Time Spent on Social Media Literature Review 2022

EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON THE MENTAL HEALTH OF THE YOUTH
Knaggs Felisme
Monroe College
Professor: Dr. Altamirano

1EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON THE MENTAL HEALTH OF THE YOUTH
Literature Review
Time spent on social media
With the multiplication of the media devices and activities available to the youth, it has
becoming increasing challenging to measure the total number of time the young adults or the
teenage people spend over social media. The data collected from the non-profit organization
Common Sense with the help of nationally representative, mainly based on the survey over 2,658
people between the age group of 15 to 21 in the U.S during the tenure of 2015. This survey was
conducted in order to measure screen time of the U.S youth in the social media (Rideout, 2016).
The survey showed that the youth in the U.S spent at least 25% to 35 % of their day surfing
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tinder or watching other online videos in YouTube and or playing
video games. This intoxication towards social media or other internet sites among the youth of
U.S has several impacts on the mental and physical and socio-ecological development of the
youth in the U.S (Rideout, 2016).
Youth Activism through Social Media
A way by which the young population of the world connects with each other is through
the use of social media. In today’s digital era, the only form of human contact is through the use
of social media. Social media has turned out to be a major way through which the youth
campaigns for their rights. From the very popular social media campaign ‘Me Too’, this was
against the sexual assault on women to promoting the U.S. presidential candidates on social
media; the virtual world has been in the center all debates in the center of all debates (Enli,

2EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON THE MENTAL HEALTH OF THE YOUTH
2017). There were various social media campaigns in the United States that were in the center of
a lot of debates. There was a movement named ‘Occupy the Wall Street’ which were promoted
by innumerable internet users all across the United States (Gerbaudo, & Treré, 2015). All these
means bring about the collective sense of self among the youth of today. These social media
campaigns in a way shape up the identity of the individual. The things that they believe in and
support in the virtual world reveals their choices and preferences as an individual, these beliefs
reveal their behavioral pattern (DiGrazia et al., 2013). Although many have criticized the fact
that the activism that these young people show in the virtual world, does not translate to concrete
actions in the real world (Loader, Vromen, & Xenos, 2014).
Effect of Social Media on the Mental Health of the Individual
The use of social media not only promotes activism and starts the conversation regarding
different subjects like sexual assault and same sex marriage but also sometimes have an adverse
effect on the mental health of the youth. There are debates regarding the factor that social media
creates a negative body image in the minds of the young girls and boys (Ferguson et al., 2014).
The pictures that are posted by the celebrities on their social media pages are said to create an
unattainable body standards. Young boys and girls following them get the false idea of
perfection and when they are not being able to achieve this, it induces sadness among them
which if continues leads to depression (Ferguson et al., 2014).
Apart from creating a negative body image, social media also induces a lot of stress and
trauma because of the presence of cyber bullies (Goodboy, & Martin, 2015). One of the strongest
advantage that social media has is that it promotes anonymity, every user can write about anyone
and everyone in the virtual world behind an anonymous wall. The fact that everyone can post
online about everyone anonymously; this enables a lot of bullies to spread negativity throughout