The Fishbowl Effect (Facebook Expansion Study)
Early Facebook environment was fundamentally distinct from those of all other major social media back in the mid-2000s as well as thereafter.
The very title of Social Media and Mental Health (SMMH) implies that its specific subject — the effects of the Facebook expansion on mental health — is representative of social media effects in general. Indeed the authors argue this is so in the Discussion section of their paper.
The Fishbowl Environment
The authors, however, fail to realize that early Facebook environments were fundamentally distinct from those of all the other major social media platforms then and now. Early Facebook was highly distinct in that, for two years, the access to it was limited to college students and, furthermore, for much of this time it allowed interaction only with students on the same campus:
The above is Figure A.3 in the SMMH paper; note the assertion “Your facebook is limited to your own college or university” — implying one was able to interact on Thefacebook only with peers at the same college or university.
That may have easily produced a ‘fishbowl’ social media environment that intensified the already ongoing social competitions and comparisons on campuses, especially since this online world was invisible to those whose participation — even passive — might have tempered the competition: the families and most acquaintances of the students.
Indeed the authors themselves argue that “Additional evidence on mechanisms suggests the results are due to Facebook fostering unfavorable social comparisons” — as one would expect when social competition is intensified in a ‘fishbowl’ environment.
Temporary Singular Impact
Adverse mental health impacts on college students caused by such fishbowl effects, however, would gradually dissipate once Facebook access was opened to the general public in late 2006.
In other words, there are good reasons to suspect that if Facebook expansion did have some negative impact on the mental health of students, these effects are of little relevance for general impacts of social media not only today, but even back in the mid-2000s.
Conclusion
Any mental health impacts of Facebook adoption at colleges in mid-2000s may have been due to a ‘fishbowl’ environment that was unique to early Facebook and would be of little relevance to social media effects in general, be it back then or since.
Well-said.