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Does social media have a negative effect on adolescent’s mental health?

Iris Manwaring

Brigham Young University- Idaho

Advanced English & Writing

Brother Leon

December 1, 2021
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Does social media have a negative effect on mental health?

Nowadays, social media is a major part of a lot of people’s daily life. It is something that

many people may see as a need. There are people that find happiness and joy from social media

as they see it as a way of being able to connect with others. On the other hand, there are people

who are completely against it and don’t see any benefits from it. Social media is a way for others

to connect, virtually, with others and keep up to date with what is happening in others’ lives. As

interesting and fun as it may seem to connect with others this way, there have been studies done

on how this can affect, negatively, the mental well-being of adolescents.

Depression

One of the main reasons why social media can be detrimental to adolescents is because as

Alsunni (2021) has stated: “Greater usage of SM predicts depressive symptoms1 and has been

found to be positively associated with depression and anxiety”. There could be many different

reasons as to why this has been found to be the case. Nonetheless, I believe that a significant

reason for this is because of how much social media focuses on the good parts of people’s lives.

Rarely, you will see people post or share information, pictures, or updates on the ugly parts of

their lives. Along with that, there are times when some can post things about how “great” their

life is when in reality, it may not be that way at all.

Additionally, it has been found that there is a connection between an emotional

connection and social media. Specifically, how adolescents seem to have created an attachment,

specifically an emotional one, with social media and the use of it. (Alsunni, 2021) There was a

scale made to calculate this emotional attachment that people have made with social media. The

name of this scale if “The Social Media Use Integration Scale’” or SMUIS, which was created

by Jenkins-Guanieri.
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One thing that is crucial in all of this is that it’s not only social media as a whole that

seems to have these negative effects on adolescents, but rather, the time spent on it. There have

been studies that focus on this key factor and there has been a great deal of findings that support

the idea of how the overuse of social media correlates with depression. For instance, Vidal et al.,

found that “Longitudinal studies suggested a reciprocal relationship between quantity of SM use

and depression” (Vidal et al., 2020).

In addition to depression, there are many teens that suffer from anxiety. This anxiety can

be caused by various things or aspects of life, but it has been shown through different studies that

it can derive from adolescent’s overuse of social media.

Self-Esteem

There seems to be a connection with how we feel about ourselves and the amount of

attention, specifically positive attention, that we get from others through social media. For

instance, personally I know many people who post pictures of themselves online, and regret or

don’t feel as good about themselves if they don’t receive as many “likes” or comments with

compliments on their pictures. This is something that we can all easily fall into. Vidal et al.,

(2020) have found that from various studies there has been a similarity in the finding that as

people get more likes, or what could be taken as positive feedback, on social media, they tend to

have higher self-esteem. This could be seen as a pro to social media, but what happens when

there is a lack in likes or positive feedback in general? This is when social media can become

detrimental. For adolescents it is very easy to feel self-conscious about a lot of things, and their

appearance is a big one. Therefore, it can really harm adolescents’ self-esteem if they are not

getting the reactions or feedback from friends on social media that they see others are getting or

that they wish they’d get.

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According to Steinsbekk (2021), it seems that the more the adolescent posts and gets

positive reactions from others, the higher their self-esteem will be. While on the other hand, the

adolescents that don’t post so consistently, and are only givers of compliments or likes on social

media, then they will grow to create an idea of what the “ideal” adolescent looks and lives like,

and therefore, their self-esteem will decrease more and more.

Dumas (2021) found that there are adolescents whom post or share certain things on

social media for the sole purpose of getting likes in return, which seem to increase their sense of

belonging. Nonetheless, even though this may seem easy and like the best way to boost up your

self-esteem, there is the possibility of having self-doubt or negative feelings about oneself as you

are doing things you wouldn’t naturally do for the likes on social media. Along with that, I

believe that as you do these things for the purpose of getting attention online you may find

yourself at one point lost and not know who you truly are because your whole focus is on who

you want others to believe you are, and at times it may not reflect the real you. This is an issue

that I have seen many adolescents face.

For instance, one popular technique nowadays, is that adolescents find themselves

editing their pictures to ways that make them look more attractive according to what their peers

deem as ideal. (Dumas, 2020). This is something to be concerned about as it can lead the

adolescent to do things that may be harmful to their bodies in order to get their bodies to look

exactly like the edited pictures of themselves, especially if they get a large number of positive

feedback on those images from peers.

Sleep Deprivation

This one may seem like a given, but even though we may feel that the use of social media

can have a negative on sleep, we need to think about how deeply it affects people, especially
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teenagers. On a journal published by the NLA Access Media Limited (2018), they have found

that around two thirds of adolescents, specifically those ranging from the ages of 11 to 20 had

reportedly not received the ideal amount of sleep and that about three quarters of these

adolescents spend a minimum of one hour per day. Additionally, one interesting finding that they

gathered was that it was mostly teenage girls who were more likely to be dependent on social

media, yet the oversue of it affects boys and girls the same when it comes to sleep deprivation.
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References

Alsunni, A. A., & Latif, R. (2021). Higher emotional investment in social media is related to

anxiety and depression in university students. Journal of Taibah University Medical

Sciences, 16(2), 247–252. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtumed.2020.11.004

Bettmann, J. E., Anstadt, G., Casselman, B., & Ganesh, K. (2021). Young Adult Depression and

Anxiety Linked to Social Media Use: Assessment and Treatment. Clinical Social Work

Journal, 49(3), 368. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10615-020-00752-1

Dumas, T. M., Maxwell-Smith, M. A., Tremblay, P. F., Litt, D. M., & Ellis, W. (2020). Gaining

likes, but at what cost? Longitudinal relations between young adults’ deceptive like-

seeking on Instagram, peer belonging and self-esteem. Computers in Human

Behavior, 112. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2020.106467

Lack of sleep due to social media impacts kids mental health more than actual apps, says study;

While the effects of social media on our health have been argued by experts in the past, a

new study claims that it is the lack of sleep and psychological stress caused by using

social media which affects kids more than the actual apps.AdvertisingPubli. (2019,

September 17). The Indian Express (New Delhi, India)

SHAWN PRICE. (2016, February 17). Study: Link between sleep loss and social media usage. UPI

NewsTrack.

Social media teens’ lack of sleep can cause depression and anxiety - study. (2015, September

11). Western Mail (Cardiff, Wales).

Steinsbekk, S., Wichstrøm, L., Stenseng, F., Nesi, J., Hygen, B. W., & Skalická, V. (2021). The

impact of social media use on appearance self-esteem from childhood to adolescence—A

3-wave community study. Computers in Human Behavior, 114.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2020.106528
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Teen social media addicts more likely to suffer sleep deprivation. (2018, January 28). Daventry

Express/Daventry Review (Daventry, England).

Tibber, M. S., Zhao, J., & Butler, S. (2020). The association between self-esteem and dimensions

and classes of cross-platform social media use in a sample of emerging adults—Evidence

from regression and latent class analyses. Computers in Human Behavior, 109.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2020.106371

Vidal, C., Lhaksampa, T., Miller, L., & Platt, R. (2020). Social media use and depression in

adolescents: a scoping review. International Review of Psychiatry, 32(3), 235–253.

https://doi.org/10.1080/09540261.2020.1720623