Positive influence

“Social media can function as a tool for care when people use it to access or share information and resources related to mental health that they wouldn’t have access to otherwise.”

In one of her studies, Gravel-Patry interviewed 22 women to see how they were using Instagram to cope with mental-health issues.

“Instagram didn’t completely change their lives from one day to the next, but when it became a habit — combined with other practices like therapy and medication — it helped women get better,” she says. One of Instagram’s advantages is that the platform’s strong visual presence is comforting to users — text-based visuals can help break down concepts more easily.

“It also has what I call a message of hope,” adds Gravel-Patry. “You can use it to see people who are already a couple of steps ahead in their healing journey, and it kind of helps you see that there is hope in getting better.”

Najmeh Khalili-Mahani, BEng 98, MA 08, an affiliate assistant professor in the Department of Design and Computation Arts and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, echoes Gravel-Patry’s findings. “The benefits trump the risks,” she says.

During the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, Khalili-Mahani carried out the study “What Media Helps, What Media Hurts: Coping with COVID-19 with Screens,” which weighed the pros and cons of social media in users’ lives. Among the responses, her findings revealed that women and nonbinary individuals were twice as likely as men to turn to social media as a means of coping with mental-health issues.

“No matter how I twist and turn the data, it seems that people of all ages who are using social media are using it to their advantage. When it becomes a source of stress, they turn away from it,” says Khalili-Mahani, who has continued to collect data since the lockdown ended.

In her research, Khalili-Mahani has observed people increasingly using social media in ways that are beneficial to their mental health.

“People seem to create their own communities. It’s becoming easier to create these silos where people of common interest come together — that allows us to avoid what’s stressful.” She has also been researching digital citizen laboratories and recognizes the power of social media as a coping strategy.

With funding from the Fonds de recherche du Québec, she developed Play the Pain, an app that facilitates community-based research about chronic pain, allowing patients to share their experiences with each other and with researchers in the network.

As far as health communications go, she says that people still tend to be drawn to “canonical sources” for information, such as traditional media and websites like WebMD or Medline. However, a patient’s social media can be an important resource for sharing individual experiences of successful or failing health care.

Fostering ‘well-being, connections and community’

For Stefanie Duguay — assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies, Concordia University Research Chair (New Scholar) and director of the Digital Intimacy, Gender and Sexuality (DIGS) Lab — social media contributes to improved mental health simply by helping users find otherwise inaccessible information.

Duguay’s research focuses on the influence of digital-media technologies in everyday life, with particular attention to sexual and gender identity and social media. In her conversations with members of the LGBTQ+ community, she’s seen how commonplace dating apps — and social media, more generally — have become places to build friend groups, find community and meet potential partners. “Thanks to these technologies, they can get a bit of background information on people. That gives them more agency over the pace of the conversation,” she says.

“These advantages are often less talked about.” With widespread harassment increasingly routine on platforms like Twitter, Duguay says that many people are taking action by moving to the likes of WhatsApp or Discord, or by involving moderators who understand the needs of a particular community.

“We see people using social media in ways that work for them and help their well-being, connections and community. People are very innovative in this way.”

Despite the good that social media can do to help individuals with their mental health, Duguay says that there’s a long way to go to ensure that platforms actually promote and protect it. She also warns that society should be careful about blaming social media for mental-health problems.

“Harassment is a societal problem. Social media didn’t invent it. Yes, we need the platforms to do better at protecting users with better policies, but we also need things to continue to change in our society when it comes to sexism, racism, homophobia and transphobia.”

From screen time to real life

Without denying the dangers that social media potentially poses to mental health, Giuliana Cucinelli, BA 03, associate professor in the Educational Technology program offered by the Department of Education, believes that young people know how to “find balance” when they engage with technology.

“Students today are extremely open about their mental health,” she says. “In the past, it was very taboo to see a therapist or talk about mental health. Now, some of my students share that they are seeing therapists.”

Along with a team of students, Cucinelli — whose research-creation program focuses on the social, cultural and educational impacts of technology — developed an educational game, called Look @ Me, that teachers and students can use in the classroom to learn how to deal with difficult situations encountered on social media. One example asks students how they might respond to photos posted of an intoxicated person without their consent.

“One responsible reaction would be, ‘Flag and report a situation so it will disappear.’ You get more points for the more responsible reaction that will spare people anguish,” Cucinelli explains.

“We want students to leave the game having had the experience of exploring the sort of mistakes they might make in the real world on social media. The game becomes a safe space for them to really explore what their reactions could be.”

‘One piece of a larger puzzle’

In one of her research projects on social-media privacy, Cucinelli heard from youth who said that platforms like Twitter or TikTok could be helpful mental-health resources. “They may be too shy to discuss these topics with an adult, friend or even someone at school,” she says.

“Social media became a tool for getting information they don’t ask for elsewhere.” But when it comes to solving mental-health problems in the long term, social media isn’t necessarily a silver bullet, she adds. “It can potentially improve someone’s state of mind or prompt them to reach out to a family member or friend to ask for help — but it’s only one piece of a larger puzzle.”

Gravel-Patry agrees that social media should only be part of the equation.

“In your toolbox, you might have a therapist, yoga, a pet, friends, your social life — Instagram content can be one of these tools,” she says. But, she maintains, “Social media is here to stay. If we continue to see it through a panicked lens, we’re not really moving forward in trying to see how we can use it in beneficial ways.”