Studies indicate that social media can amplify certain cognitive characteristics, which may be related to psychological disorders. The "Amplification of Illusions by Social Media" hypothesis suggests that some psychiatric conditions, such as borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia and eating disorders, may be aggravated by the digital environment.
Since the emergence of social media platforms, more and more human interactions have been migrating to the digital environment. Currently, more than two billion people actively use social media worldwide, and more than 3.5 billion have access to mobile devices.
In Canada, for example, 94% of adults reported having at least one social media account in 2020. In the United States, this number is even more significant among young people: 97% of teenagers access the internet daily.
Platforms such as YouTube and Facebook dominate this scenario, with 80% and 69% of American adults using these networks, respectively. Furthermore, the frequency of use is high: 70% of Facebook users access the site daily, with half of them doing so several times a day.
Social media has become not only a space for sharing information, but also a central environment for social interactions. Many users claim that social networks are their main means of contact with others, even saying that they “give” them a social life.
With the advancement of technology, communication formats have changed significantly. Whereas interactions used to occur predominantly face-to-face, they now occur through instant messaging, live broadcasts, video calls and social media posts.
This raises several questions about how this new reality influences human psychology and whether there are possible risks or impacts on mental health.
Unlike face-to-face contact, where communication involves facial expressions, tone of voice and body language, virtual interactions can occur asynchronously (at different times) and without the same physical cues.
In a traditional conversation, two people share the same physical space, synchronize the pace of speech and adjust communication based on gestures and gaze. In the digital environment, these exchanges are different: emojis, memes and short videos replace part of the physical expressions and create a shared virtual mental space.
Furthermore, social networks allow for the construction of digital identities that can be easily shaped and modified. Instead of a fixed identity, built over time in different contexts (such as work, school and family), in the digital world people can create and discard profiles according to their preferences. This allows for the existence of multiple versions of the “self”, adapted to different audiences and situations.
Another remarkable aspect of social networks is that they allow us to follow the lives of other people without direct interaction. Unlike a traditional conversation, in which active contact between two people is necessary, in the digital world it is possible to “follow” someone and see their posts without ever having spoken to that person.
This phenomenon profoundly changes the way social relationships are built and maintained.
To be successful in the digital environment, it is necessary to develop specific skills, such as the ability to understand and predict the audience's reactions. This process is related to mentalistic cognition, the ability to interpret other people's mental states, such as intentions, desires and emotions.
This ability is essential to create content that engages and arouses the interest of an invisible audience.
For example, to create a viral video on TikTok, a user needs to anticipate which topics will be popular and how to present the information in an engaging way. Since the audience is not physically present to provide immediate feedback, the content creator needs to imagine how it will be received and adjust their performance based on this expectation.
This involves a series of advanced cognitive skills, such as the ability to simulate reactions, predict emotions and adapt communication effectively.
The question that arises is: how does this new form of interaction affect psychological and psychiatric functions?
Researchers at Simon Fraser University, Canada, conducted a systematic review following a set of guidelines called PRISMA, which helps organize and report this type of analysis.
One of the authors, Nancy Yang, performed the search manually, without using automated tools. They looked for studies that linked the use of social networks (such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and others) with specific mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, psychosis, paranoia, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, eating disorders, narcissism, and autism, among others.
To do this, they combined keywords related to social networks with terms linked to these disorders. In addition, they checked references in previously published studies to find additional research. Both studies with data analysis (quantitative) and studies that describe observations without data analysis (qualitative) were considered.
The articles had to discuss the use of social networks in people with any of the disorders mentioned. Studies that analyzed only general use of the internet or smartphones, without specifying social networks, were excluded. In addition, quantitative studies were required to have a control group (i.e., a comparison group).
The search initially found 2,623 studies. They then removed 664 duplicate studies. They then screened the titles and abstracts of the remaining studies, eliminating 1,750 studies that were not relevant. After this screening, they attempted to access the full text of 209 studies, but 18 were not available.
Ultimately, 191 studies were analyzed in depth and, after another round of exclusions, 155 studies were included in the final review.
Studies indicate that social networks can amplify certain cognitive characteristics, which may be related to psychological disorders. The "Amplification of Illusions by Social Media" hypothesis suggests that some psychiatric conditions, such as borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia and eating disorders, may be aggravated by the digital environment.
Individuals with schizotypal traits, for example, tend to have exaggerated social cognition, with greater sensitivity to eye contact, a greater propensity to interpret hidden intentions in interactions and a tendency towards conspiratorial thinking.
These characteristics may be intensified by the use of social networks, where communication is less direct and more open to subjective interpretations.
The impacts of this new scenario are not yet fully understood, but research suggests that excessive use of social media may be associated with an increase in characteristics related to psychotic disorders, such as paranoia and conspiratorial thinking. At the same time, individuals with autistic traits may use the internet in a more systematic way, focused on specific interests.
The challenge now is to investigate how to balance the benefits of social media with its possible negative effects, ensuring that this new form of interaction is healthy and sustainable for everyone.
READ MORE:
I tweet, therefore I am: a systematic review on social media use and disorders of the social brain
Nancy Yang & Bernard Crespi
BMC Psychiatry, volume 25, Article number: 95 (2025)
Abstract:
With rapid technological advances, social media has become an everyday form of human social interactions. For the first time in evolutionary history, people can now interact in virtual spaces where temporal, spatial, and embodied cues are decoupled from one another. What implications do these recent changes have for socio-cognitive phenotypes and mental disorders? We have conducted a systematic review on the relationships between social media use and mental disorders involving the social brain. The main findings indicate evidence of increased social media usage in individuals with psychotic spectrum phenotypes and especially among individuals with disorders characterized by alterations in the basic self, most notably narcissism, body dysmorphism, and eating disorders. These findings can be understood in the context of a new conceptual model, referred to here as ‘Delusion Amplification by Social Media’, whereby this suite of disorders and symptoms centrally involves forms of mentalistic delusions, linked with altered perception and perpetuation of distorted manifestations of the self, that are enabled and exacerbated by social media. In particular, an underdeveloped and incoherent sense of self, in conjunction with ‘real life’ social isolation that inhibits identify formation and facilitates virtual social interactions, may lead to use of social media to generate and maintain a more or less delusional sense of self identity. The delusions involved may be mental (as in narcissism and erotomania), or somatic (as in body dysmorphic disorder and eating disorders, encompassing either the entire body or specific body parts). In each case, the virtual nature of social media facilitates the delusionality because the self is defined and bolstered in this highly mentalistic environment, where real-life exposure of the delusion can be largely avoided. Current evidence also suggests that increased social media usage, via its disembodied and isolative nature, may be associated with psychotic spectrum phenotypes, especially delusionality, by the decoupling of inter and intra-corporeal cues integral to shared reality testing, leading to the blurring of self-other boundaries.
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