The Effects of Social Media on Mental Health
When was the last time you scrolled through Facebook? Liked a post on Instagram? Opened a Snapchat? For most, the answer to this question would be just a few short moments ago. I would be lying if I said I didn’t take a number of social media breaks while writing this paper. No matter where you are in the world, you are constantly connected to family members, friends, coworkers, classmates, celebrities, and complete strangers through social media. This fact poses a number of advantages, but also a number of challenges regarding everyday life. Social media is rapidly developing, and it can affect the way we think and communicate, both positively and negatively. (Homewood Health, 2017).
Social media can have positive effects on mental health, as it opens up a whole new world. It allows people to learn new things and view the world from different perspectives. It is a platform where individuals
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(2017, March 05). Mental Health and the Effects of Social Media. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/nurturing-self-compassion/201703/mental-health-and-the-effects-social-media
Walton, A. G. (2017, October 03). 6 Ways Social Media Affects Our Mental Health. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2017/06/30/a-run-down-of-social-medias-effects-on-our-mental-health/#76c425a22e5a
Homewood Health. (2017). The Dangers of Social Media on Your Mental Health. Retrieved from Vancouver Island University: https://www2.viu.ca/humanresources/documents/DangersofSocialMediaonYourMentalHealthQ12017.pdf
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The female characters in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance, Zenobia and Priscilla, differ in their representations of womanhood. Zenobia begins as an independent character, whom later surrenders to Hollingsworth's control, whereas Priscilla is ever submissive to his desires. This determines how the male characters, Coverdale and Hollingsworth, view both women. Coverdale and Hollingsworth are first enamored by Zenobia's charm, but both fall for Priscilla's docility. Zenobia represents female independence and Priscilla embodies feminine subservience; the triumph of Priscilla casts the male vote in this novel unanimously for obedient women.
“Three billion people, around 40% of the world’s population, use online social media. That also breaks down to around half a million tweets and Snapchat photos shared every minute.” This quote was said by Jessica Brown in her article, Is Social Media Bad for you: the Evidence and the Unknown. As you can see, social media is used by a big portion of the world's population, and the effects of social media has negatively impacted teens, and population in general in a bad way. Yet many people still continue to use social media, even though it has negatively impacted many of those in today's society.
Americans today tend to believe that social media has benefited them to connect with others quickly. Nearly two-thirds of Americans (65%) use social networking sites, up from 7% when Pew Research Center began systematically tracking social media usage in 2005 (Perrin). Technology has contributed many benefits for our society to enjoy and one of this is social media. Social Media refers to an online application such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr, or Pinterest that people enjoy to share photos or videos. These applications can be accessed through computers, laptops, IPads, tablets, and smartphones. Today nearly two-thirds of Americans own a smartphone, and 19% of Americans rely to some degree on a smartphone for accessing
Why does social networking sites (SNS) become the huge place where people can communicate each other? Among many SNS, Facebook, whose number of users surpasses the most populous country China, is the most popular and fashionable SNS all over the world, and it enables people to communicate others easily and instantly (King, 2016). In the previous era of advent technology, the most part of communication had done with face-to-face ; however, as time goes on, communication style has moved from face-to-face to SNS. Nonetheless, more and more people utilize the SNS to communicate other people, some researcher described that SNS is associated with mental health. In the Behavior & Social Networking
The University of Salford in the UK did a study last year on social media’s effects on self-esteem and anxiety, and reported that 50% of their 298 participants said that their “use of social networks like Facebook and Twitter makes their lives worse”. (Medical Daily) The study also reported that participants said ...
Technology is a major force that has driven the discussion and raised awareness about mental health. The advancement of technology has contributed to changing the way the world views mental health as people have easy access to find information; they can talk, text, or tweet about it; and researchers have better equipment to conduct more searches on mental illnesses. In today’s society cell phones are used everyday and accessing information about mental health is much more efficient as opposed to someone having to look through a book and reading about it. Also cell phones and technology are the main source of social media, which is another factor that caused a major change in society's perspective on mental illness. For example, a huge trend on Twitter is the Bell Let’s Talk.
In the article “Could lots of time spent on Social be tied to depression? “, author Alan Mozes have talked about a recent research which was done to find relationship between social media and depression. The study had 1,800 men and women ages range between 19 to 32 years old participated. The main question for this finding was, is greater involvement of social media linked to depression or is it depressed people who are drag to social media? Dr. Brian Patrick have suggested three types of results which are expected from the study one of the strongest possibilities is that people who have depressive symptoms tend to use social media more often because they don’t feel the energy to engage with new people. The second possibility is that increased usage in social media use can lead into depressive thoughts. The last possibility is in which depressed people turned towards social media to make the depression worsen. This is a study based on association between social media and depression not cause and effect. Researcher’s had created a questioner that asked the participants the amount of time spent on popular social media such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest ,Vine and Linkedln. From this research it was found that on average participant checked in social media 20 times each week for over an hour a day, and 1/4th participants were appeared at high risk for depression. Along with this researchers have found that those people who are on social media the most are 2.7 times more likely to be depressed compared to people who are on social media least. In the conclusion of the findings Dr. Patrick have said that these finding do not suggest that every person who engage more time on s...
How the social networking influents young people’s psychological well-being? Since the World Wide Web appeared in the world in the year of 1991, the internet has significantly changed people’s life on almost every level. Especially when the social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, became popular during the last decade, people’s lifestyles have greatly changed by this form of communication, which consequently brings many psychological effects on the young people. As the result, according to the recent researches, the teenagers and the young adults in this era are bearing many mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety, and addiction, due to the social
Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are only a few of the most common words used in today’s language among children, teens and adults. Such words can be described as popular terms related to what many of us know as social media. In today’s culture, many teenagers rely so heavily on the usage of social media that issues once thought to be revolutionary are now taking place offline and online. In fact, several cases of mental addictions, depression and even suicide have all stemmed from the initial usage of sites such as Facebook, which are otherwise socially accepted as a simple means of communicating with “friends.” While social media does have its advantages, it can also be held responsible for several negative events in the lives of today’s teenagers.
Social media has impacted everyone that has used it at some point in his or her life. Since the world is increasing in technology advances, so is social media, which can be good and bad. Technology has made a huge difference in the world and definitely how people are doing things now. Yes, the Internet can be good for the majority of things we use it for, such as doing research, keeping in touch with family or friends who are far away, and saving time and money. Others like to take advantage of social media and use it in a way that can hurt people; it may not hurt them physically, but it can hurt them emotionally.
According to Tufts University social media refers to the means of interactions among people in which they create, share, and/or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks (www.tufts.edu). Current research indicates that there is a connection between increased social media use and deteriorated mental health. Unfortunately, young adults, the most active social media users, have a predominantly high risk for developing mental health issues, making this connection particularly concerning. Many lives may change to fit the mold of social media, and it may be consuming to the extent that one would miss out on real life scenarios in their immediate surroundings. It turns
Some of the effects of using social media can be depression, addiction, cyberbullying, and exposure to inappropriate content. One of the most concerning effects of social media is depression. When teens create an online identity, they often display an unauthentic self. This “other” self is often what the person wants to be. Having to jump from the online self to the real self can often lead to depression.
In the US, 6.7% of the population over the age of 18 is suffering from depression (Sunstrum 2014). In today’s society, there is technology dependence. Although social media can enhance learning and facilitate habits, it can also have a negative effect on the individual because it can affect their ability to form relationships.
According to the article, “10 Ways Social Media Affects Our Mental Problems,” Degreed claim that social media make us restless by “two-thirds admitted to having difficulty relaxing when unable to use their social media accounts.” Teenagers are always tired when they have to stay up late at night to catch up with all the news feed on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter that make them have no energy to go on the next day. Based on the newspaper, “Excessive Social Media Use Harms Children’s Mental Health,” by the Telegraph shows that “children who go on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for more than three hours a day are more likely to have mental health problems.” Social media can lead to bullying that affects teenagers mental health issue and being stressed. Social media have now taken a part of human life and some are addicted to the point where they can’t even live without
One of the main reasons why social media has positively affected our society is because of how it has made communicating with people much easier. “Today, four out of five active internet users maintain at least one social media profile” (Moe, 3). Using these websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and etc., people talk about everything with anyone from what they are planning to do, also what they are eating and much more (Moe, 24). Also we can also send private messages to other users of these websites about personal m...