IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-20-00070.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Model of Social Media Participation and Depression

Author

Listed:
  • Christopher Limnios

    (Providence College)

  • William Marquis

    (Providence College)

Abstract

We provide a theory which explains the link between depression and participation in social media. Opportunities to be captured and posted to one's social media randomly arrive and the participant chooses which of them are posted. Utility is a ``keeping-up-with-the-Joneses'' type. The network's socioeconomic reference point continues to rise as a result of participation in the network. Participants find it increasingly difficult to isolate opportunities which are above the reference point, decreasing aggregate utility.

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher Limnios & William Marquis, 2020. "A Model of Social Media Participation and Depression," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 40(4), pages 2994-2999.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-20-00070
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2020/Volume40/EB-20-V40-I4-P260.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chugh, Sanjay K., 2008. "Relative consumption benchmarks," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 100(2), pages 204-207, August.
    2. Bernard M.S. van Praag & Paul Frijters, 1999. "The measurement of welfare and well-being; the Leyden approach," School of Economics and Finance Discussion Papers and Working Papers Series 071a, School of Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology.
    3. Bill Dupor & Wen-Fang Liu, 2003. "Jealousy and Equilibrium Overconsumption," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 423-428, March.
    4. McInerney, Melissa & Mellor, Jennifer M. & Nicholas, Lauren Hersch, 2013. "Recession depression: Mental health effects of the 2008 stock market crash," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 1090-1104.
    5. al-Nowaihi, Ali & Stracca, Livio, 2005. "Keeping up with the Joneses, reference dependence, and equilibrium indeterminacy," Working Paper Series 444, European Central Bank.
    6. Luis Rayo & Gary S. Becker, 2007. "Habits, Peers, and Happiness: An Evolutionary Perspective," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(2), pages 487-491, May.
    7. Easterlin, Richard A., 1974. "Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence," MPRA Paper 111773, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Andrew E. Clark & Paul Frijters & Michael A. Shields, 2006. "Income and happiness: Evidence, explanations and economic implications," PSE Working Papers halshs-00590436, HAL.
    2. Yamada, Katsunori & Sato, Masayuki, 2013. "Another avenue for anatomy of income comparisons: Evidence from hypothetical choice experiments," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 35-57.
    3. Erzo F. P. Luttmer, 2005. "Neighbors as Negatives: Relative Earnings and Well-Being," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(3), pages 963-1002.
    4. Hajdu, Tamás & Hajdu, Gábor, 2011. "A hasznosság és a relatív jövedelem kapcsolatának vizsgálata magyar adatok segítségével [Examining the relation of utility and relative income using Hungarian data]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(1), pages 56-73.
    5. Walter H. Fisher, 2008. "Imports, Status Preference, and Foreign Borrowing," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(1), pages 1-20, February.
    6. Adrian de la Garza & Giovanni Mastrobuoni & Atsushi Sannabe & Katsunori Yamada, 2010. "The Relative Utility Hypothesis With and Without Self-reported Reference Wages," ISER Discussion Paper 0798, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University, revised Jul 2012.
    7. DECANCQ, Koen & FLEURBAEY, Marc & SCHOKKAERT, Erik, 2014. "Inequality, income, and well-being," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2014018, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    8. Köke, Sonja & Perino, Grischa, 2017. "For "better" or "worse": a direct approach to elicit preference rankings from life-satisfaction data," WiSo-HH Working Paper Series 43, University of Hamburg, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences, WISO Research Laboratory.
    9. Jessica Harriger-Lin & Neha Khanna & Andreas Pape, 2020. "Conspicuous consumption and peer-group inequality: the role of preferences," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 18(3), pages 365-389, September.
    10. Bruno S. Frey & Alois Stutzer, 2002. "What Can Economists Learn from Happiness Research?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 40(2), pages 402-435, June.
    11. Demougin, Dominique & Upton, Harvey, 2023. "Relative income concerns and the Easterlin Paradox: A theoretical framework," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    12. Fisher, Walter H. & Heijdra, Ben J., 2009. "Keeping up with the ageing Joneses," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 53-64, January.
    13. Lelkes, Orsolya, 2006. "Knowing what is good for you: Empirical analysis of personal preferences and the "objective good"," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 285-307, April.
    14. Chan, Ying Tung, 2020. "Optimal emissions tax rates under habit formation and social comparisons," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    15. Sébastien Rouillon, 2014. "Do Social Status Seeking Behaviors Worsen the Tragedy of the Commons?," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 73-94, March.
    16. Kaiser, Caspar, 2022. "Using memories to assess the intrapersonal comparability of wellbeing reports," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 193(C), pages 410-442.
    17. Jan-Emmanuel De Neve & James H. Fowler & Bruno S. Frey, 2010. "Genes, economics, and happiness," IEW - Working Papers 475, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    18. Mariano Rojas, 2011. "The ‘Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress’ Report and Quality of Life: Moving Forward," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 102(1), pages 169-180, May.
    19. Frijters, Paul & Johnston, David W. & Shields, Michael A. & Sinha, Kompal, 2015. "A lifecycle perspective of stock market performance and wellbeing," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 237-250.
    20. FitzRoy, Felix & Jin, Jim & Nolan, Michael A., 2019. "Higher Tax and Less Work: An Optimal Response to Relative Income Concern," IZA Discussion Papers 12468, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social media; Depression; Social networks; Facebook; Instagram; Keeping-up-with-the-Joneses; photographic filter; #nofilter;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior
    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-20-00070. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.