[hgsgm]

Or is it a proxy?

Suppose X causes inflammation and social media use.

Suppose you want to reduce social media use.

You look at this study and think I should reduce inflammation, so I can reduce social media use? How do I do that? By removing causes of inflammation.

The thing to be careful about is to avoid jumping to some medication or surgery that directly removes inflammation, and be sure to eliminate something that causes inflammation.

[cpncrunch]

I think we just need to ask: what are the most common causes of this type of inflammation? Probably depression, type 2 diabetes and heart disease. So, the options are:

- inactive people use social media more, and the inactivity causes inflammation due to heart disease / diabetes - depression causes inflammation, and depressed people use social media more - social media causes depression, which causes inflammation