SaTC: CORE: Medium: Testing the causal influence of social media on well-being and animosity

科学家、政策制定者和公众反复提出的一个问题是，在线社交媒体的使用正在如何影响人们和社会的福利。这个项目考察了社交媒体对个人幸福感和社会态度的全球影响。该项目的目标是远远超越特定国家的趋势。该研究团队正在多个国家进行一项全球实地实验，以测试社交媒体的因果影响。这项实验鼓励大样本人群在两周内暂时减少社交媒体平台的使用量。与对照样本的变化相比，项目团队正在研究社交媒体的减少如何影响一些重要的变量，如个人幸福感和群体外的敌意。该项目涉及全球多个合作者，以翻译调查项目，帮助样本选择，并帮助管理实验。除了分析试验性治疗的主要影响外，该项目还在调查减少社交媒体的影响是否受到国家一级的一些变量的影响，如国家的民主实力。该项目产生的数据集将向研究人员公开，以便发表大量二级论文和替代分析。该项目将为有关社交媒体如何影响世界各地社会的重要辩论提供严格的经验证据，包括公民中的群体外敌意和幸福感。它将提供关于社交媒体如何在不同的文化或政治背景下影响人们的理论账户，也将为改进社交媒体及其对社会的影响提供实践解决方案。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

A recurring question of scientists, policy makers, and the public is how online social media use is affecting the welfare of people and society. This project examines the global influence of social media on individuals’ well-being and social attitudes. The project aims to extend well beyond trends in specific countries. The research team is conducting a global field experiment across multiple countries to test the causal impact of social media. The experiment provides incentives to a large sample of people to temporarily reduce their usage of their social media platforms for two weeks. The project team is studying how this social media reduction influences a number of important variables, such as personal well-being and out-group animosity, as compared with changes in a control sample.This project involves multiple collaborators across the globe to translate survey items, aid in sample selection, and help administer the experiment. In addition to analyses of the main effects of the experimental treatment, the project is investigating whether the effects of social media reduction are moderated by a number of country-level variables such as the country’s democratic strength. The dataset produced by this project will be made publicly available to researchers, to allow for numerous secondary papers and alternative analyses. This project will contribute rigorous empirical evidence to important debates about how social media is influencing societies around the world, including out-group animosity and well-being among their citizens. It will inform theoretical accounts of how social media impacts people in different cultural or political contexts, and also inform practical solutions for improving social media and the impact it has on society.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.