There are a billion people using social networking sites daily. Yet, whether this influences well-being is still not absolutely known. After analyzing multiple studies containing mixed results, it has become evident that this topic is a prosperous area that produces mixed results. Whether or not social media affects ones well-being simply relies on the context that the outlet is being used for. There are both progressive and harmful effects that can result from using social media. Overall, social networking sites are a great resource for fulfilling the human need for social connection. When it comes to enriching well-being, there are similar findings that may challenge it.
Introduction
Social media is often times used as a way of alienating oneself from the real world. A lot of people look to social media when they want to escape or unwind. When people feel anxious from work, school or even from something going on at home, they often times choose to close themselves off in the world of social media. Is this relieving their anxiety or worsening it? People of all ages claim to habitually browse the web, keep up with friends through social media, vent about inconveniences via Facebook, and so on. Is this reliance on social media healthy? How does the use of social networking sites influence well-being? Due to the fact many people use social media on an every day basis, it is important to inspect how this everyday use affects ones mental and emotional health. The overall use of social networking sites and mental health is a flourishing area that produces mixed results. There have been both positive and negative results stating that social media can actually benefit people and be a good source of relief on ones stress but if people abuse the amount of time they spend on social media, mental health can get problematic.
Literature Review
According to an article posted in April of 2018, the relationship between social networking sites and mental health may be distinctive by age. Overall, the age range of Facebook users is very diverse and its been shown that users of all ages tend to compare themselves with others on social media. Adults who compare themselves with the people they see online as having a more successful and privileged life tend to have negative consequences towards their mental and emotional self. This is a form of self-comparison and adults are doing it without even noticing it. When adults log in and begin to compare their life with the lives of their peers that they see online, they begin to lower their self-esteem. If a woman at the age of 35 checks in on her high school friends online and sees that all of them are married and having children while she just got into her first serious relationship, this may cause her to overthink her life and trigger her mental stress. Situations like this are very common with adults. On the other hand, it has been found that college students tend to benefit a little more when it comes social networking sites. Indeed, college students do tend to self compare themselves on social media as well but they are not as worried about their biological clock as older adults are. College students tend to use Facebook as more of a way to openly talk about their feelings and even discuss the topic of mental health on a public level. This is why the article claims that “social networking sites could be an innovative avenue for combatting stigma surrounding mental health conditions (Moreno, 2011, p. 447).” Now although this is not always the case, adults typically feel more pressure from social media to build their life and be successful, while teenagers are using the same platform they are but to simply vent about the emotions they are feeling. Adults and teenagers are not divided into groups of who benefits from social media use as a whole and who doesn’t, adults may benefit more from certain uses of social media than teenagers do and vice versa. There are also intended uses from social media platforms that all age groups benefit from. “Both teenagers and adults use social media to help build and maintain social relationships (Hardy & Castonguay, 2018, p. 282).” It gives both age groups the feeling that they belong which helps explain the finding that the amount of Facebook friends someone has will lead to an increase in not only their social attractiveness but also their overall life satisfaction. When faced with evidence that people with more social support have stronger mental health, we note that a large amount of social support comes from the people we connect with online. “Social networking sites have a strong potential to help younger adults cope with their stressors (Hardy & Castonguay, 2018, p. 283).” When young adults specifically are given positive feedback about the things they are doing or the products they are using they tend to show more value for others’ opinions. Young adults like to actively participate and contribute to social media and prefer technology as their main source of staying connected. Avoiding social isolation is important for the mental health of young adults, which is why embracing social media as a way of interacting with others is thought to be very beneficial. Middle-aged adults are also very active on social networking sites. Unlike young adults, they do not get as much social support from online interactions but they tend to use social media as more of a way of socializing and they certainly do not vent their grievances online as much as young adults do. Mental health is mostly impacted by trust in this age therefore it is not rare for them to find discomfort when venting on social media due to the fact it lacks face-to-face interaction meaning it does not carry a strong sense of trust. Therefore, it is predicted that the use of social networking sites play a diminishing role for the well-being of those in their 30’s and 40’s. Similar to younger adults, social support is important to the mental health of older individuals ranging from 50-64 years old. They have just recently begun to find this support online which is why there has been a large increase of older users in the social media world. However, this generation has always had great success with coping with their stressors even without social media so it cannot be definite that social media is the source of their support. Many people, especially teenagers often have approximately three to six different social media platforms. Although these platforms differ in their proposed purpose, these sites create the opportunity for multitasking. “Such multitasking is associated with poor cognitive and emotional outcomes… including higher levels of depression and anxiety (Becker, Alzahabi, & Hopwood, 2013, p. 132).” The outcome one gets from the use of social media differs according to the way in which people use these platforms, and this is the same for both teenagers and adults. For example, one who uses these sites in a passive way is more likely to feel anxiety from it. People who are typically considered more anxious are more likely to misinterpret a lot of the stimuli they receive from viewing social media, which could result in mental breakdowns, but it is important to note that those breakdowns would have happened whether the anxious person was on social media or not. The next study emphasizes three components that come with social media and takes approaches the topic through the mind of an adolescent. Adolescents are widely studied when it comes to measuring the outcome of social media, but there are only so many studies that take the perspective of the teenager. They share that social media is believed to cause mood and anxiety disorders for adolescents, it is used as a platform for cyber bullying, and the use of social media itself is often times viewed as an “addiction.” This article backs up the point made in the first study stating that young people are often turning to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. to escape from the stressors that are affecting their mental health. By using a qualitative design to gain an understanding on the opinion and views of young adults, they were able to find how social media is viewed through the mind of an adolescent. The researchers used thematic analysis, which allowed participants to raise their own issues on social media. Interesting enough, the teenagers gave consistently negative views on the impact of social media on mental health. It is important to keep in mind that a lot of the teenagers who claimed that social media was dangerous for mental health were not able to clearly define the term. It was also very easy for them to talk about other young people and how they are suffering from social media but they rarely attributed that danger to their own social media usage. So it is possible that they can see the threats that come with the social media addiction in others… but do they see it in themselves? Many of them shared that the “mask of the internet” causes teenagers to say things online that they are too scared to say to ones face. A lot of them said they had witnessed it online for themselves and they know it’s a problem because it leads to issues like cyber bullying. Cyber bullying has been a big issue with young adults and social media use throughout the years. It affects both people behind the computer screen because it gives the adolescent the ability to anonymously test out a different identity while the victim of it slowly lowers their sense of self-esteem. One of the participants in the study, 12 years old, states “another downside to social media is, um, say if you think a picture is good, and other people think its funny you might get bullied… you might not tell like an adult that you’re getting bullied on social media.” This young adult shares that sometimes people who are getting cyber bullied might not do anything to stop it because they are feeling hopeless and as if nobody could help them, which is in turn affecting them emotionally. It’s interesting to hear this young adult tell us their perspective but it raises attention to the question of whether or not teenagers are standing up for one another or if they are also feeding into it. Just like the first article stated, the Internet does provide young adults with a way to escape from reality and an easy way to build connections. Although this article touches more on this and states that teenagers are now forming romantic relationships via Internet, which is playing a big role in both the social and emotional development of adolescents. With relationships being built through the web, the amount of time people are spending on social media sites is becoming worrisome. “There has been a decrease in face-to-face contact and in increase in social isolation, stress, depression and sleep deprivation (Espinoza, 2011, p. 42). “ Young adults have stated that they see the decline in their peers’ social skills due to their dependence on social media. From this study it is evident that it is easy for teenagers to point out the problems with social networking sites but it is not so easy for them to see any problem with the way they themselves use it. This next study puts emphasis on one of the biggest social media outlets today, Facebook. The researchers gathered and texted participants five times per day for two-weeks to figure out how Facebook use affected one’s well-being and their overall life satisfaction. This study also falls in between the lines when it comes to an affirmative answer on the outcome of social media. It states that “Facebook use and well-being may be more nuanced and potentially influenced by multiple factors including number of Facebook friends, perceived supportiveness of ones online network, depressive symptomatology, loneliness, and self-esteem (Kross, Verduyn, Demiralp, Park, Lee, Lin, & Ybarra, 2013, p. 8).” After texting participants a link to a survey and gaining insight on how often they logged into Facebook, the results leaned toward the belief that Facebook use predicted a decline in well-being and life satisfaction over time. Participants who only logged into Facebook once before answering the survey recorded to have a normal and happy mood. Throughout the day, people were logging onto Facebook more and more and they later reported to have been feeling worse as the day went on. A confounding variable in this study could very well be that the results were due to a separate social interaction that could have negatively affected the participants’ mood. When measuring cognitive effects, it was revealed that “direct” social interaction did not predict any changes in cognitive well-being. The participants stated that they tended to use Facebook more in the day when they were feeling bored, lonely, or worried which shows that the decline in well-being did not necessarily come from Facebook use. Due to the variables that could have skewed the results, the researchers chose to address the issue by timing the participants’ naturally occurring behavior and mental state to draw an inference about their likely causal sequence. The researchers decided to control “loneliness” in the experiment to test whether Facebook was helping those who felt lonely or making it worse. When loneliness was controlled that’s when the results showed that Facebook use led to a decline in well-being. Meaning, when loneliness was not controlled in the experiment, researchers saw positive results on the participants’ mood. Therefore, it would not be valid to conclude that Facebook makes a large impact on ones mental being. This next article brings up a concept that none of the articles prior had brought up. It introduces us to “social media fatigue.” Social media fatigue is defined as “a situation whereby social media users suffer from mental exhaustion after experiencing various technological, informative, and communicative overloads through their participation and interactions on the different online social media platforms (Dhir, Yossatorn, Kaur, P, & Chen, 2018, p. 142).” It is very common for users to suffer from social media fatigue and it causes them to cut down their use of social media interactions either temporarily or permanently. This fatigue leads users to lose mental and psychological strengths, which heightens the chances that they develop unhealthy behaviors (Chol & Lim, 2016, p. 127). The article conducts a cross-sectional research design in order to find out if compulsive social media use and an adolescent’s fear of missing out is what triggers this fatigue. Not only is social media fatigue clearly detrimental to well-being but the study pushes it further to investigate whether or not it is a contributor to anxiety and depression among social media users. After constantly viewing a computer or phone screen and scrolling social media for heavy portions of the day, it is easy to feel mentally drained. Teenagers feel as if they are missing out on what their friends are saying or doing when they are apart from their phone or have less access to social media. It is this “fear of missing out” that almost forces teens to keep scrolling through their social media until they physically can’t do it anymore. This uncontrollable Internet use results in negative cognitive states, which in turn affects the mental and physical functions and decisions (Brand, Young, Laier, Wölfling, & Potenza, 2016, p. 255). A lot of people suffering from social media fatigue are also suffering symptoms of depression. A consistent finding among all articles was that social media helps alleviate symptoms of depression. This article claims that while many users with depression are suffering from social media fatigue, “depressive users are likely to spend more time on Facebook so as to relieve themselves from stressful symptoms (Dhir, Yossatorn, Kaur, P, & Chen, 2018, p. 144). “ While they are still suffering from the mental and physical functions and decisions that have been negatively affected from this fatigue, they are also gaining some benefits toward the freeing of depressive symptoms.
Conclusion
Through experimental and observational research, it is evident that many people use social networking sites as a way to escape from the pressures of reality. Many people admit to finding enjoyment out of the Internet for many personal reasons. After researching whether or not social media use influences well-being, it was evident that it certainly does in both positive and negative ways. The outcome of social media use depends on many things like what people are looking to gain from it, how often they are using it, if they recognize the consequences that could potentially come with it and the context beyond that. Billions of people log into social networking sites every day and if they become dependent on it, it is possible it can worsen symptoms of anxiety and depression. Social media is also capable of lowering one’s self esteem depending on whether people partake in social comparison, if they are victims of cyber bullying, or if they spend abundant amounts of time on it. While results seem to show a lot of undesirable consequences towards social media there are also a handful of progressive results. With standard and appropriate time spent on social media, it can work as a stress reliever, a way to stay connected, a sense of social support and in some circumstances it can be a way to vent and share one’s emotions. The overall use of social networking sites and mental health is a flourishing area that produces mixed results. It is hard to measure if social media use is altering one’s mental health due to the fact it is hard to know everything going on in one’s life outside of social media. There could be a lot of variables researchers are unaware of when they are measuring how social media is linked to everyday mood and behavior. While social networking sites work as a great human resource to fulfill their need for social connection, this is affected and could be challenged by one’s supportiveness, motivation, self-esteem, loneliness, or depression.