Social Media and IQ

An observation I have made over the years is that prolonged social media use seems to result in a decrease in intelligence. Heavy users of social media seem to lack the ability for critical, independent thought. They adopt the view of anyone who is a member of "their" tribe.

Although the social "sciences" are clearly incapable of the task, I would be interested in seeing several studies performed on social media users. The first would examine how IQ correlates to social media usage. I believe that such a study would find that social media usage is inversely correlated to IQ. A more in-depth study might examine how IQ changes upon starting or stopping social media usage. The second would examine how someone new to social media picks their tribe and if this process has changed as social media has evolved. My expectation is that today users pick their tribe based on who is most visible, i.e. who has the most followers, who is getting the most likes. Naturally this results in a feedback loop where a user's visibility increases exponentially. This also allows the system to be gained. At least a decade ago I can remember reading about buying followers or likes and today you regularly hear about large numbers of bot accounts being banned. It is highly probable that users are still procuring these services to boost their influence. Furthermore, it seems certain that governments have used this to push propaganda.