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There is mounting evidence to suggest that there is a link between social media usage and the state of the mental health of millennials and emerging adults. A range of academic sources, current news channels, and charities have outlined potential links between social media use and the well-being of young people. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which using social media influences the mental health of young adults, positively or negatively. Factors that are fundamental to mental health such as sleep quality, self-esteem, and body confidence will be investigated to determine whether they are affected by social media usage.
The main themes in the current paper revolve around; positive influences from social media use, negative influences from social media use, links between using social media and depression, and how influences from social media on mental health can addition, the research will also pay attention to potential differences between gender regarding the relationship between mental health and levels of social media usage and whether boys or girls are more susceptible to its influence.
The aim of this research is to provide further clarity over factors influencing well-being and their linkages with social media use such as; sleep quality, self-esteem, and body confidence amongst others. The term self-esteem refers to how we value and perceive ourselves, based on our own beliefs and opinions of ourselves (Mind.co.uk). Self-esteem and body confidence can be reduced by social comparisons with social media influencers, celebrities, or even friends and family. It is imperative to gain a better understanding of how young people's and emerging adults’ mental health is impacted by social media. This is particularly true where there are negative effects since this can lead to reduced quality of life and even in the most extreme cases lead to severe depression or self-harm. Improved knowledge regarding the relationship between social media use and the well-being of young people and emerging adults would likely enable them to be better protected from the potentially harmful side effects of social media in their daily lives.
For millennials, exposure to technology has been evident since birth. Millennials that are 20 years old in 2019 were just 6 years of age when Facebook was founded (Barr, 2018). Growing up with this technology has embedded gadgets such as the iPhone and iPad into the lifestyles of young adults, and consequently for the vast majority social media use has become a large part of daily routine.
One of the goals of the research is to highlight the prevalence of social media usage among young adults at the present time. As explained by the Global Digital Report (2018) ‘more than three billion people around the world now use social media each month. ‘Almost 1 million people started using social media for the first time every day over the past year – that’s equivalent to more than 11 new users every second (Kemp, 2018). These statistics clearly underline how social media has revolutionized the way people, particularly younger generations, communicate with each other.
Another question that will be investigated during the research is; how does social media usage impact measures of well-being such as sleep quality, self-esteem, and body satisfaction? According to an article published in the E-Clinical Medicine Journal, frequent social media use can be related to online harassment, poor sleep, low self-esteem, and poor body image; in turn, these are related to higher depressive symptom scores (Kelly et al, 2018). This article discusses how numerous plausible potential intervening pathways relate young people’s mental health to the amount of time they spend on social networking platforms (Kelly et al, 2018).
The problems surrounding exposure to social media and associated negative implications on the mental health of millennials and emerging adults will be reviewed throughout the research. The Good Childhood Report 2017, written on behalf of the Children's Society and Young Minds, revealed that 38% of young people reported that social media has a negative impact on how they feel about themselves, compared to 23% who reported that it has a positive effect. These percentages are based on a large sample of 10,000 children aged 8-15. Yvonne Kelly from University College London claims ‘the average fourteen-year-old may be using social media for 3-4 hours per day. The average fourteen-year-old getting a poorer quality of sleep is more likely to have lower self-esteem and is more likely to experience cyberbullying as either the victim or the perpetrator (Kelly et al, 2018). ‘The effects of cyberbullying can be profound including depression, anxiety, isolation, and in some cases suicide’ (Richards and Caldwell, 2015). Online harassment and cyberbullying of social media influencer and reality TV star Mike Thalassitis, including the accumulation of Tweets and social media posts labeling him ‘Muggy Mike’ and portraying him in a negative light are claimed to have contributed to his suicide in March 2019 (O'Connor, 2019).
Healthwatch Essex conducted interviews with 2500 young people and highlighted that frequent exposure to body ideals could negatively affect self-esteem. Findings also revealed young people feel pressure to conform to beauty standards. This can lead to harmful behaviors to achieve results such as disordered eating and disengagement from exercising publicly’ (Fletcher 2018). In isolation, these results would not offer any concrete evidence since the whole sample would be from the same area (Essex) and so there could be a bias, ideally, a UK-wide sample size would be preferable. These results suggest that social media can lead to reductions in self-esteem among young people. Unlike the Good Child Report, Healthwatch Essex does not give an age bracket for ‘young people’, so the reader does not know exactly how old the interviewees were.
The association between social media and self-harm remains poorly understood and it must be remembered that social media is just one influence on young people’s mental health (Lancet, 2019). There have been several instances recently where disturbing images or videos have bypassed Facebook’s security filters and landed on users' newsfeeds. A recent example of this was the terrorist attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand in March 2019 where the whole attack was recorded on Facebook Live by the perpetrator (Smyth, 2019). This has resulted in Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently calling for help from the government in regulating social media content, proposing a new set of regulations to prevent harmful content from quickly spreading across the internet (Isaac, 2019).
Research is largely focused on the relationship between screen-based activity and mental health issues, with fewer studies exploring risk factors of screen time using qualitative data (Lancet, 2019). Young people using social media are susceptible to making comparisons between themselves and celebrities or social media influencers, ‘The abundance of manipulated images of idealized beauty online are linked to individual perceptions of body image and self-esteem which in turn are associated with poor mental health’ (Kelly et al 2018). Correlational studies consistently show that social media usage is associated with body image concerns among young women and men, and longitudinal studies suggest this association may strengthen over time (Fardouly & Vartanian, 2016).
The results of a qualitative study reported in the Journal of Adolescents researching possible links between social media use and depression found that ‘adolescents who experienced high levels of psychological distress, unmet mental health needs, and suicidal thoughts were more frequent users of social media such as Facebook. This relationship seems to vary with age as a study of older adolescents with mostly low-frequency users found no relationship between distress and social media usage’ (Radovic et al. 2017). The issue here is that only 23 participants were involved and there was a female bias (18:5), the results would be more reliable with a considerably larger sample size.
According to editorial authors in the Lancet, ‘sleep has been shown to be linked to mental health’ (Kelly et al. 2018). Tang et al (2017) claim sleep forms an integral part of public health. Excessive time spent on social media or staying up late into the night scrolling through social media can prevent young adults from getting adequate sleep and consequently impoverish their mental health. A study conducted by Radovic et al. (2017) on nearly 500 Scottish adolescents found that frequent social media users experienced poorer sleep quality and increased signs of depression. ‘Sleep interruptions from notifications and anxiety at missing new content only represent two of the many possible links between social media use and poor sleep (Woods & Scott, 2016). Although this study provides evidence suggesting that prolonged periods of social media usage do negatively impact mental health in young adults, there are several limitations surrounding the methodology of the research. The gender and age of participants were not recorded (Woods & Scott, 2016). These details would have been preferred since they would have allowed a deeper level of analysis to be undertaken and comparisons between genders and narrower age groups. Another potential issue is that many participants weren’t native English speakers, this may have reduced the accuracy of results since participants may have struggled to understand questions (Woods & Scott, 2016).
To maintain an unbiased perspective the benefits derived from using social media to young people’s mental health will also be reviewed. For example, in a recent report published by the Royal Society for Public Health ‘Dr. Papadopoulos advised that technology takes away physical barriers to social connections’ (Elmore & Wragg, 2019). This provides an opportunity for shy, introverted young people to socialize without the pressure or anxiety of having to physically interact which may have been holding them back previously. ‘Social media provides a rich opportunity to unite generations’ (The Lancet, 2018). Samaritans use Twitter to facilitate ‘organized discussions’, claiming in their findings from their Digital Futures consultations that, social media contributes to reducing feelings of loneliness amongst young people (Russell & Hunter, 2015). This illustrates how for some young people social media acts as a support mechanism and enhances mental health and wellbeing. Although Samaritans fail to reveal how many participants are involved in these discussions or to indicate how beneficial these kinds of Twitter discussions prove to be.
Birmingham University conducted a study on 1,346 young people and found that social media can provide a ‘valuable learning resource, with 63% reporting that social media was a good source of health information’ (Goodyear & Wood, 2018). The phrase ‘health information’ is not qualified in this statement, there is no guarantee here that the young people are referring to credible sources on social media platforms, but it suggests they at least feel a degree of inspiration or motivation from them.
We will be conducting field research on the University Campus to try and determine the impact of social media usage on Swansea University students at Singleton and Bay campuses to add more clarity on the 18-24 age range.
The results of the Millennium Cohort Study published in the EclinicalMedicine journal discovered that ‘the association between social media use and depressive symptoms was stronger for girls than for boys. The results indicated that girls are spending more hours per day on social media than boys. Moreover, girls are more likely to be involved in online harassment than boys and are more likely to suffer from low self-esteem, be unhappy with their appearance, and get fewer hours of sleep per night than boys. During this study, participants completed a mood and feelings questionnaire where they were asked about their average hours of social media use on a weekday (Kelly et al 2018). One of the pitfalls of this methodology is the risk that self-reported data on time spent on social media may lack accuracy, participants may be tempted to under-exaggerate the amount of time due to embarrassment or shame. Although the journal claims, ‘the estimates of time spent using social media presented in our paper are consistent with those reported in other UK survey's (Kelly et al. 2018). Kelly et al (2018) also acknowledge how ‘self-reported sleep measures may also be prone to bias’, which also adds a degree of doubt over the accuracy of the findings. However, the reliability of this source is relatively strong since in the paper it is revealed that the funder was the Economic and Social Resource Council and had no role in the data collection, interpretation, or writing of the paper.
According to the ‘Media Lives Study’ published by Ofcom, ‘girls aged 12-15 with a social media or messaging profile are more likely than boys to feel pressure to look popular on these sites ‘all of the time’ (20% vs. 11%). Supporting this, ‘some of the girls in our Media Lives study were this year choosing more glamourized or aesthetic Snapchat filters, rather than the ‘cute’ animal faces they had used in previous waves; these are popular as they are thought to make faces look ‘prettier’ and ‘brighter’’ (Ofcom, 2019). The pressure to look popular or glamorous on social media can stem from social comparisons among peers, influencers, or celebrities. This can lead to reduced body confidence, hence the girls in the study mentioned above used Snapchat filters to edit their appearance. Reinforcing these findings are the results from the UK Longitudinal Study, where it was found that high levels of social media interaction in early adolescence impact well-being in later adolescence, particularly for females (Booker et al. 2018).
In summary, the evidence explored in this review suggests there is a growing concern surrounding the negative aspects of the connection between social media use and the well-being of young people and emerging adults. There is a need for a greater knowledge of how and why social media can have these influences on young people’s well-being.
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