https://journals.lww.com/co-psychiatry/fulltext/2019/11000/s...
But of course, an isolated, depressed, anxious child is likely to withdraw and spend a great deal of time online. Whether it's a symptom or a cause, or both and to which degree, seems unclear.
That said, just anecdotally, as a man in my 30s, I cannot look at the typical popular Instagram profile targeted at my demographic. It evokes horrible feelings. Jealousy, image insecurity, sexual insecurity, sexual frustration, FOMO, social status insecurity... all bundled up in a nasty ball. And quite reliably induced after ten seconds and three photos of inhumanely sexy men in implausibly photogenic homes that cost 10x as much as I'll ever make. No thanks. I believe that walling that whole thing off mentally, has been good for me.
Anyway in the name of research, I pulled some Instagram URLs from a Telegram chat with some friends. To their credit they mostly seem to post memes and jokes from Instagram, not Instagram models. But the first non-meme account I pulled up is a good example, actually: https://www.instagram.com/benjaminbenz/ (somewhat NSFW?)
Exotic vacations, mountain-top kisses, ATVs, cute dogs, fast cars, jet-setting, gym gains, beautiful mansions, fishing trips, big muscles, sports, a too-sexy boyfriend, and a good dose of almost-tasteful butts and some sexual suggestiveness. No cares. All happy. In love. Damn, I want all that. Why isn't my life like that? Sure, it's mostly fake. But good luck convincing my amygdala of that.
It seems clear to me this isn't random.
[1]: https://www.nrk.no/emne/trigger-warning-1.14739155
[2]: https://www.nrk.no/spesial/det-skjulte-nettverket-1.14739159
> U.S. hospitals going back to 2001 and were able to estimate self-harm rates for the entire country. They found that the rate for boys held steady at roughly 200 per hundred thousand boys in the age range of fifteen to nineteen. The rate for girls in that age range was much higher, but had also been relatively steady from 2001 to 2009, at around 420 per hundred thousand girls. Beginning in 2010, however, the girls’ rate began to rise steadily, reaching 630 per hundred thousand in 2015. The rate for younger girls (ages ten to fourteen) rose even more quickly, nearly tripling from roughly 110 per hundred thousand in 2009 to 318 per hundred thousand in 2015. (The corresponding rate for boys in that age range was around 40 throughout the period studied.) The years since 2010 have been very hard on girls.