Social media is one of the most widely used information sources for people. The daily use of the Internet has increased significantly during the last ten years. Social media addiction is estimated to affect 210 million individuals (Social Media Addiction Statistics, 2022). Moreover, social media sites are more addicting than both alcohol and tobacco. Since social networks and the Internet are an essential element of modern life, they have a significant impact on people’s health and quality of life. It turns out that platforms intended to foster social interaction can instead exacerbate a mental health crisis.
There has been a lot of studies on the subject of how social media affects people’s mental health. Social media provides a lot of advantages as well as disadvantages. The availability of services online is one of the key benefits of using social media. According to a survey by Naslund et al. (2020), people with mental illnesses have expressed interest in using social media to seek mental health treatments. The majority of respondents expressed interest in using social media to access mental health programs that addressed symptom management, health promotion, and assistance in communicating with medical professionals and dealing with the healthcare system. People with mental illnesses can utilize social media to quickly find medical assistance. Social media can also be used to seek support from others, discuss personal experiences with mental illness, and research recommended treatments (Naslund et al., 2020). However, using social media has a lot of drawbacks as well. Through a survey of adolescents, O’Reilly et al. (2018) discovered three key detrimental consequences of social media on mental health. First of all, using social media can lead to anxiety and mood disorders. Second, cyberbullying is prevalent on social media and has a negative effect on mental health. Third, the use of social media is a kind of addiction. The same issues were noted in the study by Bashir and Bhad (2017), who came to the conclusion that social media has detrimental consequences in the form of cyberbullying, online harassment, depression, stress, weariness, loneliness, reduction in intellectual capacities, and emotion suppression. The benefits of social networking, however, are still a hot debate. Therefore, the following study will concentrate on how social media affects people’s mental health.
References
Bashir, H., & Bhat, S. A. (2017). Effects of social media on mental health: A review. The International Journal of Indian Psychology, 4(3). doi:10.25215/0403.134
Naslund, J. A., Bondre, A., Torous, J., & Aschbrenner, K. A. (2020). Social media and mental health: Benefits, risks, and opportunities for research and practice. Journal of Technology in Behavioral Science. doi:10.1007/s41347-020-00134-x
O’Reilly, M., Dogra, N., Whiteman, N., Hughes, J., Eruyar, S., & Reilly, P. (2018). Is social media bad for mental health and wellbeing? Exploring the perspectives of adolescents. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 1-13. doi:10.1177/1359104518775154
Social Media Addiction Statistics. (2022). Truelist.Â