Posted October 23, 2022 | Reviewed by Abigail Fagan Key points - New research examines whether Facebook caused mental health problems in college students from 2004 to 2006.- The study found that when Facebook added a college campus to its early service, depression and anxiety increased among students.First, the design: This study looked at 2004 to 2006, the period when Facebook expanded from just being available to Harvard students to then being rolled out at an increasing number of colleges and universities.While this study didn’t include an experiment (the gold standard for establishing cause-and-effect), it was able to use advanced statistical techniques to check their assumptions about a cause-effect relationship.For example, psychologist Jonathan Haidt suggests that Facebook began to cause more problems after three changes to the site: the introduction of the feed–a constantly updating timeline of posts—in 2006, the addition of the “Like” button in 2009, and later the use of internal algorithms to show content that was predicted to drive engagement."