Social Media Causes Mental Health Issues
Abstract: Social Media Causes Mental Health Issues
Background
According to the most recent studies, as many as 7 out of 10 Americans use social media. This has risen drastically in the past decade. In 2005, only 5% of adults reported using social media on a regular basis. There has been a massive explosion of use and interest in the intervening years, and now over half of all Americans of every age group report social media use. This has brought with it a mass of benefits and problems alike that are entirely new for our society to be handling, as technology has brought us innovations on an exponential level that are unlike anything we have experienced in our recorded human history. Now, researchers are scrambling
to understand the implications of long-term and regular social media use on our ourselves and our great society community. This does not only apply to the lives of youth, or young adults, who are known for spending their free
time on the internet. In fact, since census tells us that the majority of every categorical age group are involved with social media, the implications of its use are of concern to every corner of our society. Many scholars have noticed an increased trend of depression, addiction, and instances of cyber bullying, and are doing research to find the correlations between these problems and social media. In addition, people are looking to understand themselves in terms of our modern digital lives, and they are looking for research to explain their own experiences, both for themselves and the people they care about. Finally, as a member of the generation who grew up using the internet, I have a personal stake in this research as it could affect my own health and well-being. It will be a part of our greater society for the foreseeable future, and thus it is important to fully understand its changes and implications for every generation. While I am an active social media user, an effort will be made to acknowledge my own biases and look beyond my desire for social media to be a purely positive place, in order to present fact-based data.
Method
This argument will be approached by compiling a variety of sources and reviewing them so accurate and reasonable conclusions can be drawn. This will include data on cyberbullying, depression, and addiction as they
relate to social media. While a variety of evidence will be gathered and recorded to support the fact-based claim against social media usage, there are currently three articles that are the foundation for backing up the
position that social media can be harmful to the mental health of its users. To address addiction, the article entitled “Online Social Networking and Addiction—A Review of the Psychological Literature” will expose
important facts, the article “When Social Media Sparks Depression” will investigate the occurrences of depression among social media users, and “College Student Cyberbullying on Social …
