For many of us, a “like” on social media is a tiny blip of approval and quickly forgotten. But for people suffering with depression, that little thumbs-up or heart may carry more weight than researchers once thought.

A new study found that people with depression were more likely than others to change how often they posted after receiving likes. The more positive feedback they got, the more strongly their future posting behavior was affected. This finding surprised researchers because laboratory studies have frequently suggested that depression dulls the brain's response to rewards. In everyday life, the opposite may be true.

What looks like only a bit of digital approval may carry far more emotional weight for some people than we ever realized.

Researchers at Princeton University wanted to know whether depression changes the way people respond to one of social media's most familiar rewards — the thumbs-up “like.”

To find out, the researchers, led by Dan-Mircea Mirea, PhD, a member of Princeton University's Department of Psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, analyzed more than 17 million posts from over 7,700 Twitter users across three separate datasets between March 2023 and January 2026.

The posts were divided into three different groups. The first included 1,045 Twitter users who had publicly disclosed a depression diagnosis and 5,001 randomly selected users.

The second included over 600 people, ages 18 to 78, recruited through Twitter ads who reported how depressed they had felt during the previous weeks.

The third group included nearly 1,070 adults, ages 18 to 68, who completed a 20-item self-rating scale designed to measure levels of depression.

Researchers then looked at a simple pattern. Did the number of likes a person received on one day affect how much that person posted the next day?

Across all three groups, the answer was consistent. People with a depression diagnosis or more severe depressive symptoms showed a greater tendency to let likes influence their subsequent posting frequency. The finding held up even though the three datasets differed in who participated and how depression was measured.

The result? Likes appeared to have more power to shape behavior among people with depression. As Mirea and his colleagues wrote in the study, “Across 3 datasets, we found that depression was associated with a greater tendency to be reinforced by likes.”

The researchers also examined whether this pattern was tied specifically to depression or to other mental health traits. In the third dataset, the stronger response to likes was linked to what the researchers called an anxious-depression factor, which included depression, anxiety and apathy. A separate pattern of persistent posting was more closely connected to compulsivity and intrusive thoughts.

Did the number of likes a person received on one day affect how much that person posted the next day?

Why might likes matter more to someone who is depressed? One possibility is that people with depression may be especially sensitive to social acceptance and rejection; another is that those who receive fewer rewards or less connection offline may turn to social media for a dose of approval.

The study cannot tell us whether depression makes people more responsive to likes or whether being highly dependent on online feedback can worsen depressive symptoms. That's because the research was correlational, meaning it found a relationship, but could not show cause and effect.

There are other cautions. The findings apply only to people who post on social media and may not represent everyone with clinical depression. Depression was self-reported and the study looked only at Twitter, now called X, so the results may not apply to Instagram, Tik Tok or other platforms. The effects were also small. However, the researchers point out that small effects can matter when billions of people use social media.

The relationship between social media and mood may be less like a one-way street and more like a loop: Our emotional state may influence how we use social media; any rewards we find there may, in turn, shape what we do next.

This study adds an important wrinkle to the familiar debate over whether using social media causes depression. The relationship between social media and mood may be less like a one-way street and more like a loop: Our emotional state may influence how we use social media; any rewards we find there may, in turn, shape what we do next.

For someone struggling with depression, even a social media “like” may not be such a small, simple or fleeting thing after all.

So, the next time you tap a heart or thumbs-up, consider this: what looks like a bit of digital approval may carry far more emotional weight for some folks than we ever realized.

The study is published in JAMA Psychiatry.