Social media and suicide: empirical evidence from the quasi-exogenous geographical adoption of Twitter

TL;DR

This study investigates whether the adoption of Twitter causally affects suicide rates by exploiting the quasi-exogenous variation in adoption driven by a major festival, finding no significant causal link after rigorous analysis.

Contribution

It introduces an instrumental variable approach using the SXSW festival as an exogenous shock to Twitter adoption to identify causal effects on suicide rates.

Findings

No significant causal relationship between Twitter adoption and suicide rates.

Twitter's geographical adoption was influenced by SXSW festival attendance.

The study controls for various geographic and socioeconomic factors.

Abstract

Social media usage is often cited as a potential driver behind the rising suicide rates. However, distinguishing the causal effect - whether social media increases the risk of suicide - from reverse causality, where individuals already at higher risk of suicide are more likely to use social media, remains a significant challenge. In this paper, we use an instrumental variable approach to study the quasi-exogenous geographical adoption of Twitter and its causal relationship with suicide rates. Our analysis first demonstrates that Twitter's geographical adoption was driven by the presence of certain users at the 2007 SXSW festival, which led to long-term disparities in adoption rates across counties in the United States. Then, using a two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression and controlling for a wide range of geographic, socioeconomic and demographic factors, we find no significant relationship between Twitter adoption and suicide rates.