Social Media & Well-being
Examines how social media use promotes or hinders user well-being through self-affirmation, social support, envy, and fear-of-missing out.
Summary
What you’ll be able to do
Define well-being and its multiple components, including positive (e.g., high self-esteem, relationship satisfaction) and negative elements (e.g., depression, anxiety)
Apply theories of human behavior to understand how social media activities can benefit or hurt users’ well-being, and how users’ well-being shapes their social media activities
Synthesize current research findings on the relationship between social media use and well-being
Analyze how characteristics of users (e.g., life experiences, personality traits), specific social media activities and information (e.g., browsing, actively posting) and social media design features (e.g., access to audiences) work together to shape users’ well-being
Evaluate the potential of various social media platforms to support users’ well-being
Source: UW Guide
Grade history
↗No recorded grade history.
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Prerequisites
Course mapSophomore standing
- Sophomore standing
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Prerequisite text tree
- Sophomore standing
Professors
Spring 2027No instructors recorded for this selection.
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Student experience
the class
One of the most widely debated and consequential issues of our time is how social media use affects users' well-being. Examine the ways in which social media use can promote well-being (e.g., by being a source of self-affirmation, social support, and social capital) and hinder it (e.g., by provoking envy and fear-of-missing out). Special attention is paid to how users' well-being deficits (e.g., low self-esteem, depression, anxiety) prompt them to use social media in beneficial or harmful ways.
difficulty & workload
No workload feedback recorded.
Topics
- Promotion and hindrance of well-being via social media
- Well-being deficits prompting social media use
- Theories of human behavior and social media activities
- User characteristics, activities, and platform design features
Skills
- Defining well-being and its components
- Applying theories of human behavior to social media use
- Synthesizing research findings on social media and well-being
- Analyzing user characteristics, activities, and design features
- Evaluating social media platforms for supporting well-being
Grades
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Catalog & offerings
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Explore recorded gradesRecorded 2026-10-14
Model outputs & technical records
LLM outputs across runs
Full model traces
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Model & dataset provenance
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"output_id": "425397a14d8e40bbdacb6e72ab4b7e6070097019240d7b5f9a41e571e2f2d257",
"requirements_status": "valid",
"dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
"observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
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