Impact of Social Media on Mental Health of Teenagers

This report discusses the impact of social media on the mental health of teenagers. It includes a documentary analysis of articles such as “Impact of Social Media on Youth Mental Health: challenges and opportunities”, “Is Social Media Threatening Teens’ Mental Health and Well-being?” and “Social Media Use and Mental Health and Well-Being Among Adolescents — A Scoping Review”. The report highlights the negative impacts of social media on mental health and provides strategies for parents to limit these impacts.

READING
CONTEMPORARY
SOCIETY

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
DOCUMENTARY ANALYSIS......................................................................................................1
Article 1.......................................................................................................................................1
Article 2.......................................................................................................................................3
Article 3.......................................................................................................................................4
DISCUSSION..................................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Contemporary refers to the advanced and modern things that are related to the present
era. Contemporary society combines with the surroundings which effectively increases human
connections, allows new and innovative technological representations along with
anthropological and ecological transformations due to appropriate interactions among certain
factors which includes economic, cultural, social and technological changes (Marino and et.al.,
2020).
This report will illustrate the concept with the help of taking a topic i.e. “Impact of
social media on mental health of teenagers” into consideration. Within this study,
documentary analysis and further discussions will be taken place which helps to adopt clear and
detailed information about the topic with the help of taking similar articles for further reference.
The articles such as “ Impact of Social Media on Youth Mental Health: challenges and
opportunities”, “Is Social Media Threatening Teens’ Mental Health and Well-being?” and
“Social Media Use and Mental Health and Well-Being Among Adolescents — A Scoping
Review” will be chosen. The themes that will be considered includes statistics about social
media impacts, tips and resources to deal with such issues, how it impacts sleeping habits along
with their protection methods.
DOCUMENTARY ANALYSIS
Article 1
Bibliographic information
The article has been published in North Caroline Medical Journal by Jacqueline Nesi. It
had been published in year 2020. The author is postdoctoral fellow, works in Department of
psychiatry and human behaviour, Division of clinical psychology, worked at Brown University
and Bradley Hasbro research center at Rhode Island (Abaido, 2020).
Owner of news publication
The publications of the article belongs to NCMJ a journal of health policy analysis and
debate in March 2020. It is published through online mode and written down by a PhD person
i.e. Jacqueline Nesi (NCMJ. 2020).
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Aim of the publication
The primary aim of publishing this article is to highlight various impacts of social media
over the mental health of youngsters. The study highlighted the challenges that has been faced
by them along with potential risks over teenagers. Apart from this, within the article certain
benefits also introduced by the publisher which helps in order to create certain opportunities as
well.
Things represented within the article
The things have been illustrated within the article with the help of statistics which
elaborate that 95% of adolescents who are at the age group of 13 to 18 years have access to a
smartphone and 88% have access to laptop or desktop at home which shows negative impacts
over their mental health and does create depression or anxiety challenges (Shensa and et.al.,
2018). Due to this reason, more and more challenges and risks for youth mental health have been
involved at continuous basis.
Biasses of the article and their representation
In context of biasses, it had been identified that the publisher is highly focused towards
the impacts of social media over the mental health and status of youngsters but parallelly, it also
provides their emphasis over the information that had been shared by media over considerable
benefits and opportunities for teenagers of utilizing social media.
Suitability for academic study
The study is appropriately able to illustrate the concept in detailed manner as it involved
the facts and figures along with deep understanding about the impacts of social media on youth
mental health. Furthermore, it also represents potential risks for adolescent mental health status
of teenagers.
After reading above article, it has been share that there are other similar articles over the similar
topic which also focuses towards the teenagers and social media drawbacks such as access
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utilization of social media creates disruption of sleeping patterns, distracting them from their
studies along with expose them towards more bullying, rumours as well as peer pressures. As
per research it had been found that more than 15000 children in the UK spend more than three
hours a day over social media platform that harm them drastically. Those children are also
facing poor mental health issues along with their well-being.
Article 2
Information related to bibliography
This specific article is written down by Anne Marie Albano who is a director of
Columbia University work in Clinic for anxiety and related disorders and also a professor of
medical psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Vagelos College of
physicians and surgeons (Wong and et.al., 2020).
News publication owner
The article was published in Columbia University Irving Medical center on May 20,
2021. It consists of information related to health matters that arises because of the usage of
social media among teenagers.
Aim of the article published
The basic and foremost aim for publishing this article is to enhance a level of
understanding among people living in society towards the ways in which social media
continuously threaten and impacting the mental health of young people (Columbia. 2022).
Furthermore, the risks of cyberbullying, sufficient time over social media platform, impacts
which cause attention deficit disorders along with social isolation dangers.
Things involved within the article
The publication includes various impacts that drastically effect over the sleeping pattern
that also cause attention deficit disorder issues and challenges for the parents and children which
is very difficult to handle at later on stages. Moreover, strategies also have been discussed which
help to create a healthier relationship with social media.
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Representation and biasses within the article
The study is biased in a way that it illustrates some positive aspects of social media as
well which shows that the publisher have both perceptions in their mind while writing for this
specific document.
Suitability of this academic article
The article is highly suitable for parents as it helps them to identify the current cultural
differences along with their impacts over the mental ability of teenagers. In addition to that, it
also discussed the strategies in order to avoid harmful effects that may cause attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder within teenagers.
According to this article, it has been illustrated that there are multiple studies had been done
over this hot topic as well as varied newspaper articles also highlight the issues that teenagers
who utilize excess social media requires escape from their immediate physical environment and
are always feel stressed and lonely in their real life terms. A children is addict towards social
media when they use social media almost all the time, use it even while presenting physically
with somebody, affect their studies, lie about the time they spent and other similar kind of
things. Moreover, various studies also highlighted that there is a relationship between feeling
anxious and depressed all the times.
Article 3
Bibliographical information about the article
The article has been published by Changiz Mohiyeddini who worked in the Oakland
University William Beaumont School of Medicine, Alexender Lithopoulos who work in
University of Victoria and David Leiva who works in University of Barcelona (Aparicio-
Martinez and et.al., 2019).
News publication owner
The article had been published in Frontiers in psychology in August 2020.
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Aim of the article
The major aim of this article is to identify various aspects of mental health and well-
being which focuses completely over the gender, socio-economic status, ethnicity as well as
geographic location in order to identify impacts of social media.
Things involved within this published article
This study is based upon the research over a group of huge people through which the
publisher gives emphasize over the diversified aspects of mental health which causes depression,
and other health related issues among youngsters.
Biasses within the article
It involves a particular set of people of specified age group which have their own
feelings and views which might able to provide biased results while publishing the results. It had
been identified that the positive outcomes or impacts seems to be rarer while the major emphasis
is over negative impacts.
In the last article as well, it has been clearly identifiable that social media greatly affects
the mental status of children in most drastic manner. One study discovered that some social
media platforms were linked to both less amount of happiness as well as least life satisfaction. It
is all because of the fact that using continuously social media generates FOMO and generates a
feeling of dissatisfaction, inadequacy and isolation which is not at all good for the children or
teenagers.
Article suitability
The publication is completely able to present their views in order to define adolescence
and impacts of social media over teenagers. It does affect the mental abilities of young people in
drastic manner which causes varied health issues.
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DISCUSSION
With the help of considering all the articles that had been read in order to elaborate the
concept in detailed manner, it has been evaluated that social media greatly impacts the youth
generation as it affects their mental health which causes social anxiety and depression issues
within them. It generates because it reduces the face to face interactions and increases the online
or screen timings which currently act as a challenging situation for overall population. It creates
a feeling of hopelessness, alienation, anxiety, isolation and depressive kind of feelings within the
teenagers (Craig and et.al., 2020). In order to discuss the impacts of social media, in general, the
study involved certain aspects or theories in terms of agenda setting, cultivation of the
information, framing, uses and gratifications along with social learning as well as third person
effects over the publication.
Within each article, the group that has been highly focused are between the age of 10 to
20 years who are highly at risk of getting challenges due to spending high amount of time over
the social media platform and does affected by them. Furthermore, it had also been identified
that this involves various cyber bullying issue which causes serious implications if not resolved
at utmost priority manner. The more the children spend online time, the more chances they have
of being bullied or harassed by others and something wrong might have happened at any point of
time in their life. In addition to that, it had also been evaluated that it does create attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder within the children due to which they are unable top focus towards their
studies. This is specifically true when it comes over the gaming topic because of the gaming
programs are created in a way which attracts the non-stop attention of youngsters and affects the
reinforcement systems in the brain in a manner that they are highly stimulating and exciting in
nature.
However, the media plays a vital role in order to make the things gets changed and show
the picture which might not correct or in favour of the betterment of the establishment. In the
above considered articles, it had been identified that even after considering various negative
impacts of social media, the media people illustrate the potential benefits of utilizing social
media in most diplomatic manner for adolescent mental health of the children or youngsters.
According to them, social media platform have been used in order to create more and advanced
opportunities for promoting adolescents mental ability (Frontiers in psychology. 2020). One of
the major benefit that had been elaborated in front of youngsters and attracts them on highest
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pace includes maintenance of social connections with large amount of people through which
they feel more connected with each other. It helps to create new connections.
On the other hand, they also shape and forced in somewhat manner to the media to think
over certain negative impacts of social media over youngsters. This is the major reason through
which the media people also illustrate their viewpoints and show statistics which helps the
parents and forced the youngsters to limit down their time over the social media platform. They
do describe the statistics and mental health status over the platform which affects the complete
understanding of the parents as well as general people. The article highly influences the parents
as well as children by explaining various kind of negative impacts of social media which causes
various mental health issues such as depression, anxiety challenges along with attention deficit
matters within them (Dienlin and Johannes, 2020). Although, the study shows their biases
towards the information represented by the media people as according to them the social media
also have their own benefits as well which provides certain profits as well. This also influence
and affects the mental status of youngsters, and they somehow unable to fully accept the
concepts of reality that has been told by various studies. Moreover, various evidences also
available which effectively shows the impacts of social media in most elaborative and detailed
manner. Hence, the translation of basic social media research findings into the clinical and
policy application remain an area of critical and crucial requirement in the field which involves
and requires more studies over the similar kind of topics.
CONCLUSION
From the above report, it had been concluded that social media does impacts the mental
health and status of youngsters or teenagers and raise various issue which create mental health
challenges for them. With the help of specific strategies, the parents will limit down negative
impacts over children which includes set reasonable limits, effective monitoring, explaining
them about negative impacts rather than forcing them to adopt what had been taught to them,
encourage face to face interactions along with talk freely about social media platform as well as
their implications over health status.
However, still more research is needed as the digital media platform continues to rapidly
evolved as most of the previous studies were relied on over self-support measures of adolescent
media usage along with preventing them from negative impacts which cause mental health
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issues. In addition to that, future investigations also require which helps to move beyond
previous notion of screen time. As practically, it has been identified that the presence of media
continues to expand and grow faster and thus it will be essential to develop evidence based
approaches for encouraging healthy social media usage among youth. This will help to
effectively utilize these tools for mental health screening along with their interventions.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Abaido, G.M., 2020. Cyberbullying on social media platforms among university students in the
United Arab Emirates. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 25(1), pp.407-
420.
Aparicio-Martinez, P., and et.al., 2019. Social media, thin-ideal, body dissatisfaction and
disordered eating attitudes: An exploratory analysis. International journal of
environmental research and public health, 16(21), p.4177.
Craig, W., and et.al., 2020. Social media use and cyber-bullying: A cross-national analysis of
young people in 42 countries. Journal of Adolescent Health, 66(6), pp.S100-S108.
Dienlin, T. and Johannes, N., 2020. The impact of digital technology use on adolescent well-
being. Dialogues in clinical neuroscience, 22(2), p.135.
Marino, C., and et.al., 2020. Social norms and e-motions in problematic social media use among
adolescents. Addictive Behaviors Reports, 11, p.100250.
Shensa, A., and et.al., 2018. Social media use and depression and anxiety symptoms: A cluster
analysis. American journal of health behavior, 42(2), pp.116-128.
Wong, H.Y., and et.al., 2020. Relationships between severity of internet gaming disorder,
severity of problematic social media use, sleep quality and psychological
distress. International journal of environmental research and public health, 17(6),
p.1879.
Online
Columbia, 2022. [Online]. Available Through: <https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/social-
media-threatening-teens-mental-health-and-well-being>.
Frontiers in psychology, 2020. [Online]. Available Through:
<https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01949/full>.
NCMJ, 2020. [Online]. Available Through:
<https://www.ncmedicaljournal.com/content/81/2/116>.
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