Is social media responsible for the rise in mental illness?

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There seems to be a mental illness epidemic in the United States. Teens and young adults seem to have a hard time coping with life these days. Teens and young adults seem to take their anger out using violence. We have seen a number of mass shootings in public schools and elsewhere across the United States. Young people didn't seem to have the same kinds of problems 30 or 40 years ago as young people today. Sure, there was bullying back then and teenagers had the fair share of problems, but you didn't see constant mass shootings like you do today. Social media was not around back then. Many young people today are victims of cyber bullying. Could this be a contributor to the rise in mental illness and mass shootings? What do you think has changed in the last 30 or 40 years that has made people resort to violence?

It probably plays a part but I think other things play a part too such as the welfare state which encourages irresponsible and selfish people to have children in order to get benefits. I also think the fact that for the first time in history the upbringing or each generation is different.

Each generation before us claim that they had it harder but kids today can have a terrible time due to social media , you can't even fart without the world knowing about it.
I am of the opinion that social media can have a detrimental effect on the mental health of children.

social media activity does not necessarily cause mental illness but however tells a lot about the emotional and mental state of the person.
People with moderate social media activity have healthy lifestyles however if a person constantly seeks validation or admiration from unknown ppl through social media then it is possible that they are mentally unhealthy.
ppl constantly showing off, blowing their trumpets or discussing even very private details of their life on social media... from new haircuts to new husband/wife to even traumatic experiences like death, rape, abortion, violence etc only to gain sympathy and attention is red flag. These ppl can even be found to be pathological liars or even sociopaths in real life pretending to be angels/superstars on social media.when it reaches this extent it is a mental condition needing help.

Mental illness existed before written language. We're more aware of the existence of mental illness due to newspapers, television broadcasts and news on the internet. The media (television and the internet) has created a vast network that gives us information about things happening on the other side of the world as they happen in real time, practically. A couple of decades or a century or so ago, we wouldn't have known about an influential old man who died in China (random example) for weeks, months, years, the further back you go. We see the world as it is more than ever before, and it is full of sickness and mental illness and famine and death. It's ALWAYS been like this, but it isn't really worse (aside from environmental change following the industrial revolution; a big issue, but not the focus here.)

I don't think social media causes people to go crazy it just instigates it. Imagine if we had the social media of today back when we were growing up, 70s, 80s, 90s. All the bullying we endured usually was confined to school and social settings. Once we went home it usually stopped, and if we had mean sibblings we could goto our alone spot. Today the bullying continues 24/7/365.25. Everyone has a phone connected at the hip and in the face, every ring, ding and reply heard and has to be checked out. Im sure it must be really, really extra stressful for today's AS kid to keep up with all the added social interactions and mean, negative bully as.holes they have to deal with. If you could only get through to them to just ignore it and those uneducated bully asshats will eventually go away. Unfortunately, that has become nearly impossible to do now, all thanks to social media.

No your countries gun laws are the reason why these acts are able to be carried out. But... this is not a recent phenomenon in terms of rising social ills in U.S society. I guess you're too young to remember Columbine, huh? much of the same thing and that was 19 years ago.

You don't understand, this is just criminality motivated by both anger and even presumably boredom. It has nothing to do with current social media.

I started high school in 2004 and though social media was not like it is today it was still plenty enough to wreak havoc on your self esteem. The MSN messenger chats were the worst, you'd have several of your classmates talking sh*t about you and then they'd take the contents of the conversation over to Myspace or a blog to trash you more.