Speaker: Kristina Lerman, Principal Scientist, University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute

Date: Thursday, September 21, 2023

Time: 11:00 am to 12 noon

Location: 130 N. Bellefield Conference Room, 5th Floor

Abstract: There is growing consensus that social media has created a mental health crisis among youth, with severe consequences to their emotional well-being, social functioning, and physical health. This crisis disproportionately affects girls and young women, widening gender gaps and hindering progress towards gender equality. However, the pathways of social media harm are not well understood. In this talk I present evidence for a potential mechanism, exploring it in the context of eating disorders, an often-fatal mental health condition that includes anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorder. The rise in eating disorders has been linked to the proliferation of idealized body images on social media; however, the link between social media and eating disorders is more complex. I show how technological affordances of social media can create a “harm spiral” that traps people in toxic echo chambers that promote eating disorders. Specifically, social media makes harmful content easy to discover and its group dynamics encourage people to stay engaged, which exposes them to more harmful content that is deleterious to mental health. To address the youth mental health crisis, we urgently need to understand how social media harms mental health, and who is vulnerable to its detrimental effects.