Are you stressed by politics? Did the last election make you lose sleep, lose your temper, or lose a friend? If so, you were not alone.
For the better part of two decades, the American Psychological Association has documented a steady increase in the phenomenon “political anxiety” among American voters. However, research and reporting during the same period has mainly focused on political consequences of increasing polarization and division rather than the psychological consequences of the contemporary political climate.
As a political scientist studying how the public engages with politics and the media, I asked myself: What does it mean to live in a political environment that is highly conflictual, emotionally charged, and difficult to escape? And how does this environment affect people over time?
During the 2024 presidential election, I teamed up with three colleagues to answer these questions. our book, The Unsettled State: Polarizing Stress and Elections in Americapublished in January 2026, summarizes what we have learned.
While many features of the contemporary political landscape contribute to political stress, one culprit in particular is alarmingly effective at turning politics into chronic stress – social media.
Political anxiety builds quickly
We conducted four large, nationally representative surveys to track Americans’ political attitudes and well-being, one every three months through 2024. During our election-year surveys, about 4 in 10 American adults consistently reported that politics had caused them at least one significant stress reaction in the past month. These included non-trivial conflicts with friends and family, sleep disturbances, loss of temper, and an inability to mentally or emotionally disengage from politics.
In a country of about 260 million adultsthat is, over 100 million people who experience measurable political stress every month.
In just one example, at any point in 2024, about 17% of American adults reported losing sleep over politics. That translates to about 44 million people across the country. Sleep loss is not an insignificant inconvenience. Extensive research shows that insufficient sleep is associated with impaired cognitive function, chronic health problems, reduced productivity and one increase in traffic accidentsto name just a few.
Our findings indicate similar trends from the effects of lost temper, fractured social networks, and excessive political rumination. And while some degree of political stress might have been expected in the run-up to elections of high consequence, what surprised us most was how little these numbers changed over time. Despite a year filled with dramatic political events, reported levels of political stress rarely abated.
This stability suggests that political anxiety is no longer driven primarily by isolated moments of breaking news or election upheaval. Instead, it seems to be sustained by the environment in which people now face politics – and this environment is increasingly shaped by social media.
Because social media is different
Social media differs from earlier forms of political communication in a critical way: Content is not presented chronologically or editorially. presented algorithmically. Platforms like Facebook, X and TikTok are designed to maximize attention and engagementwhich means privileging content that elicits strong emotional responses.
In other words, content that provokes anger, fear, moral condemnation, and conflict is simply more likely to keep users scrolling, clicking, commenting, and sharing.
As a result, political information on social media is more likely to reach people through a impressed and emotionally charged lens from the information found through traditional news sources. And given the architecture of social networks, this content tends to reach users whether they’re looking for it or not.
Time spent online is stressful, but commitment makes it worse
Our findings show that even passive exposure to political content on social media is associated with increased political anxiety. But active engagement – like likes, reposts and comments – makes the problem much worse.
People who reported frequently encountering, commenting on, or sharing political content online consistently displayed the highest overall levels of political stress in our survey. Compared to those who primarily consumed political information passively and without engagement, active participants were significantly more likely to report losing sleep, losing their temper, and feeling unable to disengage from politics.
In other words, the more social media transforms users from observers to participants in political conflict, the greater the psychological toll.
A generation gap
These effects, although significant, were not evenly distributed across the population.
Younger Americans, particularly members of Gen Z, reported higher levels of political stress related to social media use than older cohorts. This is not particularly surprising. Younger adults are more likely to rely on social media as their primary source of political information.
For a generation that has never known a political environment without algorithmically curated streams, the boundary between politics and everyday life it is very delicate. Politics does not arrive at scheduled times, through discrete channels. Rather, it is interspersed with expressions of social identity, entertainment, and interaction with peers. And this constant exposure has a psychological cost.
Social media alone is certainly not to blame for the anxious and divisive state of America’s political climate. In our research, we identified a number of factors contributing to current levels of American burnout with politics, including sharp increases in partisan animosity and negative—often uncivilized—campaign tactics.
But social media stands out for how effectively it amplifies that anxiety – and that’s unlikely to change unless and until voters become more aware that their emotions and well-being are negatively impacted by the very platforms they turn to for information and connection.
