New Study Looks at Whether Screen Time And Online Harassment Affects Suicidal Ideation In College Students

A new study published in the American Journal of Public Health looked at suicidal ideation, screen time, and online harassment among college students.

“Our study examined how college students’ lives in digital spaces relate to suicidal thoughts,” study author Dr. Seungbin Oh told us. “We focused on two distinct dimensions: how much nonacademic time students spent online and whether they had experienced harassment or other harm in those environments.”

The researchers wanted to determine whether each dimension was independently associated with past-year suicidal ideation. They were also interested in whether these relationships differed among cisgender men, cisgender women, and transgender and gender-nonconforming students. 

“Much of the existing conversation treats screen time as a single, uniform exposure, but an hour spent connecting with supportive friends may be very different from an hour spent in an isolating or hostile environment,” Dr. Oh told us. “We expected online harassment to be associated with suicidal ideation because hostile interpersonal experiences can undermine belonging, increase distress, and intensify feelings of isolation. We also anticipated that spending substantial amounts of time online might be associated with suicidal ideation, although we were less certain that time alone would remain important after accounting for harassment, depression, sleep, financial stress, and other factors.”

The research team further expected some variation by gender because students may use digital spaces for different purposes and encounter different types of stress online. However, they did not begin with a firm expectation that cisgender men would show the strongest relationship between time online and suicidal ideation.

Digital environments are no longer separate from college students’ everyday lives. They are where many students socialize, relax, explore identity, seek information, and build relationships. They are also places where students may experience exclusion, hostility, harassment, and exposure to distressing content.

At the same time, suicidal ideation remains a major concern on college campuses. 

“I was interested in whether our approaches to student mental health have fully caught up with this shift in how young adults live and connect,” Dr. Oh told us. “Clinicians routinely ask about sleep, mood, substance use, and relationships, but students’ online experiences may receive much less systematic attention.”

The researchers analyzed data from the 2023–2024 Healthy Minds Study, a large national survey of U.S. college students. More than 100,000 students participated in the survey, and approximately 47,000 were randomly assigned to receive questions about their time in online spaces.

The researchers used multivariable logistic regression models to examine whether time spent online and online harassment were associated with past-year suicidal ideation. The models accounted for factors such as depressive symptoms, sleep duration, financial stress, age, race and ethnicity, first-generation status, degree level, and international student status. They also tested gender interactions and conducted separate analyses for cisgender men, cisgender women, and transgender and gender-nonconforming students.

“We found that both the amount of time students spent online and their experiences of online harassment were independently associated with suicidal ideation,” Dr. Oh told us. “Compared with students who spent less than one hour per day in online spaces, those spending one to three hours had 29% higher adjusted odds of suicidal ideation, and those spending more than three hours had 45% higher odds. Students who experienced online harassment had 77% higher adjusted odds of suicidal ideation than those who did not.”

The gender-specific results were particularly notable. Among cisgender men, even one to three hours of daily online time was associated with 76% higher odds of suicidal ideation, while more than three hours was associated with nearly twice the odds. The relationship was more modest among cisgender women and was not statistically significant among transgender and gender-nonconforming students.

At the descriptive level, however, transgender and gender-nonconforming students reported the highest prevalence of both prolonged online use and online harassment. Their lack of a significant screen-time association should therefore not be interpreted as an absence of digital vulnerability.

“The finding that stood out most was the heightened association among cisgender men,” Dr. Oh told us. “Public and scholarly discussions of digital mental health have often emphasized girls’ and young women’s vulnerability to social media-related harms. Those concerns are important, but our findings suggest that college men may have a different and comparatively underrecognized risk profile. I was also struck by the fact that time online remained associated with suicidal ideation after accounting for reported harassment and several established risk factors. This suggests that the relevant digital risks may extend beyond explicit harassment and could involve factors we could not directly measure, such as social withdrawal, late-night use, passive consumption, social comparison, or exposure to hostile content.”

Dr. Oh believes the practical lesson is not simply that students should spend less time online. Digital spaces can provide meaningful connection, affirmation, information, and support. Instead, colleges and health professionals should ask more carefully about what students are doing online, what they encounter there, and whether their digital lives are supporting or undermining their well-being.

“Brief questions about online time, gaming, social media experiences, harassment, and sleep could be incorporated into routine mental health assessments,” Dr. Oh told us. “Campuses could also strengthen digital-wellness education and online-harassment response systems. Because cisgender men may be less likely to seek traditional mental health care, outreach designed specifically to reduce help-seeking barriers among male students may also be warranted.”

Categories: Addiction , Anger , Anxiety | Tags: screen time, college, suicide