A more concerning relationship would be social media use induces inflammation / inflammatory responses. Perhaps the study controlled for the inverse causation,

A more concerning relationship would be social media use induces inflammation / inflammatory responses. Perhaps the study controlled for the inverse causation, but maybe not. So if there is correlation, the opposite causation would imply a more pernicious outcome, combined with the fact that social media use is addictive. Some inflammatory event causing social media use like injury is a lot more limited than social media use by billions of people increasing stress. The short article didn't really assuage me of this. It shouldn't be debatable that social media use increases the sensation that you are being watched/looked at by more people than normal. It would be a given that this increases stress and tension.