Should social media be considered a risk factor for depression? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Mental health problems among US young adults are at an all time high, with many pointing to social media as a prominent factor. Carol Vidal, a Johns Hopkins adolescent and child psychiatrist, did a study looking at depression and social media use among young adults to find out just how big a factor it is.

Vidal: There's a lot of talk about social media causing depression and is this the cause of this mental health crisis? In reality there's so many causes for depression and we've always known that there's genetic factors that predispose you to depression, also environmental factors and there's so many environmental factors. So it would be hard to pinpoint one only but what is true is that it seems that people that use more social media tend to be people that tend to be more depressed as well. This is also a sample of mostly women who also tend to have higher rates of depression so that's also something to take into consideration.  :33

Vidal says her findings point to a need to scrutinize social media use among those at risk. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.