Research Problem Statement
Ideal Situation
Social media (SM) refers to a variety of platforms for public discussions. SM websites, including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, are frequently advertised as a way to improve teenagers’ and other users’ mental well-being by eliminating loneliness (Akram & Kumar, 2017). SM, according to Akram and Kumar (2017), is anticipated to facilitate the sharing of suggestions regarding diseases, thus supporting users’ mental health awareness. As per Orben’s (2020) review, SM can also be positioned as a means of benefiting teenage users’ mental health by fostering social capital, a sense of connectedness, and opportunities for self-expression. In the ideal scenario, SM websites act as planned and fulfill all promises that they are designed for, such as addressing loneliness and reducing social anxiety by helping teenagers build sound communication skills. The ideal situation also entails the nation’s clear and detailed understanding of SM’s overall impacts on teenagers’ mental health and, therefore, the entire society.
Reality
Nevertheless, two interconnected barriers to the scenario above are present. First, there are suggestions that SM affects teenage users’ mental health adversely. Some adverse impacts include promoting depression and anxiety and fostering low self-esteem (Akram & Kumar, 2017; Orben, 2020). Second, society’s inability to fully comprehend SM’s impacts on the teenage population and take effective measures to advocate for making SM safer for the teenage population hinders achieving the ideal situation’s circumstances. Specifically, aside from the aforementioned negative mental health trends, there is evidence in favour of SM’s contributions to fighting social awkwardness in teenagers and providing positive role models (Akram & Kumar, 2017). Given the presence of conflicting findings peculiar to the topic, the global picture of how SM platforms affect teenagers’ mental health remains blurry and consists of mutually exclusive facts.
Consequences
To respond to the issue and fill the identified knowledge gap, the proposed study will recruit a comprehensive sample of teenage SM users without pre-existing psychiatric diagnoses [insert your city’s name]. The study will follow the participants over time, asking them to complete detailed SM use surveys and depression, anxiety, self-esteem, and self-image disorder screening tools every two months during a year. Based on the identified trends and SM exposures/practices associated with worsening results, the group will assess mental health crisis prevention solutions for the teenage population. The group will evaluate the feasibility of parent control/limited screen time recommendations, petitions for stricter censorship policies pertaining to SM, and other options. The failure to do anything about the gap will leave the negative reverberations of SM on teenagers’ mental health under researched, thus preventing society from responding appropriately.
Literature Review
The question of how SM affects the teenage population’s mental health, thus impacting society, has received much scholarly attention. As a suggestive audience, teenagers are often supposed to be adversely affected by SM in many aspects of psychological well-being. This literature review reveals the existence of links between SM and mental health concerns in this demographic group, but most findings and the effectiveness of society’s responses to the issue can be subject to criticism.
Depression/Mood Disorders
There are conflicting findings regarding SM’s direct relation to mood issues in the teenage population. As per narrative reviews, excessive SM utilisation can promote adverse emotional outcomes, such as depressed moods, in some subgroups of teenagers (Ivie, Pettitt, Moses, & Allen, 2020; Orben, 2020). Meta-analyses of RCTs suggest small positive links between SM use frequency, mood oscillations, and depression in adolescents (Ivie et al., 2020; Valkenburg, Meier, & Beyens, 2022). Nevertheless, such research does not demonstrate direct cause-effect relationships or take cultural and individual-level predictors of mood dysregulation, including temperament, into account (Ivie et al., 2020; Orben, 2020). Thus, SM and depression in teenagers require further analysis to establish causal links’ presence.
SM is likely to affect teenagers’ emotional well-being if exposure to such platforms is intensive enough. Based on cross-sectional research, teenage girls using SM for >5 hours daily get diagnosed with depression in more than 40% of cases (Ali, Al Harbi, & Rahman, 2018). In general, studies revealing SM-depression connections in the teenage population emphasise daily time spent using SM as a contributor to mood disorders (Orben, 2020; Valkenburg et al., 2022). In contrast, emotional engagement in SM activities and the size of one’s friend circle produce neither positive nor adverse impacts on moods (Orben, 2020; Valkenburg et al., 2022). Therefore, exploring screen time optimization practices can be promising to protect teenage users against mood disorders.
Anxiety/Loneliness
In some peer-reviewed literature, SM use is supposed to affect teenagers’ mental health, with excessive and passive utilisation associated with loneliness and anxiety, respectively. Reducing daily SM use to ten minutes decreases perceived loneliness in college students, including those in their late teenage years, with no prominent influences on anxiety (Orben, 2020). These findings might imply SM’s active contribution to loneliness in teenagers, but no research shows causal links (Orben, 2020; Valkenburg et al., 2022). SM’s roles in teenage anxiety are supposed to differ depending on usage modes. Specifically, teenagers’ passive SM use, including newsfeed/profile/image browsing without direct communication, is associated with more anxiety (Orben, 2020; Thorisdottir, Sigurvinsdottir, Asgeirsdottir, Allegrante, & Sigfusdottir, 2019). Conversely, the active or communication-based mode can be protective against abnormal anxiety levels by enhancing teenage users’ social capital (Orben, 2020; Thorisdottir et al., 2019). Interestingly, SM’s ability to affect mental well-being is predicted by users’ degree of emotional investment, with teenagers’ excessive investment being positively related to anxiety and sleep dysregulation (Buda, Lukoševičiūtė, Šalčiūnaitė, & Šmigelskas, 2021). The circumstances under which SM induces anxiety disorders and the sense of loneliness in teenagers should still be explored.
Self-Esteem and Body Image
Body image (BI) and self-esteem problems permeate the discussions of SM’s adverse mental health impacts on teenagers, but such connections are likely to exist only in specific contexts and for particular subgroups of this demographic. Overall, SM platforms are widely suggested to promote BI distortions and bulimia/anorexia among the teenage population (Akram & Kumar, 2017; Orben, 2020). SM’s positive link to low self-esteem levels and BI issues is actually prominent in female teenagers, with limited research focusing on their male peers (Buda et al., 2021; Choukas-Bradley, Roberts, Maheux, & Nesi, 2022). Other risk factors aside from gender include active exposure to pro-anorexia/pro-bulimia/thinspiration materials and image-based SM, such as TikTok and Tumblr (Choukas-Bradley et al., 2022). SM use modes can have a bearing on teenage users’ vulnerability to self-esteem deficits and BI distortions. Specifically, teenagers’ passive use of SM is hypothesised to promote upward interpersonal comparisons, resulting in envy and self-denigration, which is not the case for active communication (Thorisdottir et al., 2019). Considering self-harm risks, continuing to study the SM-related contributors to the discussed issues is a public health matter.
Broader Impacts on Society
The aforementioned trends cannot go unnoticed by general society, causing the problem’s intense discussion as part of the global mental health strategy. Noting SM’s explicit role in their unhealthy food consumption patterns and BI issues, the survivors of eating disorders advocate for stricter SM content control policies (Saunders, Eaton, & Frazier, 2019). Such calls for change can stem from various considerations, including teenage SM users’ increased suggestibility (Saunders et al., 2019). Overall, the banning of SM content deemed unsafe for teenagers’ psychological health permeates society’s response to the issue in question (Akram & Kumar, 2017; Saunders et al., 2019). However, the effectiveness of such solutions might be another research gap to address.
The problem also causes intense fears among the parents of teenagers, motivating caregivers to resort to control and restriction practices. Screen time applications and parental SM use control are gaining popularity, with some mixed results concerning their ability to address the prevalence of negative emotions (Buda et al., 2021; Van Wezel, Abrahamse, & Abeele, 2021). SM-focused screen time control measures are, however, widely recommended by researchers, with digital safety but not mental health professionals advising parents to monitor teenagers’ SM practices (Akram & Kumar, 2017). Such recommendations are, however, more pertinent to cyberbullying and academic underachievement prevention, making the mental health issue insufficiently addressed.
Finally, there is some evidence to suggest that SM affects teenagers’ mental health by increasing this demographic’s propensity to BI issues, mood dysregulation, anxiety, and other negative outcomes. However, the strength of such connections is still an open question, and SM use is not supposed to be disruptive per se. Overall, subsequent research is needed to specify the circumstances in which SM utilisation has the largest effects on mental health in teenage users and update solutions accordingly.
References
Akram, W., & Kumar, R. (2017). A study on positive and negative effects of social media on society. International Journal of Computer Sciences and Engineering, 5(10), 351-354. Web.
Ali, S., Al Harbi, H. A., & Rahman, S. R. (2018). Relationship between use of social media and depression among female teenagers in Buraidah, AlQassim, Saudi Arabia. Journal of Child and Adolescent Behavior, 6(3), 1-5. Web.
Buda, G., Lukoševičiūtė, J., Šalčiūnaitė, L., & Šmigelskas, K. (2021). Possible effects of social media use on adolescent health behaviours and perceptions. Psychological Reports, 124(3), 1031-1048. Web.
Choukas-Bradley, S., Roberts, S. R., Maheux, A. J., & Nesi, J. (2022). The perfect storm: A developmental–sociocultural framework for the role of social media in adolescent girls’ body image concerns and mental health. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 1-21. Web.
Ivie, E. J., Pettitt, A., Moses, L. J., & Allen, N. B. (2020). A meta-analysis of the association between adolescent social media use and depressive symptoms. Journal of Affective Disorders, 275, 165-174. Web.
Orben, A. (2020). Teenagers, screens and social media: A narrative review of reviews and key studies. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 55(4), 407-414. Web.
Saunders, J. F., Eaton, A. A., & Frazier, S. L. (2019). Disordered society: Women in eating disorder recovery advice policy makers on change. Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, 46(2), 175-187. Web.
Thorisdottir, I. E., Sigurvinsdottir, R., Asgeirsdottir, B. B., Allegrante, J. P., & Sigfusdottir, I. D. (2019). Active and passive social media use and symptoms of anxiety and depressed mood among Icelandic adolescents. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 22(8), 535-542. Web.
Valkenburg, P. M., Meier, A., & Beyens, I. (2022). Social media use and its impact on adolescent mental health: An umbrella review of the evidence. Current Opinion in Psychology, 44, 58-68. Web.
Van Wezel, M. M., Abrahamse, E. L., & Abeele, M. M. V. (2021). Does a 7-day restriction on the use of social media improve cognitive functioning and emotional well-being? Results from a randomised controlled trial. Addictive Behaviours Reports, 14, 1-15. Web.