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Teens who are more likely to feel that others are monitoring them on social media to see what they are doing, where they are, or who they are with are also more likely than other teens to have symptoms of anxiety and depression. This is shown by a study conducted by FHI.
FHI researchers asked 2000 young people from upper secondary schools in Bergen about their lives on social media and the mental health of young people. Researchers found that teenagers who had symptoms of anxiety and depression were more likely to answer yes to these three statements:
- On social media happening there is so much going on that I often feel overwhelmed.
- I wish we knew more about how social media affects us.
- Sometimes I feel like I'm being watched on social media (because what I do/where I am/who I'm with is visible).
It is not the high time consumption that is a cause for concern
“In other words, it's something other than the high time consumption that is problematic with social media,” says Turi Reiten Finserås, a researcher at Norwegian Institute of Public Health.
Scientists collectively referred to these three statements as a "source of concern."
– Although we found links here, we still cannot conclude that social media causes mental health problems in some teenagers. Mental health problems may be due to other conditions that we have not examined. We can therefore conclude that there is a correlation here, but to determine whether it exists cause and effect relationship, we need further research, says Finserås.
Spending a lot of time on social media doesn't have to be problematic
Although many people talk about social media use as problematic, there is still a lot of uncertainty in the scientific world about what it actually is and what it involves. This is the background for this study. Many previous studies have found that problematic social media use depends on how much time you spend there. In the last decade it happened rapid growth social media use among Norwegian youth. About 90 percent of all teenagers use social media, and 37 percent say they have been using it for more than 3 years. hours a day.
However, recent research has shown that while some people see correlations between time spent on social media and mental health, the strength of the associations is so small that they are of questionable practical significance.
- Our the study confirmsthat time use is not a good measure of problematic social media use. The study showsthat there may be other aspects of use that could be potentially problematic, says Finserås.
The most frequently used social media in the study were YouTube (91%), Snapchat (91%), Instagram (84%), and TikTok (60%) for boys. Among girls, it was Snapchat (97%), Instagram (96%), TikTok (81%) and YouTube (78%).
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Using interviews as a starting point for a questionnaire
It has also been suggested that problematic social media use involves addiction, with social media addiction being considered an established concept. There are a few problems with this, however. Among other things, the following were not taken into account: point of view of the main users of social media: teenagers.
As such, the study used interviews with teenagers as a starting point for the questions the researchers asked in a social media questionnaire. Therefore, the survey questions are more closely related to real life, opinions and motives young people on social media. In this study, researchers used responses to some of these questions to examine whether they formed different factors (groups of questionnaire questions) that were associated with poorer mental health. The researchers found three factors that they called sources of anxiety, social obligations and subjective overspending.
The factor that had the strongest correlation with mental health and the lowest correlation with time spent on social media was the source of anxiety. This factor is related to feeling overwhelmed, being watched, and wanting to know more about the effects of social media (the three statements in the bullet points above).
The “social obligation” factor in social media refers to the feeling of social obligation to be present on social media. It may also be a concern with conforming to unwritten rules and norms on social media in order to be accepted by others, in relationships and social groups.
The group of questions that researchers have called "subjective overuse" of social media involves the belief that someone is dependent on social media and spends too much time on it.
“This factor was most strongly associated with time spent on social media of the three factors and least associated with mental health,” says Finserås.
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Source: Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Photo: pixabay
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