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Effect of Social Networking Sites on Mental Health of Adolescent Girls: A Case Study | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Paper Id :
17640 Submission Date :
2023-05-13 Acceptance Date :
2023-05-19 Publication Date :
2023-05-25
This is an open-access research paper/article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. For verification of this paper, please visit on
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Abstract |
Adolescents are the assets for the growth and development. Existing era is profoundly empowered by Internet and social media in such a way that arise consideration about the technology abuse. It also emerges that varieties of disagreeable incidences during adolescence are prompted due to these social networking sites. It is also advocated that gender showed important role in development of mental issues and well being during use of virtual social networking. Present study scrutinizes the use of specific analytical tools and questionnaire based self disclosure survey for the effect of role of social media in anxiety and depression among adolescent girls. The study also focuses on association between use of Facebook and other social networking platform with development of social capital. For the determination of anxiety, SCARED (Birmahe et al., 1999) and for evaluation of depression, CES-DC (Faulstich et al., 1986) is used with some modifications. 52 undergraduate and senior secondary female students were randomly screened without any biasing and any special selection. 40 respondents were found to use social networks, Facebook being predominantly social network having average 82.125 members per user with 2.44 hrs average daily Internet use including 1 hour approximately Facebook use per day. 12 respondents declined to use any social networking sites and are treated as control set for the present study. The senior secondary students require special help for completion of the questionnaire as contrary to the recommended age for help in guidelines. Result validated the use of SCARED and CES-DC for adolescents having Cronbach’s alpha (α) of 0.831726 and 0.737435 respectively for respondents who reported to use Facebook. Social media usage was found to interact with measures of psychological well-being, social capital and overall personal satisfaction. Anxiety is high in non-users as compared to users (66.67% against 50%) Depression is high in users as compared to non-users (37.5% and 25% respectively). Both the values are statistically insignificant in terms of correlation analyses conducted on results from a survey suggest agreement between use of Facebook and social capital. Role of social media in expansion of anxiety and depression are insignificant at degree of variance at 0.05%. Facebook intensity indicates very low grade negative correlation with anxiety (-0.41834). Non-users showed weak positive correlation of TV screen time with depression (correlation correlation 0.424559). It is thus recommended to augment the study base and certain add-up sequences to understand the actual process of mental health among adolescents.
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Keywords | Adolescent, Mental Disorder, Depression, Anxiety, Social Media, Gender, Girl | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Introduction |
Mental health is integral and intrinsic part of human survival. It plays important role from the individualistic apprehension to societal perspective. At present, it became essential integer for achieving the sustainable development. The phrase ‘Healthy brain lies in healthy body’ emphasized the role of health in growth and developmental aspect from family to nation. At the start of 21st century, mental health is included in definition of disease by World Health Organization. This aspect became fundamental by emphasizing the good mental health through WHO Mental Health Action Plan 2013-20 in 65th World Health Assembly which is re-instated as tag line of ‘Transforming Mental Health for All’ in World Mental Health Report (2022). Mental health traits gained momentum during and post Covid pandemic due to unprecedented lockdown, restrictions and isolation. Mental health is not merely ailment but is a complex array of mental dismay to psychosocial disabilities which manifest themselves in diverse approach to person to person which is perceived individually with altering extent of difficulty, distress and impending socio-clinical outcomes (WHO, 2022). Anxiety, depression and stress are most common manifestation of mental disorders and are induced due to unfavourable social, economic, geopolitical and environmental circumstances which include poverty, violence, inequality, perceived injustice, rejection, discrimination and environmental deprivation (Galderisi et al., 2015).
Risk factors associated with mental ailments can mark these anarchy at all stages of life, but all those induced at impulsive childhood are predominantly detrimental. Some inevitable and regrettable circumstances like cruel parenting, substantial punishment, emotional blackmailing, discrimination and bullying in early stage may augment mental health conditions among adolescents (Ahn, 2011; Slade et al., 2014). Globally, majority of adolescents faced moderate to severe mental ailment which are usually unrecognizable so untreatable. World Health Organization reported 86 million adolescents aged 15–19 and 80 million adolescents aged 10–14 have mental health issues. Gender specific study reported 89 million adolescent boys and 77 million adolescent girls aged 10–19 live with a mental disorder. Adolescents experienced aberrant deaths in which suicide stands fifth which increased in late adolescents up to fourth. These conditions may induces estimated annual loss of US$387.2 billion in terms of human capital as per purchasing power parity (WHO, 2012; 2013; UNICEF, 2021).
Mental issues were found to increase at alarming rate of 52% during period of 2005-2017 which indicated that adolescents are vulnerable and easily victimized due to their physiological, psychological and social enigma (Twenge et al., 2019). Social media imparts new dimensions as their widespread and inevitable contact to adolescents added a new facet to the mental health. 78.05% population possessed smart-phone among which more than one mobile are held by many persons by the end of 2020. The smart-phone subscriptions as of 2021 are supposed to be 6.23 billion which exceed the number of smart-phone users (Laricchia, 2023). Statista informed that global number of social media users are 4.76 billion having penetration rate of 59.4% having a major purpose of connection with family and friends while others reasons are filling spare time, looking for inspiration, reading and creativity. Social media usage indicated differential daily performance as about 60 minutes for adults, while 49.12 minutes among adolescents (Dixon, 2022).
Depression is correlated with upsurge of social networking sites browsing during several cross-sectional and co-relational surveys (Brunborg and Andreas, 2019; Ivie et al., 2020; Keles, McCrae, and Grealish, 2020). Even though, several studies reported about the beneficial outcomes of social media which are supposed to be of greater value, many researchers alarmed about the negative impact of social media (Elsayed, 2021). A few studies underline the any significant correlation amid social media usage and depressive sign (Coyne et al., 2020). Majority of correlational and cross-sectional studies are confined to measure the impact of time spent on social media with mental health indicators and withdraw the inter-relation between anxiety and depression with social networking sites. Some workers highlighted the role of gender and individual psychological well-being in onset of depression and anxiety (Ahn, 2011; Calandri, Graziano and Rolle, 2021).
In light of the views, a randomized gender specific survey based study is planned to compare the use of social network with induction of mental health. Non-users of social media are treated as control and separately evaluated for the statistical variation with proposed null hypothesis as ‘effect of social media usage is not associated with mental ailments’. The alternate hypothesis accepts the role of social media use in development of mental disorders.
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Objective of study | The aim and objective of the study may be summarised in following points;
1. To understand the internet and web browsing pattern of adolescent girls
2. To figure out the mental health of adolescent girls
3. To evaluate the psychological and social perception of adolescent girls
4. To study the impact of social media on mental health of adolescent girls
5. To correlate the mental health indicators with social media users and non-users |
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Review of Literature | Social media is
new emerging phenomenon of present century which manifest itself in ubiquitous
manner having deep reach in every aspect of life. Frequent use of smartphone in
general and social media specially may induces disturbances slowly which cannot
be judged in early stage and only be understood when it is very late. Role of
social media is highlighted in many progressive aspects ranging from study to personality
development to peer recognition but certain negative aspects are surfaced which
make it as an inevitable nuisance. A gender
specific study reported that girls manifested the mental disorders in
differential symptoms as compared to commonly recognised set of symptoms which
encompasses most common unexplained fatigue decreased energy, psychomotor
changes and lack of concentration, weight change and suicidal tendency (Khalil,
2010). Social networking addiction may be potential danger which is accountable
for the adolescents’ mental health and psychological problem in behaviour
dependent manner. Extroverts present themselves as social enhancers while
introverts exhibited narcissism which decreases real life community
communication, low academic performance, relationship thrash and compulsive
drug abuse (Kuss and Griffiths, 2011). Sarda et al. (2013) found that
gender, age, economic condition and urban and rural background do not play any
noteworthy role in beginning and development of mental disorders. As guilty
verdict, it is supposed that social anxiety is prevalent in society to varied
intensity and became a motive for depression which negatively effects physical
and psychological difficulty but no correlation between social media use and
social anxiety are reported. Although the existence of social anxiety are not
denied but highlighted that other variables are hidden in social dispersion
which may be root cause for the beginning of anxiety and depression (Riaz,
Ishaq and Abbasi, 2018). Social media are not found of permanent and stable
effect on life satisfaction of adolescents in longitudinal, cross-sectional,
randomised-intercept, specification curve analysis. Mostly effects are
statistically insignificant with indication of more susceptibility among girls
(Orben, Dienlin and Przybylski, 2019). The results revealed that prolonged
social media use endorsed elevated depressive symptoms along with lower
well-being and life satisfaction among girls of lower emotional self-efficacy
and vice-versa (Calandri, Graziano and Rolle, 2021). Achmad et al. (2023)
underline the significance of socialization, healthy and wise use of social
media which provide positive and remarkable influence on the lifestyle of
adolescents in the city of Bandung by 43% at the cost of disturbed sleep
pattern. General
correlation amid social media use and mental health problems are observed along
with some confounding variables (e.g. age and gender) and intervening factors
(e.g. insomnia, rumination and self-esteem) in the studies where results are
not utterly consistent (Keles, McCrae and Grealish, 2020). 50%
non-dependent, 8.3% moderate and 41.7% dependent respondents are reported in
descriptive phrase, questionnaire based, convenient sampling which exhibited
unconstructive effect of social media but dependent user might be border line
addicts (Kurian et al., 2021). Social media use and playing games were positively
associated with internalizing symptoms which are conditional on gender
indicating girls might be especially vulnerable to display internalizing
symptoms and different kinds of social media activities with sense of
well-being (Svensson, Johnson and Olsson, 2022). Pantic et al. (2012) reported
direct association between depression and online social networking as high
usage of social sites accelerate the depressive symptoms and reduce the sleep
time of the adolescents. Overall, psychopathology may not be influenced by
social network usage but subjective well-being of the user is primary concern.
Impoverished social network and changes in mental condition are linked with
adolescents with mental illness which ultimately leads towards change in
individual profiles. Thus screening the substance and worth of interaction is
good marker for the recognition of mental issues in early phase (Seabrook, Kern
and Rickard, 2016). A controlled
descriptive study on 90 respondents with respect to demography, social
networking usage, social relationship and health affects which indicated that
significant links and affirmative correlations between social media usage and
feeling of anxiousness on social networking sites (Deepa and Priya, 2020). The
confirmed psychological effects of social media use among students contain
depression, stress, anxiety, emotional isolation, low self-esteem, memory loss,
and self-harm (Olola, Asukwo and Odufuwa, 2022). Correlational study
on addiction showed that the gender specific findings as 58% females among 11%
of the total participants are extensively addicted to social media having low
self-esteems which prompts higher social media surfing and playing video-games
as distractive measures (Ciacchini et al., 2023). During the study, Labrague (2014) find the indirect
link between Facebook usage and mental disorder. Although the Facebook itself
cannot induce negative emotions but prolonged use raises the depression and
anxiety indicators and troubled emotional situation of the subjects. Facebook
is not only helps in relationship continuance, time surpass, amusement and
friendship but for flight from negative phase and mood upliftment. Usually
excessive users might face habit forming and slowly became compulsive and
addictive. It appeared that frequency of use, duration of use and content of
use might be associated with surveillance gratification, entertainment gratification
and content gratification and play prominent role in Facebook addiction in
gender specific manner as females prefer to maintain their existing friend base
but males always expand to new users. Facebook addiction occupies various
factors namely low psychological well-being, loneliness, non-socially motivated
use, fear of missing out (Ryan et al., 2014). The association
between social media and academic performance is found in terms of significant
deviation of test score of mathematics with respect to social media usage.
Students with history of social media usage less than an hour have superior
performance as compared to subjects with usage of more than 7 hours
(Igcasama et al., 2019). In present scenario, study of psychological well-being and social capital must be incorporated along with some randomised control entities which do not have any social media account for more relatable and statistically valid findings. Gender should also be incorporated in study; more study should be planned on girls to understand the effect better. |
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Sampling |
Survey: A randomised sampling process were performed in various department of Dr. H.S. Gaur Sagar Unioversity, Sagar, M.P. and KV, Sagar from 2021-2023. Internal subsampling will be used to reduce respondent burden by dividing the study into 2 parts. Part 1 will be included core diagnostic assessment. Part 2 will be included subjects which are non user of social media and are treated to be control for the study. Total 60 girl students up to age of 19 were counselled and briefly explained about the nature of study. After that they were voluntarily asked for the filling of the different formats for evaluation of Facebook Intensity, Anxiety and Depression. Total 3 formats were used, any ambiguity or confusion about questions was duly addressed and the participants were prompted to fill and return all formats within week.
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Tools Used | Assessments: Total three formats were used namely Facebook Intensity Scale for social media usage, SCARED (Child Version) for anxiety and CES-DC for depression. The detail structure is given below. a. Demographic Information: During the survey, general information regarding age, and gender prompted to provide in the questionnaire. In the questionnaire average time spent on watching TV and social media is also recorded. b. Facebook Intensity Scale (Ellison, Steinfield and Lampe; 2007): The Facebook Intensity Scale (FIS) will be included as part of an investigation of subject for social networking site usage and social capital, the resources accumulated through being part of a network. The questionnaire is adopted from the study of Ellison, Steinfield and Lampe (2007) with some modification. The scale consists of 26 items for measuring self declared social media usage along with psychological and social capital which are scored using a 5-point Likert scale with choices ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”. As important part of this study, the questionnaire will reveal the active engagement of subject with Facebook and other social site activities, the extent to which individuals were emotionally connected to social sites and how well social sites was integrated into users’ daily lives. c. Anxiety Scale (Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders - SCARED) (Birmahe et al., 1995; Birmahe et al., 1999): The scale consists of 41 items for measuring self reported anxiety symptoms which are scored using a 3-point Likert scale with choices ranging from “not true or hardly ever true” to “very true or often true”. Scoring consists of a total score, as well as analysis of five factors, including panic disorder or significant somatic symptoms, general anxiety disorder, separation anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, and significant school avoidance. The total score as well as the individual scores within the five factors will be utilized for analysis. The scale will be considered invalid if more than three items were left unanswered. The anxiety scores at each time point ranging from 0 (no symptoms) to 82 (severe symptoms) has strong predictive validity for anxiety at a threshold score of 30 (25 as predictive and 30 as specified). d. Depression Scale (Centers for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale for Children CES-DC) (Weissman, Orvaschel and Padian, 1980; Faulstich et al., 1986): The scale consists of 20 items that have been successfully used for quantifying the severity of depression in general populations which will be recorded using responses of respondents that how often in the last 7 days they had experienced specific depressive symptoms. Each item will be scored on a scale of 0 to 3, corresponding to responses of “never or rarely”, “sometimes”, “a lot of the time” and “most or all of the time”. The depression scores at each time point ranging from 0 (no symptoms) to 60 (severe symptoms) has strong predictive validity for depression at a threshold score of 22 (16 as predictive and 22 as specific). |
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Statistics Used in the Study | The
collected data was checked for completeness and cleaned using Microsoft Excel
by removing all incomplete responses so that statistical analysis of the data
could be done. Cronbach’s alpha was used to the determine
reliability of all constructs within the study, with numbers >0.7 taken to
indicate reliability (Tavakol and Dennick, 2011). All values are reported as mean ±SD. The Student’s t-Test was used for analysis of variance in between
users and non-users. Correlation coefficient was used to measure the impact of social media on adolescents
as required. |
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Result and Discussion |
Demographic
information exhibited in Table 1 which revealed that 86.67% recovery rate of
the questionnaire. The average age of subjects is 17 years. Television time is
1.24 hours while average time spent on internet 2.14 hrs.76.92% users (40
girls) have Facebook account with average member of 82.13 while 67.41% have
alternate or additional social accounts. Usually subjects spent 2.38 hours
average on social networks with some members have very high internet usage of
10 hours (Table 1). 22 to 33% respondents don’t have Facebook or any other
social network membership and these are treated as control for the study. Usually
Facebook users spent 10 min. to 3 hours for the social network surfing (Table
2). It is also clear that subjects with high numbers of online friends spent
more time on social media and internet (data not shown). Usually members showed
the Facebook intensity value of 2.79 which exhibited average to strong bonding
with social networking sites. Data expressed in terms provide good reliability with
Cronbach’s alpha value 0.77342. Girl prefers to connect with person they
already known to him like classmate, neighbour or friend (average value of
2.93) as compared to new people having average value of 2.4 (Table 3). The
trend indicated that they prefer to share the thought, media and other content
with offline friends. Respondents valued their old friendship most with index
value of 4.15. Table 4 depicts
about the psychological well being in terms of self-esteem. The performances of
respondents are compared in between users and non-users. The non-user
self-esteem is slightly high with mean value of 3.85 as compared to users
having value of 3.41 (Cronbach’s alpha is 0.81 and 0.73 respectively). The
value indicated that non-users have high self-esteem but Student’s t-Test
showed insignificant variation of 0.2865 at 5% significance. Social capital
is evaluated in terms of bridging social capital and bonding social capital.
Bridging social capital evaluates the tendency to link external asset for the
information resources which indicated the weak bonding pattern among the
created group. In this scenario group search information externally and rely on
other sources thus indicated as weak or loose network. On the other hand
bonding social capital involved the likeminded people in a group which
strengthen the group and behave like a closed or tight network. During survey
both parameters are assessed among both user and non-user. Social media user
exhibited low degree of bridging social capital having mean value of 17.18 as
compared to non-users with value of 18.42. Although, these values are again
insignificant (t = 0.359776, p < 0.05) but non-users prefer to broad
their knowledge base form other external sources. On the other hand, bonding
social capital revealed inverted trend as non-users have low degree of asset
value (8.92) as compared to users with high asset value (9.78). in this
scenario, it can be concluded that users have high degree of bonding in terms
of resource distribution apparently as the physical variation is not
statistically significant (t = 0.207371) at 5% significance (Table 5). Table 6
exhibited the data related to mental disorders. In the table anxiety and
depression are presented separately for users and non-users. The anxiety is
sub-classified in 5 variants namely; panic disorder, generalised anxiety
disorder, separation anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder and significant
school avoidance. The thresh hold value for anxiety is 1-25 as normal, 26-29 as
moderate and <30 as severe and specific anxiety. Depression indicator is
1-15 normal, 16-21 is moderate and <22 is confirmed depression. The survey
data exhibited that non-users of social media do have equal or high degree of
disorders despite the use of social media. Among non-user 66.67% respondents
faced severe anxiety while 25% faced severe depression as compared to users
where 50% severe anxiety and 37,5% severe depression is documented. 77.5% users
have found to be associated with separation disorder while 70% users have panic
disorder. Among non-users separation, panic and generalised anxiety disorders
are found at very high level (88.33%, 75% and 75% respectively). In this
scenario, it can be proposed that only social media cannot be blamed for the
induction of mental disorder. There must be certain other facets which are
involved in theses parameters. Finally Table 7 provides the correlational data which interconnect the different parameters with respect to anxiety and depression. The main parameters taken are Television Exposure (in hrs), Internet Surfing (in hrs), Facebook Members, Facebook Intensity, Average Calculated Intensity, Facebook Usage Pattern, Psychological Well-being, Bridging Social Capital and Bonding Social Capital. All these parameters are supposed or claimed to be responsible for triggering of the mental illness. In the study none of the parameters are supposed to induce any disorder at high level of correlation at any significance level. Only Facebook intensity (cumulative of total member and usage time) and average Facebook intensity indicate the slight low negative correlation with anxiety (-0.41834 and -0.41147 respectively) for social media users while TV exposure time indicated low positive correlation among non-users (0.424559). On basis of these results, the relation among social media use and mental illness cannot be proved. They may be guiding force but at very low level and alone they cannot induce any significant change in interrelation of the both parameters. The social media might have implicated the psychological and social well being among users as compared to non-users. The findings suggested low positive for anxiety (psychological well being 0.021154 for users and -0.27012 for non-users) to negligible indicator for depression although the correlation coefficient indicated insufficiency but trend is pleasant. Non-users exhibited weak positive for the bonding social capital (0.428535) indices which suggests that they rely on internal source for their information and knowledge base. Table 1:
Sample Demography
*Converted value from Lickert scale (mid
value of defined range is used), for example Television/Internet usage of 2-3
hours are treated as 2.5 # Members/Time on social network on nominal scale where 2 indicated as 31-60 min of usage and 3 indicated as 1-2 hours usage Table 2: Facebook Intensity
*Converted value from Lickert scale (mid
value of defined range is used), for example Television/Internet usage of 2-3
hours are treated as 2.5 # Members/Time on social network on
nominal scale where 2 indicated as 31-60 min of usage and 3 indicated as 1-2
hours usage Unless
otherwise stated, the response recording made from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 5
(Strongly agree) Table 3:
Facebook Usage Pattern
Unless otherwise
stated, the response recording made from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 5 (Strongly
agree) Table 4:
Psychological Well-being
Unless otherwise stated, the response recording made from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 5 (Strongly agree) Table 5: Social
Capital
Unless
otherwise stated, the response recording made from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 5
(Strongly agree) Table 6:
Prevalence of Mental Health Indicators
Anxiety values
derived from SCARED (3 point Likert scale); Depression derived from CES-DC
(4 point Likert scale) Table 7:
Correlational study of Mental Health Indicators
Discussion: Attribute of social networks and mental health of
adolescents are blurred and plausible because of the nature and patterns in
planning, data collection traits and methods of studies. There is huge
diversity in pattern and selection of parameters to large extent. The study is
in initial phase, availability of literature is in childhood and rigor deficit
design due to un-harmonised planning outline and inadequately designed
questionnaire. Even though some preliminary and established alliance between
social networking site surfing and mental health are demonstrated. The
planning, questionnaire and data collection method need to be harmonised and
authenticated before depiction of any actual conclusion. On the other hand, it
is impervious to declare the collected data redundant as previous data is
important for collective responses (Toseeb and Inkster, 2015). Gender specific
results are also obtained as girls are more susceptible to social media usage
as high media surfing may result in low life satisfaction (Orben, Dienlin and
Przybylski, 2019). Present study also conclude that majority of control
subjects have high degree of mental issues despite of non-social media
background. It is also noted that there are positive correlation with TV
exposure with depression. Serious concerns were raised by Srygley (1978) in
pre-social media era which showed influence of TV time with increasing
aggression, violence and crime among young ones. The possible addiction among
children was also highlighted due to high screen time. The finding of
Pantic et al. (2012) is contradictory as insignificant
correlation between BDI-II score and TV time were reported. The social media might have involved in slightly
improving the psychological and social well being as compared to non-users
although the correlation coefficient indicated low positive for anxiety to
negligible indicator for depression but trend is harmonious. This finding is in
co-ordinance with Objective self awareness theory of Gonzales and Hancock
(2011). McPherson et al. (2014) also concluded that social capital
at family and community level exhibited highly influential role in mental
health among adolescents. Pantic et al. (2012) proposed new
sub-theory as objective self awareness may be induced in respect of over use of
social media and early indicator of depression, which is not visualised in
present study. Present study showed the higher percentage of
anxiety (50%) and depression (66.67) amonh non-users control group which is
contradictory to findings of Sarda et al. (2013) in which only
11.48% mental disorders were reported. This might be due to various aspects
like survey time, any stress like examination, condition and individual
perception. With reference to Facebook mediated mental disorder screening
Labrague (2014) concluded that anxiety, depression and stress are significantly
correlated with high usage of Facebook among adolescents which might be not
purely in accordance of this finding. In both study the major concern is number
of users per Facebook and time spent over Facebook. In that scenario both
studies exhibited same pattern.
Majority of psychological effects of social media
on adolescents are inconclusive on time spent on social site irrespective of
other factors like gender, emotional self efficacy, psychological well-being
and life satisfaction which also contributed as intervening variables along
with the prime factor as mental illness is directly determined as person to
person. |
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Findings | Data collection of SCARED and CES-DC for adolescents shows reliable Cronbach’s alpha (α) of 0.831726 and 0.737435 respectively for respondents who reported to use Facebook. Social media intensity was evaluated in terms of Facebook usage, their members and involvement along with psychological well-being, social capital and overall personal satisfaction. Anxiety is high in non-users as compared to users (66.67% against 50%) Depression is high in users as compared to non-users (37.5% and 25% respectively). Both the values are statistically insignificant in terms of correlation analyses conducted on results from a survey suggest agreement between use of Facebook and social capital. Role of social media in expansion of anxiety and depression are insignificant at degree of variance at 0.05%. Facebook intensity indicates very low grade negative correlation with anxiety (-0.41834). Non-users showed weak positive correlation of TV screen time with depression (correlation correlation 0.424559). | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Conclusion |
In the study very low degree of correlation were found in between Facebook intensity and mental illness (especially anxiety) which alone cannot be deciding in nature. It indicated that only social media cannot be blamed for mental illness. In that scenario it is not wise to disconnect the adolescents from beneficial outcome of social media. |
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Limitation of the Study | One of the limitations in present study is sample size. Although the numbers of participants are low but is enough to withdraw the indication as per well executed set of parameters which inducted in study. Apart from screen time and number of participants, Facebook intensity, psychological well being and social capital is also involved in the study which enrich the conclusion and substantiate the knowledge pattern. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Acknowledgement | Authors are very grateful to HoD and Faculty members of different departments of DR HSG Sagar University and Principal, KV Sagar for their help and support. Authors highly appreciate the supportive nature of Principal and Head of the Department of SNGG PG College, Bhopal. The help of college library is duly acknowledged. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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