{"id":231431,"date":"2026-02-16T05:03:22","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T11:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/study-of-65000-college-students-links-16-hours-a-week-on-social-media-to-higher-loneliness"},"modified":"2026-02-16T05:03:22","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T11:03:22","slug":"study-of-65000-college-students-links-16-hours-a-week-on-social-media-to-higher-loneliness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/study-of-65000-college-students-links-16-hours-a-week-on-social-media-to-higher-loneliness","title":{"rendered":"Study of 65,000 college students links 16 hours a week on social media to higher loneliness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/study-of-65000-college-students-links-16-hours-a-week-on-social-media-to-higher-loneliness2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>More than half of college students are lonely\u2014and those who use social media the most are particularly likely to feel isolated, a study of tens of thousands of 18 to 24-year-olds in the US shows. Just 16 hours a week\u2014two or so hours a day\u2014on social media was linked with higher odds of loneliness, <a href=\"http:\/\/tandfonline.com\/doi\/full\/10.1080\/07448481.2025.2573108\" target=\"_blank\">reports a paper<\/a> in the Journal of American College Health.<\/p>\n<p>The study\u2019s authors said that academic institutions should educate students on the effects of social media use and encourage them to set time limits.<\/p>\n<p>Researcher Dr. Madelyn Hill, now an assistant professor at Ohio University, who led the study while completing her doctoral work in University of Cincinnati\u2019s School of Human Services in spring 2025, explains, We know that people who are lonely are more likely to become depressed. We also know that those who are lonely are more likely to die early.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More than half of college students are lonely\u2014and those who use social media the most are particularly likely to feel isolated, a study of tens of thousands of 18 to 24-year-olds in the US shows. Just 16 hours a week\u2014two or so hours a day\u2014on social media was linked with higher odds of loneliness, reports [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1495],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}