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Social media use has skyrocketed over the past decade and a half."I tend to believe, given my own work and then reading the work of others, that there's very little evidence that social media directly displaces meaningful interaction with close relational partners," says Hall.Growth in the number of people who use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat and other social media platforms -- and the time spent on them--has garnered interest and concern among policymakers, teachers, parents, and clinicians about social media's impacts on our lives and psychological well-being.However, during these same abstention periods, there was no difference in people's time spent socializing with their strongest social ties.Hall's research interrogates that cultural belief.The upshot?

Social media use has skyrocketed over the past decade and a half. Whereas only five percent of adults in the United States reported using a social media platform in 2005, that number is now around 70 percent.

Growth in the number of people who use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat and other social media platforms — and the time spent on them—has garnered interest and concern among policymakers, teachers, parents, and clinicians about social media's impacts on our lives and psychological well-being.

While the research is still in its early years — Facebook itself only celebrated its 15th birthday this year — media psychology researchers are beginning to tease apart the ways in which time spent on these platforms is, and is not, impacting our day-to-day lives.
Social media and relationships
One particularly pernicious concern is whether time spent on social media sites is eating away at face-to-face time, a phenomenon known as social displacement .

Fears about social displacement are longstanding, as old as the telephone and probably older. “This issue of displacement has gone on for more than 100 years,” says Jeffrey Hall, PhD, director of the Relationships and Technology Lab at the University of Kansas. “No matter what the technology is,” says Hall, there is always a “cultural belief that it's replacing face-to-face time with our close friends and family.”

Hall's research interrogates that cultural belief. In one study, participants kept a daily log of time spent doing 19 different activities during weeks when they were and were not asked to abstain from using social media. In the weeks when people abstained from social media, they spent more time browsing the internet, working, cleaning, and doing household chores. However, during these same abstention periods, there was no difference in people's time spent socializing with their strongest social ties.
The upshot? “I tend to believe, given my own work and then reading the work of others, that there's very little evidence that social media directly displaces meaningful interaction with close relational partners,” says Hall. One possible reason for this is because we tend to interact with our close loved ones through several different modalities—such as texts, emails, phone calls, and in-person time.

What about teens?
When it comes to teens, a recent study by Jean Twenge, PhD, professor of psychology at San Diego State University, and colleagues found that, as a cohort, high school seniors heading to college in 2016 spent an “ hour less a day engaging in in-person social interaction” — such as going to parties, movies, or riding in cars together — compared with high school seniors in the late 1980s. As a group, this decline was associated with increased digital media use. However, at the individual level, more social media use was positively associated with more in-person social interaction. The study also found that adolescents who spent the most time on social media and the least time in face-to-face social interactions reported the most loneliness.

While Twenge and colleagues posit that overall face-to-face interactions among teens may be down due to increased time spent on digital media, Hall says there's a possibility that the relationship goes the other way