Fig. 2: Percentage of participants who reported disordered eating, self-harm or suicidal thoughts in the past year, by sex and frequency of using any social media.

The frequency with which participants used any social media is reported as ‘more than ten times a day’, ‘between two and ten times a day’ or ‘once or less per day’, and the percentage of participants in that group who reported each mental health outcome is given in each sub-plot, with 95% confidence intervals. Disordered eating, self-harm and suicidal thoughts were assessed in the main sample alongside the social media questions (N = 4083) and included for those participants who reported them in the past year. Depression (N = 2991) was measured in the sub-sample with the Moods and Feelings questionnaire in the year prior to the social media measurement, and uses a cut off of 12 or more to indicate the presence of depression.