New Study Finds Link Between Social Media and Adult Loneliness

Being friends with a lot of people you don't actually know on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok may just be bad for your health. This, according to a new study linking adult loneliness and social media.

Lead author Dr. Brian Primack was behind the study, published this week in Public Health Reports, the official journal of the U.S. Public Health Service.

In it, Primack noted that "while social media use has been associated with increased loneliness among adolescents, little research has examined this association among adults." He also wrote that it's not clear "whether it is better to communicate only with close personal friends or with people one has never met in person."

His objective was to examine whether "real-life closeness of social media contacts was associated with loneliness among a nationally representative sample of US adults."

The study follows a 2023 report from the Surgeon General that found that about half of American adults are lonely. Calling it an "epidemic," the report said the problem needs to be addressed as directly as tobacco use, obesity, and addiction.

How the Study Was Conducted

The study included 1,512 participants, all adults in the US, aged 30-70 years of age. The group was surveyed twice, once in July and again in August 2023.

Loneliness was assessed using the National Institutes of Health Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System's 4-item scale. Participants would also self-report their proportion of social media contacts they've never met in person, or "NMPs", against those they consider close personal friends, or "CFPs."

The researchers reportedly noted that about 35% of the study group's contacts were NMPs, as they reported on their engagements across Facebook, X, Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, and WhatsApp.

From there, researchers looked at the connections between NMPs/CFPs and loneliness.

The Study's Findings

The study concluded that while having "more social media interactions with relative strangers was linked to increased loneliness, having more social media contacts who were CPFs was not linked to reduced loneliness."

Per CNN, Primack is unclear whether the findings mean that those who were lonelier happened to connect with more strangers online, or whether connecting with those strangers actually caused their loneliness. Primack, however, said he believes both are true.

Primack also said that while having offline friends makes people less lonely, connecting with them online just isn't "the same." He compared online communications to eating apple cereal, versus taking a bite out of the real fruit.

"This flavored apple cereal will fill your belly, it still provides calories, and it tastes good," he said, "but it's not providing the special sauce that we evolved to need."

Co-study author Jessica Gorman also gave some insight into why communicating with more strangers online could have a negative effect.

"We know that social media interactions can result in idealization of other people's friendships with each other, which can exacerbate the effects of social comparison," she explained. "This idealization is possibly stronger when those friendships involve people you've never met because there is no personal experience to counter that idealization."

The study concluded that future research should examine the reasons behind the results.

This story was originally published by Men's Journal on May 7, 2026, where it first appeared in the Health & Fitness section. Add Men's Journal as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

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This story was originally published May 7, 2026 at 12:47 PM.