinely provides it. But unlike in-person contact, more Facebook doesn’t reliably make us feel better – for many people, it does the opposite, and the company’s own internal research suggests it knew this about at least some of its most vulnerable users.

What’s changed since 2014 isn’t the underlying psychology so much as the evidence base and the public conversation. We now have both academic research and the platform’s own internal data pointing in a similar direction, alongside a genuine scientific debate about how large and how causal these effects really are. The most useful response probably isn’t panic, but the same thing we suggested a decade ago: moderation, awareness of how a session of scrolling actually leaves you feeling, and honesty with yourself about whether your own use is closer to the “5 positives” above or the “7 negatives.”

If Facebook, Instagram, or any other social platform seems to be affecting your mood, self-esteem, or body image more than you’d like, that’s something worth talking through with a therapist – not something to just try to muscle through alone.

Sheri Jacobson is the founder and clinical director of Harley Therapy, and a reviewer across Harley Therapy’s blog content.