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World Health Organization - Mental Health

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World Health Organization - Mental Health

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The World Health Organization is incredible they launched The WHO Special Initiative for Mental Health and the Universal Health Coverage for Mental Health to ensure access to quality and affordable care for mental health conditions in 12 priority countries which helps assist 100 million more people than before.

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In recent years, there has been increasing acknowledgement of the important role mental health plays in achieving global development goals, as illustrated by the inclusion of mental health in the Sustainable Development Goals. Depression is one of the leading causes of disability. Suicide is the fourth leading cause of death among 15-29-year-olds. People with severe mental health conditions die prematurely - as much as two decades early - due to preventable physical conditions.

Despite progress in some countries, people with mental health conditions often experience severe human rights violations, discrimination, and stigma.

Many mental health conditions can be effectively treated at relatively low cost, yet the gap between people needing care and those with access to care remains substantial. Effective treatment coverage remains extremely low.

Increased investment is required on all fronts: for mental health awareness to increase understanding and reduce stigma; for efforts to increase access to quality mental health care and effective treatments; and for research to identify new treatments and improve existing treatments for all mental disorders. In 2019, WHO launched the WHO Special Initiative for Mental Health (2019-2023): Universal Health Coverage for Mental Health to ensure access to quality and affordable care for mental health conditions in 12 priority countries to 100 million more people.

In 2022, WHO launched the World Mental Health Report: Transforming Mental health for All.

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United For Global Mental Health Organization 

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United For Global Mental Health Organization 

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"There is no health without mental health". United For Global Mental Health is an organization that is working with trusted partners in order to create a better world where they are taking the vital steps to not only raise awareness but increase the support for mental health around the world. They unite, advise, support, advocate and influence.

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NPR Current News Article - The truth about teens, social media and the mental health crisis.

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NPR Current News Article - The truth about teens, social media and the mental health crisis.

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Michaeleen Doucleff warned of a mental health crisis on the horizon back in 2017 and now she is speaking out again in 2023. Her new book, Generations, ties in with this article but is consisted of more data to back up her reasoning. Doucleff believes most young adults spend their time using social media, sleeping, going to school and using social media again.

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Back in 2017, psychologist Jean Twenge set off a firestorm in the field of psychology.

Twenge studies generational trends at San Diego State University. When she looked at mental health metrics for teenagers around 2012, what she saw shocked her. "In all my analyses of generational data - some reaching back to the 1930s - I had never seen anything like it," Twenge wrote in the Atlantic in 2017.

Twenge warned of a mental health crisis on the horizon. Rates of depression, anxiety and loneliness were rising. And she had a hypothesis for the cause: smartphones and all the social media that comes along with them. "Smartphones were used by the majority of Americans around 2012, and that's the same time loneliness increases. That's very suspicious," Twenge told NPR in 2017.

But many of her colleagues were skeptical. Some even accused her of inciting a panic with too little - and too weak - data to back her claims.

Now, six years later, Twenge is back. She has a new book out this week, called Generations, with much more data backing her hypothesis. At the same time, several high-quality studies have begun to answer critical questions, such as does social media cause teens to become depressed and is it a key contributor to a rise in depression?

In particular, studies from three different types of experiments, altogether, point in the same direction. "Indeed, I think the picture is getting more and more consistent," says economist Alexey Makarin, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A seismic change in how teens spend their time

In Generations, Twenge analyzes mental health trends for five age groups, from the Silent Generation, who were born between 1925 and 1945, to Gen Z, who were born between 1995 and 2012. She shows definitively that "the way teens spend their time outside of school fundamentally changed in 2012," as Twenge writes in the book.

Take for instance, hanging out with friends, in person. Since 1976, the number of times per week teens go out with friends - and without their parents - held basically steady for nearly 30 years. In 2004, it slid a bit. Then in 2010, it nosedived.

"It was just like a Black Diamond ski slope straight down," Twenge tells NPR. "So these really big changes occur."

At the same time, around 2012, time on social media began to soar. In 2009, only about half of teens used social media every day, Twenge reports. In 2017, 85% used it daily. By 2022, 95% of teens said they use some social media, and about a third say they use it constantly, a poll from Pew Research Center found.

"Now, in the most recent data, 22% of 10th grade girls spend seven or more hours a day on social media," Twenge says, which means many teenage girls are doing little else than sleeping, going to school and engaging with social media.

Not surprisingly, all this screen time has cut into many kids' sleep time. Between 2010 and 2021, the percentage of 10th and 12th graders who slept seven or fewer hours each night rose from a third to nearly one-half. "That's a big jump," Twenge says. "Kids in that age group are supposed to sleep nine hours a night. So less than seven hours is a really serious problem."

On its own, sleep deprivation can cause mental health issues. "Sleep is absolutely crucial for physical health and for mental health. Not getting enough sleep is a major risk factor for anxiety and depression and self-harm," she explains. Unfortunately, all of those mental health problems have continued to rise since Twenge first sounded the alarm six years ago.

"Nuclear bomb" on teen social life

"Every indicator of mental health and psychological well-being has become more negative among teens and young adults since 2012," Twenge writes in Generations. "The trends are stunning in their consistency, breadth and size."

Across the board, since 2010, anxiety, depression and loneliness have all increased. "And it's not just symptoms that rose, but also behaviors," she says, "including emergency room visits for self-harm, for suicide attempts and completed suicides." The data goes up through 2019, so it doesn't include changes due to COVID-19.

All these rapid changes coincide with what, Twenge says, may be the most rapid uptake in a new technology in human history: the incorporation of smartphones into our lives, which has allowed nearly nonstop engagement with social media apps. Apple introduced the first iPhones in 2007, and by 2012, about 50% of American adults owned a smartphone, the Pew Research Center found.

The timing is hard to ignore, says data scientist Chris Said, who has a Ph.D. in psychology from Princeton University and has worked at Facebook and Twitter. "Social media was like a nuclear bomb on teen social life," he says. "I don't think there's anything in recent memory, or even distant history, that has changed the way teens socialize as much as social media."

Murky picture becomes clearer on causes of teen depression

But the timing doesn't tell you whether social media actually causes depression in teens.

In the past decade, scientists have published a whole slew of studies trying to answer this question, and those studies sparked intense debate among scientists and in the media. But, Said says, what many people don't realize is scientists weren't using - or didn't even have - the proper tools to answer the question. "This is a very hard problem to study," he says. "The data they were analyzing couldn't really solve the problem."

So the findings have been all over the place. They've been murky, noisy, inconclusive and confusing. "When you use tools that can't fully answer the question, you're going to get weak answers," he says. "So I think that's one reason why really strong evidence didn't show up in the data, at least early on."

On top of it, psychology has a bad track record in this field, Said points out. For nearly a century, psychologists have repeatedly blamed new technologies for mental and physical health problems of children, even when they've had little - or shady - data to back up their claims.

For example, in the 1940s, psychologists worried that children were becoming addicted to radio crime dramas, psychologist Amy Orben at the University of Cambridge explains in her doctoral thesis. After that, they raised concerns about comic books, television and - eventually - video games. Thus, many researchers worried that social media may simply be the newest scapegoat for children's mental health issues.

A handful of scientists, including MIT's Alexey Makarin, noticed this problem with the data, the tools and the field's past failures, and so they took the matter into their own hands. They went out and found better tools.

Hundreds of thousands of more college students depressed

Over the past few years, several high-quality studies have come that can directly test whether social media causes depression. Instead of being murky and mixed, they support each other and show clear effects of social media. "The body of literature seems to suggest that indeed, social media has negative effects on mental health, especially on young adults' mental health," says Makarin, who led what many scientists say is the best study on the topic to date.

In that study, Makarin and his team took advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: the staggered introduction of Facebook across U.S. colleges from 2004 to 2006. Facebook rolled out into society first on college campuses, but not all campuses introduced Facebook at the same time.

For Makarin and his colleagues, this staggered rollout is experimental gold.

"It allowed us to compare students' mental health between colleges where Facebook just arrived to colleges where Facebook had not yet arrived," he says. They could also measure how students' mental health shifted on a particular campus when people started to spend a bunch of their time on social media.

Luckily, his team could track mental health at the time because college administrators were also conducting a national survey that asked students an array of questions about their mental health, including diagnoses, therapies and medications for depression, anxiety and eating disorders. "These are not just people's feelings," Makarin says. "These are actual conditions that people have to report."

They had data on a large number of students. "The data comes from more than 350,000 student responses across more than 300 colleges," Makarin says.

This type of study is called a quasi-experiment, and it allows scientists to estimate how much social media actually changes teens' mental health, or as Makarin says, "We can get causal estimates of the impact of Facebook on mental health."

So what happened? "Almost immediately after Facebook arrives on campus, we see an uptick in mental health issues that students report," Makarin says. "We especially find an impact on depression rates, anxiety disorders and other questions associated with depression in general."

And the effect isn't small, he says. Across the population, the rollout of Facebook caused about 2% of college students to become clinically depressed. That may sound modest, but with more than 17 million college students in the U.S. at the time, that means Facebook caused more than 300,000 young adults to suffer from depression.

For an individual, on average, engaging with Facebook decreases their mental health by roughly 22% of the effect of losing one's job, as reported by a previous meta-analysis, Makarin and his team found.

Facebook's rollout had a larger effect on women's mental health than on men's mental health, the study showed. But the difference was small, Makarin says.

He and his colleagues published their findings last November in the American Economic Review. "I love that paper," says economist Matthew Gentzkow at Stanford University, who was not involved in the research. "It's probably the most convincing study I've seen. I think it shows a clear effect, and it's really credible. They did a good job of isolating the effect of Facebook, which isn't easy."

Of course, the study has limitations, Gentzkow says. First off, it's Facebook, which teens are using less and less. And the version of Facebook is barebones. In 2006, the platform didn't have a "like" button" or a "newsfeed." This older version probably wasn't as "potent" as social media now, says data scientist Chris Said. Furthermore, students used the platform only on a computer because smartphones weren't available yet. And the study only examined mental health impacts over a six-month period.

Nevertheless, the findings in this study bolster other recent studies, including one that Gentzkow led.

Social media is "like the ocean" for kids

Back in 2018, Gentzkow and his team recruited about 2,700 Facebook users ages 18 or over. They paid about half of them to deactivate their Facebook accounts for four weeks. Then Gentzkow and his team looked to see how a Facebook break shifted their mental health. They reported their findings in March 2020 in the American Economic Review.

This type of study is called a randomized experiment, and it's thought of as the best way to estimate whether a variable in life causes a particular problem. But with social media, these randomized experiments have big limitations. For one, the experiments are short-term - here only four weeks. Also, people use social media in clusters, not as individuals. So having individuals quit Facebook won't capture the effect of having an entire social group quit together. Both of these limitations could underestimate the impact of social media on an individual and community.

Nevertheless, Gentzkow could see how deactivating Facebook made people, on average, feel better. "Being off Facebook was positive across well-being outcomes," he says. "You see higher happiness, life satisfaction, and also lower depression, lower anxiety, and maybe a little bit lower loneliness."

Gentzkow and his team measured participants' well-being by giving them a survey at the end of the experiment but also asking questions, via text message, through the experiment. "For example, we sent people text messages that say, 'Right now, would you say you're feeling happy or not happy,'" he explains.

Again, as with Makarin's experiment, the effect was moderate. Gentzkow and his colleagues estimate that temporarily quitting Facebook improves a person's mental health by about 30% of the positive effect seen by going to therapy. "You could view that meaning these effects are pretty big," he explains, "or you could also see that as meaning that the effects of therapy are somewhat small. And I think both of those things are true to an extent."

Scientists still don't know to what extent social media is behind the rising mental health issues among teenagers and whether it is the primary cause. "It seems to be the case - like it's a big factor," says MIT's Alexey Makarin, "but that's still up for debate."

Still, though, other specifics are beginning to crystallize. Scientists are narrowing in on what aspects of social media are most problematic. And they can see that social media won't hurt every teen - or hurt them by the same amount. The data suggests that the more hours a child devotes to social media, the higher their risk for mental health problems.

Finally, some adolescents are likely more vulnerable to social media, and children may be more vulnerable at particular ages. A study published in February 2022 looked to see how time spent on social media varies with life satisfaction during different times in a child's life (see the graphic).

The researchers also looked to see if a child's present use of social media predicted a decrease of life satisfaction one year later. That data suggeststwo windows of time when children are most sensitive to detrimental effects of social media, especially heavy use of it. For girls, one window occurs at ages 11 through 13. And for boys, one window occurs at ages 14 and 15. For both genders, there's a window of sensitivity around age 19 - or near the time teenagers enter college. Amy Orben and her team at the University of Cambridge reported the findings in Nature Communications.

This type of evidence is known as a correlative. "It's hard to draw conclusions from these studies," Gentzkow says, because many factors contribute to life satisfaction, such as environmental factors and family backgrounds. Plus, people may use social media because they're depressed (and so depression could be the cause, not the outcome of social media use).

"Nevertheless, these correlative studies, together with the evidence from the causal experiments, paint a picture that suggests we should take social media seriously and be concerned," Gentzkow adds.

Psychologist Orben once heard a metaphor that may help parents understand how to approach this new technology. Social media for children is a bit like the ocean, she says, noting that it can be an extremely dangerous place for children. Before parents let children swim in any open water, they make sure the child is well-prepared and equipped to handle problems that arise. They provide safety vests, swimming lessons, often in less dangerous waters, and even then parents provide a huge amount of supervision.
Alyson Hurt created the graphic. Jane Greenhalgh and Diane Webber edited the story.

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The truth about teens, social media and the mental health crisis

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A striking decline in teen mental health has coincided with the rise of smartphones and social media. Is social media causing the mental health challenges? Finally, research can answer that question.

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ABC Current News Article - Social Media is driving teen mental health crisis, surgeon general warns.

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ABC Current News Article - Social Media is driving teen mental health crisis, surgeon general warns.

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Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is a proponent of mental health awareness and has issues a warning that social media is the main contributor of depression, anxiety and other problems in teenagers around the world. This article was just posted a month ago and he is asking people to take action and manage the amount of social media use the world is using.

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Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, long a proponent of mental health awareness, has issued a warning that social media use is a main contributor to depression, anxiety and other problems in the nation's teenagers.

The report, released Tuesday, calls attention to growing concerns about the effects of social media use on children and adolescent's mental health. The advisory urges policymakers and the companies that make the social media platforms to share with parents the burden of managing children's and adolescents' social media use.

Murthy calls youth mental health "the defining public health issue of our time," urging policymakers to help ensure strong safety standards to help protect adolescents and teens from exposure to harmful content and excessive use.

Up to 95% of teens between the ages of 13 and 17 say they use a social media platform, according to the report. About a third say they're scrolling, posting or otherwise engaged with social media "almost constantly."

"At this point, we do not have enough evidence to say with confidence that social media is sufficiently safe for our kids, Murthy said in an interview. "We have to now take action to make sure that we are protecting our kids."

The report pulls together research that links social media use and poor mental health in adolescents, such as a 2019 study that found teens who spent more than three hours a day on social media "faced double the risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes, including symptoms of depression and anxiety."

As of last year, students in grades eight and 10 who were surveyed said they spent even more time each day on these platforms: three hours and 30 minutes, on average.

Jim Steyer, founder of Common Sense Media, an organization that advocates for laws and policies to make media more child-friendly, said the advisory was "absolutely spot on" and "should be a clarion call to every parent in this country, every policymaker, that we need to put focus and resources into this effort."

The most popular social media platforms among teens are TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram, according to the Pew Research Center.

The surgeon general's warning about social media comes as the rates of teenage depression, sadness and hopelessness have skyrocketed over the past decade, especially among girls.

" Teen depression started to rise around 2012, a time that coincides with the popularity of smartphones," said Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University and the author of "Generations: The Real Differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers and Silents-and What They Mean for America's Future."

It was also a time, Twenge said, that "'likes' on posts became common, and the algorithms started to become more sophisticated to keep people on social media for longer. That's clearly not a coincidence."

The surgeon general's report also blamed social media for perpetuating eating disorders, body dysmorphia and low self-esteem. Some evidence also suggests a possible link between excessive social media use and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in teens.

Twenge said social media can a ffect mental health in a variety of ways. Both sleep and face-to-face social interaction are beneficial to mental health, she said, but if kids are online when they should be in bed or spending time with friends, that's a problem.

Feeling left out and comparing oneself to others can also be damaging.

"Even if you know on an intellectual level that they may have taken 200 selfies to get the right one," Twenge said, "at an emotional level, that's not really processed."

What can be done?

The surgeon general's report outlines recommendations for both technology companies and lawmakers.

"Policymakers need to step up and help ensure that we have strong safety standards, to help protect our kids from exposure to harmful content, and to also protect them from excessive use," Murthy said. This includes enforcing age minimums.

Companies are advised to create better tools to protect teenagers, and loosen up on features that entice kids to stay online longer.

It's parents who are on the front lines now in trying to help teens navigate the online world. The report encourages caregivers to create "tech-free" zones in the home, and to talk with kids about how social media use makes them feel.

"It's really not fair to put the onus on parents alone. Why isn't the industry held responsible for creating the platforms and making the features that much more addictive?" Steyer of Common Sense Media said. "There has to be a major national discussion."

How old should kids be before using social media?

Most tech companies require users to be at least 13 years old. But nearly 40% of kids between the ages of 8 and 12 use social media, the report said.

Murthy said he believes even 13 is too young to be on social media but said there wasn't enough data to suggest which age would be appropriate.

Twenge suggested that the age minimum should be set at 16.

"Let's get some regulations in place now to help kids who are not yet on social media," Twenge said. "Maybe we can save the next generation."

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Social media is driving teen mental health crisis, surgeon general warns

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U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy blames social media for rising rates of anxiety, depression and other mental health struggles among teens and adolescents.

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Article - Is Social Media Bad For Your Mental Health?

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Article - Is Social Media Bad For Your Mental Health?

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Dr. Kim Johnson an associate professor of nursing at Middle Georgia State University explains her take on why social media is hurting your health and shares why we should take a break from it.

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Author: Alexandria Brooks
Posted: Thursday, June 16, 2022 12:00 AM
Categories: Pressroom | School of Health and Natural Sciences | Faculty/Staff
Macon, GA
From Facebook to TikTok and everything in between, social media is engrained in our everyday lives, connecting us to work, school, businesses, and each other. However, while social media helps to build these connections and ease feelings of isolation, it also takes a toll on users' mental and emotional wellbeing. Dr. Kim Johnson, associate professor of nursing at Middle Georgia State University, explains why social media use may be hurting your health and shares the benefits of taking a break.
What drives social media use?
For the past two decades, social media has become a double-edged sword as we scroll to cure boredom, portray polished versions of ourselves, or catch up with family and friends. It can be an incredible tool for connecting with those who are important to us, for gathering information, and for self-expression. However, while there are positive uses for social media, there are physiological effects on our brains that affect our dopaminergic pathways and thus our mental health.

Per the Pew Research Center (2021), 82 percent of American adults 30 years old and younger use some type of social media. Whiting and Williams (2013) identify these five uses for social media which include social interaction (88 percent), information seeking (80 percent), to pass time (76 percent), entertainment (64 percent), and relaxation (60 percent). Colloquially, many of our students state the reason they use social media is for 'fear of missing out" or FOMO. Studies have been performed on "FOMO," which determined that this phenomenon contributes to social media fatigue.
What are the risks vs. rewards of social media consumption?
Users seek out social media to meet basic needs for entertainment, autonomy, relatedness, intrinsic and external motivation, and perceptions of well-being. Teens and young adults spend an increasing amount of time with online socialization and are at greater risk of negative effects. Teens have a less fixed sense of self that relies more on feedback from peers. Also, teens and young adults have a less mature prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that regulates emotional responses to social rewards. Research studies note the connection between use of social media and its undesirable outcomes that increase incidence of anxiety, stress, depression, body image concerns, and loneliness in teens and young adults (APA, 2022).
How does social media impact mental and emotional health? What are the signs?
Social media use, just as use of alcohol or drugs, can highjack the dopaminergic pathways more quickly and reliably than naturally derived awards such as studying hard and getting a good grade. Effort gained from diligent, time-consuming work is slower to access the reward system, while checking Snapchat or Instagram causes a rush of dopamine that provides immediate gratification. Recurrent checking behavior can be likened to smoking a cigarette, which floods the dopaminergic pathway quicker. Thus, the almost instant dopamine rush becomes addictive and can result in depression, anxiety, and other mental illness. Self-disclosure on social networking sites lights up the same part of the brain that ignites when taking an addictive substance. In the mesolimbic system, dopamine is released during pleasurable experiences and binds to dopaminergic receptors located in the nucleus accumbens (Kumar, 2020).

Signs of compulsive social media use include preoccupation, spending increased time on social media sites to the detriment of one's health or relationships, needing longer periods of time on the internet to gain satisfaction, unsuccessful efforts to control or stop use of social media, as well as restlessness, sadness, or anxiety when attempting to control social media use.
How can individuals help to limit the impact of media consumption on their mental and emotional health?
The first step is recognition that a problem with excessive social media exists and making a plan to curb usage. Studies show that self-corrective behavior can be achieved and is successful. Corrective behavior includes recognizing increasing social media use by using apps to track usage. More suggestions include turning off app notifications as they are the biggest source of distraction, moving most-used apps from the home page to a folder that is difficult to access, charging mobile phones in harder to reach places, creating personal daily time limits to control phone usage, and changing color settings on the phone to black and white.
How can parents or guardians help children or teens with unhealthy social media habits?
Limiting social media use of preteens and teens helps control early introduction of harmful, aggressive advertising, cyberbullying, body-image concerns, and poor self-esteem. If use can be curtailed to later teen or young adulthood years, each individual will have a more developed of sense of self. Increased maturity in the pre-frontal cortex helps younger adults have more control over their emotions. Parents can set timers, control of apps, and time usage after 10 p.m., color settings, and keep kids educated on the potential dangers inherent in social media use.
How can platforms help or change in order to support vulnerable individuals?
The information revolution of the century has produced the most dramatic economic and social transformation since industrialization, instigating its own set of unanticipated and unacceptable harms to children, teens, and young adults. As with the fight against child labor, these harms will continue to manifest until policymakers act. Internet platforms can be changed to promote support for vulnerable individuals; however, consensus agrees they must be forced to do so by policymakers. Limitations on social media platforms of any kind is likely to decrease profits of these internet platforms.

Some ways policy limitations on social media would support children, teens, and young adults include:

Making it harder for images uploaded of children to reach widespread dissemination

Banning individuals under 18 from changing from private to public settings

Stopping the deliberate engineering cycle of virtual affirmation that drives vulnerable populations to stay online or buy products

Preventing the creation of a permanent public record using pictures and postings

Banning various channels for sexual exploitation that social media enables

Dr. Kim Johnson is a practicing dual board-certified psychiatric nurse Practitioner and a family nurse practitioner at Woods Medical, LLC. She is skilled in medication management for psychiatric disorders in concurrence with chronic disease management. As an associate professor at Middle Georgia State University, she teaches mental health courses to baccalaureate nursing students as well as advanced pharmacology, and professionalism to students in the master's degree program. She is a University System of Georgia Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Fellow, chair of MGA's Alumni Association, and has been teaching at MGA for 12 years. She obtained her DNP, PMHNP, and FNP from Georgia Southern University. Her primary interests include easing the burden and stigma of psychiatric illness and promotion of the nurse practitioner within the delivery of healthcare. References American Psychological Association (2022). Why young brains are especially vulnerable to social media. APA News and Advocacy. https://www.apa.org/news/apa/2022/social-media-children-teens Bashir, H., & Bhat, S. A. (2017). Effects of social media on mental health: A review. International Journal of Indian Psychology, 4(3), 125-131. Center, P.R. (2021). Social media fact sheet. Pew Research Center: Washington, DC, USA. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/social-media/ Dwivedi, Y. K., Ismagilova, E., Hughes, D. L., Carlson, J., Filieri, R., Jacobson, J., & Wang, Y. (2021). "Setting the future of digital and social media marketing research: Perspectives and research propositions." ("Setting the future of digital and social media marketing research ...") International Journal of Information Management, 59, 102168. Kumar, A., & Sachdeva, N. (2020). Multi-input integrative learning using deep neural networks and transfer learning for cyberbullying detection in real-time code-mix data. Multimedia systems, 1-15. Whiting, A. and Williams, D (2013). "Why people use social media: a uses and gratifications approach" Qualitative Market Research, Vol. 16 No. 4, pp. 362-369. https://doi.org/10.1108/QMR-06-2013-0041

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Is Social Media Bad For Your Mental Health?

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Author: Alexandria Brooks Posted: Thursday, June 16, 2022 12:00 AM Categories: Pressroom | School of Health and Natural Sciences | Faculty/Staff Macon, GA From Facebook to TikTok and everything in between, social media is engrained in our everyday lives, connecting us to work, school, businesses, and each other.

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Case Study - Social Media Use and Its Connection to Mental Health

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Case Study - Social Media Use and Its Connection to Mental Health

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This case study tells us how social media has became a part of our daily lives. Most of us, wake up in the morning and automatically check our phones. Also, females are much more likely to experience mental health than males. This study also goes on to draw connections with The Displaced Behavior Theory, which may explain why social media is effecting mental health as much as it does.

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Monitoring Editor: Alexander Muacevic and John R Adler

Abstract

Social media are responsible for aggravating mental health problems. This systematic study summarizes the effects of social network usage on mental health. Fifty papers were shortlisted from google scholar databases, and after the application of various inclusion and exclusion criteria, 16 papers were chosen and all papers were evaluated for quality. Eight papers were cross-sectional studies, three were longitudinal studies, two were qualitative studies, and others were systematic reviews. Findings were classified into two outcomes of mental health: anxiety and depression. Social media activity such as time spent to have a positive effect on the mental health domain. However, due to the cross-sectional design and methodological limitations of sampling, there are considerable differences. The structure of social media influences on mental health needs to be further analyzed through qualitative research and vertical cohort studies.

Keywords: social media, mental health, systematic review, prisma

Introduction and background

Human beings are social creatures that require the companionship of others to make progress in life. Thus, being socially connected with other people can relieve stress, anxiety, and sadness, but lack of social connection can pose serious risks to mental health [ 1].

Social media

Social media has recently become part of people's daily activities; many of them spend hours each day on Messenger, Instagram, Facebook, and other popular social media. Thus, many researchers and scholars study the impact of social media and applications on various aspects of people's lives [ 2]. Moreover, the number of social media users worldwide in 2019 is 3.484 billion, up 9% year-on-year [ 3- 5]. A statistic in Figure 1 shows the gender distribution of social media audiences worldwide as of January 2020, sorted by platform. It was found that only 38% of Twitter users were male but 61% were using Snapchat. In contrast, females were more likely to use LinkedIn and Facebook. There is no denying that social media has now become an important part of many people's lives. Social media has many positive and enjoyable benefits, but it can also lead to mental health problems. Previous research found that age did not have an effect but gender did; females were much more likely to experience mental health than males [ 6, 7].

Impact on mental health

Mental health is defined as a state of well-being in which people understand their abilities, solve everyday life problems, work well, and make a significant contribution to the lives of their communities [ 8]. There is debated presently going on regarding the benefits and negative impacts of social media on mental health [ 9, 10]. Social networking is a crucial element in protecting our mental health. Both the quantity and quality of social relationships affect mental health, health behavior, physical health, and mortality risk [ 9]. The Displaced Behavior Theory may help explain why social media shows a connection with mental health. According to the theory, people who spend more time in sedentary behaviors such as social media use have less time for face-to-face social interaction, both of which have been proven to be protective against mental disorders [ 11, 12]. On the other hand, social theories found how social media use affects mental health by influencing how people view, maintain, and interact with their social network [ 13]. A number of studies have been conducted on the impacts of social media, and it has been indicated that the prolonged use of social media platforms such as Facebook may be related to negative signs and symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress [ 10- 15]. Furthermore, social media can create a lot of pressure to create the stereotype that others want to see and also being as popular as others.

The need for a systematic review

Systematic studies can quantitatively and qualitatively identify, aggregate, and evaluate all accessible data to generate a warm and accurate response to the research questions involved [ 4]. In addition, many existing systematic studies related to mental health studies have been conducted worldwide. However, only a limited number of studies are integrated with social media and conducted in the context of social science because the available literature heavily focused on medical science [ 6]. Because social media is a relatively new phenomenon, the potential links between their use and mental health have not been widely investigated.

This paper attempt to systematically review all the relevant literature with the aim of filling the gap by examining social media impact on mental health, which is sedentary behavior, which, if in excess, raises the risk of health problems [ 7, 9, 12]. This study is important because it provides information on the extent of the focus of peer review literature, which can assist the researchers in delivering a prospect with the aim of understanding the future attention related to climate change strategies that require scholarly attention. This study is very useful because it provides information on the extent to which peer review literature can assist researchers in presenting prospects with a view to understanding future concerns related to mental health strategies that require scientific attention. The development of the current systematic review is based on the main research question: how does social media affect mental health?

Review

Research strategy

The research was conducted to identify studies analyzing the role of social media on mental health. Google Scholar was used as our main database to find the relevant articles. Keywords that were used for the search were: (1) "social media", (2) "mental health", (3) "social media" AND "mental health", (4) "social networking" AND "mental health", and (5) "social networking" OR "social media" AND "mental health" (Table 1 ).

Out of the results in Table 1 , a total of 50 articles relevant to the research question were selected. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, duplicate papers were removed, and, finally, a total of 28 articles were selected for review (Figure 2 ).

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Peer-reviewed, full-text research papers from the past five years were included in the review. All selected articles were in English language and any non-peer-reviewed and duplicate papers were excluded from finally selected articles.

Result

Of the 16 selected research papers, there were a research focus on adults, gender, and preadolescents [ 10- 19]. In the design, there were qualitative and quantitative studies [ 15, 16]. There were three systematic reviews and one thematic analysis that explored the better or worse of using social media among adolescents [ 20- 23]. In addition, eight were cross-sectional studies and only three were longitudinal studies [ 24- 29].The meta-analyses included studies published beyond the last five years in this population. Table 2 presents a selection of studies from the review.

Table 2

Author

Title of Study

Method

Findings

Discussion

This study has attempted to systematically analyze the existing literature on the effect of social media use on mental health. Although the results of the study were not completely consistent, this review found a general association between social media use and mental health issues. Although there is positive evidence for a link between social media and mental health, the opposite has been reported.

For example, a previous study found no relationship between the amount of time spent on social media and depression or between social media-related activities, such as the number of online friends and the number of "selfies", and depression [ 29]. Similarly, Neira and Barber found that while higher investment in social media (e.g. active social media use) predicted adolescents' depressive symptoms, no relationship was found between the frequency of social media use and depressed mood [ 28].

In the 16 studies, anxiety and depression were the most commonly measured outcome. The prominent risk factors for anxiety and depression emerging from this study comprised time spent, activity, and addiction to social media. In today's world, anxiety is one of the basic mental health problems. People liked and commented on their uploaded photos and videos. In today's age, everyone is immune to the social media context. Some teens experience anxiety from social media related to fear of loss, which causes teens to try to respond and check all their friends' messages and messages on a regular basis.

On the contrary, depression is one of the unintended significances of unnecessary use of social media. In detail, depression is limited not only to Facebooks but also to other social networking sites, which causes psychological problems. A new study found that individuals who are involved in social media, games, texts, mobile phones, etc. are more likely to experience depression.

The previous study found a 70% increase in self-reported depressive symptoms among the group using social media. The other social media influence that causes depression is sexual fun [ 12]. The intimacy fun happens when social media promotes putting on a facade that highlights the fun and excitement but does not tell us much about where we are struggling in our daily lives at a deeper level [ 28]. Another study revealed that depression and time spent on Facebook by adolescents are positively correlated [ 22]. More importantly, symptoms of major depression have been found among the individuals who spent most of their time in online activities and performing image management on social networking sites [ 14].

Another study assessed gender differences in associations between social media use and mental health. Females were found to be more addicted to social media as compared with males [ 26]. Passive activity in social media use such as reading posts is more strongly associated with depression than doing active use like making posts [ 23]. Other important findings of this review suggest that other factors such as interpersonal trust and family functioning may have a greater influence on the symptoms of depression than the frequency of social media use [ 28, 29].

Limitation and suggestion

The limitations and suggestions were identified by the evidence involved in the study and review process. Previously, 7 of the 16 studies were cross-sectional and slightly failed to determine the causal relationship between the variables of interest. Given the evidence from cross-sectional studies, it is not possible to conclude that the use of social networks causes mental health problems. Only three longitudinal studies examined the causal relationship between social media and mental health, which is hard to examine if the mental health problem appeared more pronounced in those who use social media more compared with those who use it less or do not use at all [ 19, 20, 24]. Next, despite the fact that the proposed relationship between social media and mental health is complex, a few studies investigated mediating factors that may contribute or exacerbate this relationship. Further investigations are required to clarify the underlying factors that help examine why social media has a negative impact on some peoples' mental health, whereas it has no or positive effect on others' mental health.

Conclusions

Social media is a new study that is rapidly growing and gaining popularity. Thus, there are many unexplored and unexpected constructive answers associated with it. Lately, studies have found that using social media platforms can have a detrimental effect on the psychological health of its users. However, the extent to which the use of social media impacts the public is yet to be determined. This systematic review has found that social media envy can affect the level of anxiety and depression in individuals. In addition, other potential causes of anxiety and depression have been identified, which require further exploration.

The importance of such findings is to facilitate further research on social media and mental health. In addition, the information obtained from this study can be helpful not only to medical professionals but also to social science research. The findings of this study suggest that potential causal factors from social media can be considered when cooperating with patients who have been diagnosed with anxiety or depression. Also, if the results from this study were used to explore more relationships with another construct, this could potentially enhance the findings to reduce anxiety and depression rates and prevent suicide rates from occurring.

Notes

The content published in Cureus is the result of clinical experience and/or research by independent individuals or organizations. Cureus is not responsible for the scientific accuracy or reliability of data or conclusions published herein. All content published within Cureus is intended only for educational, research and reference purposes. Additionally, articles published within Cureus should not be deemed a suitable substitute for the advice of a qualified health care professional. Do not disregard or avoid professional medical advice due to content published within Cureus.

Footnotes

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

References

6. Interrelationships of adolescent physical activity, screen-based sedentary behavior, and social and psychological health. Iannotti RJ, Janssen I, Haug E, et al. Int J Public Health. 2009;54:191-198. [[ PMC free article] [ PubMed] Google Scholar]

17. Is there an association between social media use and mental health? the timing of confounding measurement matters-reply [Online ahead of print] Feder KA, Riehm KE, Mojtabai R. JAMA Psychiatry. 2019 [[ PubMed] Google Scholar]

23. Adolescent mental health in the digital age: facts, fears, and future directions. Odgers CL, Jensen MR. J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2020;61:336-348. [[ PMC free article] [ PubMed] Google Scholar]

27. Chang FM. Electronic Theses and Dissertations, University of Windsor, Windsor, Canada. Vol. 2019. Canada: University of Windsor; 2019. Selfies on social media: the role of appearance contingent self-worth and impact on self-esteem; p. 7633. [ Google Scholar]

Articles from Cureus are provided here courtesy of Cureus Inc.

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Social Media Use and Its Connection to Mental Health: A Systematic Review

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Social media are responsible for aggravating mental health problems. This systematic study summarizes the effects of social network usage on mental health. Fifty papers were shortlisted from google scholar databases, and after the application of various ...

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Case Study - Social Medias link to a DECLINE in Mental Health

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Case Study - Social Medias link to a DECLINE in Mental Health

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Dylan Walsh writes about the connections between social media and the links it has to the increases in anxiety and depression among college students. He also states that over half of the global population has at least one social media account.

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Mark Zuckerberg launched TheFacebook at Harvard University in February 2004. Days later, 650 students had made accounts. Today, there are roughly two billion daily active users.

Concurrent with Facebook's meteoric expansion has been growing concern over the mental well-being of adolescents and young adults. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control, the suicide rate among 10- to 24-year-olds was stable from 2000 to 2007; it then increased 57% between 2007 and 2017.

Given these parallel trends, it's important to understand the relationship between mental health and technology use, especially how youths use social media. But there have been few causal studies.

"There may be hundreds of papers that present correlations between social media and well-being, and many of them are great and highly informative, but we still know little about which way the effect runs," said Alexey Makarin, an assistant professor at MIT Sloan. People who use more social media may become more depressed, or, conversely, people who are more depressed may be more active on social media. "There is a lack of true causal evidence."

Makarin and colleagues Luca Braghieri of Bocconi University and Ro'ee Levy of Tel Aviv University aim to fill this gap with a new paper, forthcoming in the American Economic Review. The researchers paired the staggered rollout of Facebook in colleges with 430,000 responses from the National College Health Assessment, a semi-annual survey of mental health and well-being on campuses across the U.S. (The survey looks at other dimensions of student health, as well, like substance use and exercise habits.) The researchers found a significant link between the presence of Facebook and a deterioration in mental health among college students.

Facebook access leads to more anxiety and depression

When Facebook began, access was restricted to people with a Harvard email address. Less than a month later, the website had expanded to Columbia, Stanford, and Yale. This progressive opening continued until September of 2006, when anybody over 13 years old was able to create an account.

"We were able to use the fact that Facebook rolled out at different universities at different times, together with the fact that we have this huge survey already conducted at universities, to understand the causal impact of Facebook on student mental health," Makarin said.

Most broadly, the researchers found a sizable increase in the number of students who reported mental distress at some time in the preceding year. College-wide access to Facebook led to an increase in severe depression by 7% and anxiety disorder by 20%. Beyond these results, a greater percentage of the most susceptible students also treated symptoms with either psychotherapy or antidepressants. In total, the negative effect of Facebook on mental health appeared to be roughly 20% the magnitude of what is experienced by those who lose their job.

The researchers posit that social comparison with peers is behind those results, and it is an effect that appears to grow stronger as people are exposed to Facebook for greater lengths. "The effects seem to increase with time," Makarin said. "If, in late fall 2004, a freshman at Harvard had Facebook available to him for one semester and a sophomore for two semesters, it appears as though the effect is stronger with the sophomore, who had greater exposure."

Trying to solve a "truly bad" situation

Given Makarin and his coauthors are looking at Facebook in its earliest form, they've faced questions about the salience of these findings. "People wonder how much this tells us about Facebook, or Instagram, right now," Makarin said. "And that's a fair criticism - but there are a few things in our defense."

First, to the degree that social comparison drives these results, Makarin notes there is reason to believe the effect has not diminished; looking at and interpreting the curated posts of others remains a fundamental operating principle on Facebook and other, similar forms of social media. (Makarin also suspects that the ubiquity of smartphones could make this channel of influence stronger.)

Second, even if the study pertains to a particular period, the paucity of experimental data on how social media affects its users means any contribution should be considered worthwhile. "Whatever causal evidence we are able to provide is, by its nature, useful," he said.

Makarin and his coauthors also take care to delimit the scope of their study. The mental health of Facebook's users is only one dimension on which to measure the overall effect of social media. People may derive benefits, like connection with old friends or access to likeminded groups or good deals on products, that, in total, outweigh the costs.

But even if this is the case, Makarin believes that social media companies and policymakers should still work to alleviate the potentially harmful effects on mental well-being. As of 2021, 4.5 billion people - more than half of the global population - had a social media account.

"When I came to this work, I knew that mental health was an important issue, but to be honest, I thought of it as just one more outcome to study in our social media agenda," he said. "When I started to really look into the trends of deteriorating mental health among the young adults, though, I came to realize how truly bad the situation is, and that stuck with me. Any insights that this paper, or others, can offer into what's behind this trend will be very valuable to society."
Read next: 5 social media trends experts are watching

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Study: Social media use linked to decline in mental health | MIT Sloan

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Researchers found a significant link between the presence of Facebook and increases in anxiety and depression among college students.

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TedTalk - Is Social Media Hurting Your Mental Health? (14 minutes)

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TedTalk - Is Social Media Hurting Your Mental Health? (14 minutes)

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This video is such a beneficial watch. Bailey talks about your "internal monologue" you have with yourself as you are scrolling through social media, it is truly relatable. We do not recognize how much social media affects our mental health. We are so connected to our phones that sometimes we even feel phantom vibrations. A quote she used in the TedTalk stood out to me and I wanted to share it, "We struggle with insecurity because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else's highlight reel." (Steven Furtick).

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Is Social Media Hurting Your Mental Health? | Bailey Parnell | TEDxRyersonU

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Overuse of social media can impact mental health - Video (17 minutes)

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Overuse of social media can impact mental health - Video (17 minutes)

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This video is beneficial to watch because it discusses how social media is affecting young adults. Social media is increasing rates in suicide and mental health. We all know how addicting social media is especially TikTok right now, but is it worth declining your mental health?

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Overuse of social media can impact mental health