Does Social Media Support or Worsen Mental Well-Being? What Quasi-Experimental Studies Can Tell Us

Join the Cyber Policy Center on Tuesday, November 14th from 12 Noon–1 PM Pacific, for Does Social Media Support or Worsen Mental Well-Being? What Quasi-Experimental Studies Can Tell Us, a conversation with Munmun De Choudhury, Associate Professor of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. The session will be moderated by Jeff Hancock, co director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center and is part of the Fall Seminar Series, a series spanning October through December, hosted at the Cyber Policy Center. Sessions are in-person and virtual, via Zoom and streamed via YouTube, with in-person attendance offered to Stanford affiliates only. Lunch is provided for in-person attendance and registration is required. This session will take place in Encina Commons, Moghadam Conference Room #119, 615 Crothers Way.

Social media platforms continue to accrue important roles in our lives. Popular discourse has discussed the impact of social media on a variety of outcomes, from political polarization to issues of social justice. Is social media good or bad when it comes to mental well-being? This talk seeks to answer this question through a series of quasi-experimental observational studies, looking to a population that stands to both benefit as well as be harmed online -- those who struggle with mental illnesses. First, through propensity score modeling of language change online, De Choudhury will situate how social support can help to reduce suicidal thoughts. In contrast, a second study will employ an interrupted time series and difference-in-differences approach to reveal the alarming ways online harassment can aggravate mental health outcomes.

Adopting a human-centered lens, De Choudhury will discuss the complex role of social media in patients' social reintegration efforts following a major psychiatric episode. Online social technologies are here to stay, but there are pragmatic paths forward that can amplify its positive uses while mitigating harms for those marginalized by mental illness.

About the Speaker:

Munmun De Choudhury is an Associate Professor of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. Dr. De Choudhury is best known for laying the foundation of a new line of research that develops computational approaches to understand how social media can inform us of varied mental health outcomes. As an interdisciplinary researcher, this work combines social computing, machine learning, and natural language analysis with insights and theories from the social, behavioral, and health sciences. Dr. De Choudhury has been recognized with the 2023 SIGCHI Societal Impact Award, the 2023 AAAI ICWSM and the 2022 Web Science Trust Test-of-Time Awards, the 2021 ACM-W Rising Star Award, the 2019 Complex Systems Society – Junior Scientific Award, and over a dozen best paper and honorable mention awards from the ACM and AAAI. Her work has been featured in popular press like the New York Times, the NPR, and the BBC. Dr. De Choudhury serves on the Board of Directors of the International Society for Computational Social Science. She has contributed to the Office of U.S. Surgeon General's recent Advisory on The Healing Effects of Social Connection.