Essay Example on Does Social Networking Contribute to Depression

They gather that adolescents should not be banned from social media and the internet completely however parents should understand and be aware of what is happening online As well as pediatricians having a new role of educating families and advising parents guardians to become familiar with the technology their children are using CITATION O'Keeffe G S Clarke Pearson K 2011 The impact of social media on children adolescents and families Pediatrics 127 4 800 804 SOURCE 2 From the journal Social media use in adolescence is associated with poor sleep quality anxiety depression and low self esteem researchers Dr Heather Cleland Woods and Holly Scott conducted a study on Scottish adolescents to examine if social media affected their sleep self image and amount of depression anxiety they experienced They gave the adolescents questionnaires in school and had them speak out about their feelings and thoughts throughout the process in which they studied them They found through their research that individuals who spent more time using social media had Poorer sleep quality lower self esteem and higher levels of anxiety and depression Woods H C Scott H 2016 Specifically nighttime use of social media more often was found to have the worst effect This research contributes to the growing evidence that the use of social media contributes to depression and the well being of adolescents CITATION Woods H C Scott H 2016 Sleepyteens Social media use in adolescence is associated with poor sleep quality anxiety depression and low self esteem Journal Of Adolescence 5141 49 doi 10 1016 j adolescence 2016 05 008 SOURCE 3 In 2016 a study titled Association Between Social Media Use and Depression Among U S Young Adults analyzed the impact of social media on depression and the factors that contribute to depression The researchers noted that around 90 of young adults in the United States use social media and most of the users visit the sites at least once a day Lin L y Sidani J E Shensa A Radovic A Miller E Colditz J B Primack B A 2016 When conducting their research they used a sample of young adults that represented everyone different ethnicities genders age groups social class etc They selected these people at random and used surveys to ask about social media use and depression Their findings revealed a remarkably strong correlation between social media use and depression One explanation offered by the authors was that adolescents see their peers posts online Facebook Instagram and so on which cause feelings of jealousy and the belief that they are leading better lives 

This study is important because with social media becoming increasingly popular among adolescents it is good to have as much research as possible about how it affects them and be able to understand the implications that can arise from too much time spent online CITATION Lin L y Sidani J E Shensa A Radovic A Miller E Colditz J B Primack B A 2016 Association between social media use and depression among U S young adults Depression And Anxiety 33 4 323 331 doi 10 1002 da 22466 SOURCE 4 The Journal of Adolescence conducted a qualitative study in 2017 titled Depressed adolescents positive and negative use of social media on 23 adolescents who had been diagnosed with depression and examined their social media use to see if it had an effect on their depression Ana Radovic Theresa Gmelin Bradley D Stein and Elizabeth Millera say that in the study they had the adolescents describe what they thought the negative and positive things were about their social media use Examples of negative being comparing themselves to others cyberbullying sexting or other dangerous acts and examples of positive being entertainment connecting with family friends finding jobs or reading educational material Working towards treatment the adolescents in this study focus on changing their patterns from negative uses to positive The researchers found that although they used social media in the same ways as other adolescents without depression they tended to use social media more when they were feeling depressed in an effort to feel better while sometimes it would actually worsen their mood CITATION Radovic A Gmelin T Stein B D Miller E 2017 Depressed adolescents positive and negative use of social media Journal Of Adolescence 555 15 doi 10 1016 j adolescence 2016 12 002