Title: Social Media and Adolescents’ and Young Adults’ Mental Health | National Center for Health Research
Headings: Social Media and Adolescents’ and Young Adults’ Mental Health
Social Media and Adolescents’ and Young Adults’ Mental Health
What are the different social media platforms and how are they used?
The benefits of social media
Is social media related to mental health problems?
What can parents do?
Tips for managing social media use
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Content: Social media can worsen feelings of FoMO, for example, if someone sees posts about a party that they were not invited to. Adolescents may be particularly vulnerable to potential negative impacts of social media because social connectedness is important for their development. Browsing social media can lead to FoMO, and the feeling of being excluded can lead to negative feelings.15
Anxiety and depression are not the only mental health problems associated with social media use. Research on adolescents has found that body image, for girls and boys, is harmed by social media use.16 Higher social media use leads to “body surveillance,” which refers to monitoring one’s own body and becoming judgmental of it. People who do more body surveillance report feeling more shame about their bodies.4 Looking at profiles of attractive people leads to more negative body image.17 There are many “fitspiration” accounts on Instagram, posting about diet and exercise in order to be thin, and it is common for people to filter or photoshop their posts on Instagram in order to remove blemishes. People compare themselves to these ideals or these edited images and feel like they do not measure up. This can cause poor body image.16
Another harmful aspect of social media is cyberbullying, which is bullying that occurs online. As many as 72% of teens say that they have been cyberbullied at some point.18 Cyberbullying is more strongly correlated with suicide attempts than is face-to-face bullying.19 Unlike bullying that takes place in-person, victims of cyberbullying cannot get away from it, it stays online, and it happens out of sight of teachers and parents. What can parents do? Because children are not good at self-regulation and are susceptible to peer pressure, social media sites can be risky places to “hang out.”