# The Hidden Toll of Social Media News: Causal Effects on Psychosocial Wellbeing

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.13487 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.13487/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 10 of its 70 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Jan 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [Mental Health Coping Stories on Social Media: A Causal-Inference Study of Papageno Effect](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.09885/) (2023)
- ["I'm in the Bluesky Tonight": Insights from a Year Worth of Social Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.18984/) (2024)
- [Mental Health Impacts of AI Companions: Triangulating Social Media Quasi-Experiments, User Perspectives, and Relational Theory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.22505/) (2025)
- [Bonsai: Intentional and Personalized Social Media Feeds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.10776/) (2025)
- [Does Positive Reinforcement Work?: A Quasi-Experimental Study of the Effects of Positive Feedback on Reddit](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.20410/) (2024)
- [Examining Factors Associated with Twitter Account Suspension Following the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.09575/) (2021)
- [Bystanders of Online Moderation: Examining the Effects of Witnessing Post-Removal Explanations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.08361/) (2023)
- [Examining Algorithmic Curation on Social Media: An Empirical Audit of Reddit's r/popular Feed](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20491/) (2025)
- [PILOT: Control Surfaces for Authoring Social Media Feeds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.19615/) (2025)
- ["Narco" Emotions: Affect and Desensitization in Social Media during the Mexican Drug War](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1507.01287/) (2015)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Social Simulacra in the Wild: AI Agent Communities on Moltbook](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.16128/) (2026)
- [Answer Bubbles: Information Exposure in AI-Mediated Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.16138/) (2026)
- [Masking or Mitigating? Deconstructing the Impact of Query Rewriting on Retriever Biases in RAG](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.06097/) (2026)
- [Algorithmic Cultivation: How Social Media Feeds Shape User Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.17010/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

News consumption on social media has become ubiquitous, yet how different forms of engagement shape psychosocial outcomes remains unclear. To address this gap, we leveraged a large-scale dataset of ~26M posts and ~45M comments on the BlueSky platform, and conducted a quasi-experimental study, matching 81,345 Treated users exposed to News feeds with 83,711 Control users using stratified propensity score analysis. We examined psychosocial wellbeing, in terms of affective, behavioral, and cognitive outcomes. Our findings reveal that news engagement produces systematic trade-offs: increased depression, stress, and anxiety, yet decreased loneliness and increased social interaction on the platform. Regression models reveal that News feed bookmarking is associated with greater psychosocial deterioration compared to commenting or quoting, with magnitude differences exceeding tenfold. These per-engagement effects accumulate with repeated exposure, showing significant psychosocial impacts. Our work extends theories of news effects beyond crisis-centric frameworks by demonstrating that routine consumption creates distinct psychological dynamics depending on engagement type, and bears implications for tools and interventions for mitigating the psychosocial costs of news consumption on social media.