2024/12/04 by Alexis Du, Thomas Renault, Du, Alexis +1
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · Social Sciences · #COVID-19 epidemiological studies #FOS: Economics and business #General Economics (econ.GN) #Media Influence and Politics #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2412.03217
openalex publication_date 2024/12/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
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.