Influence of Social Media on Adolescent Mental Health

Abstract

Social media use during adolescence can adversely affect health and development. It could be safely assumed that social media is the most famous and preferred leisure activity among adolescents. Most teens report that social media gives positive contributions to their lives, but the modern research literature documented that social media use and adolescents’ mental health are adversely connected. Social media is a double-edged sword, so it can affect their mental health in a constructive or destructive way. Hence the excess use of social media comes with some risks for adolescents. The present study found the impact of social media on adolescent mental health. Depression, anxiety, stress, and aggression have been found as mental health issues of adolescents. The participants for the present study were randomly chosen, consisting of 312 (N= 312) adolescents aged between 14 and 19 years randomly selected from Kerala, India. The variables like viz., social media use, Depression, Anxiety, Stress, and Aggression were selected for the study. The outcome of the study reveals that there is a positive correlation between social media use and depression (r= 0.62), anxiety (r= 0.59), stress (r= 0.57), and aggression (r= 0.51). All the correlations were found to be statistically significant. The findings of the present research can be explained how mental health could be affected if the time spent on social media is considerably higher than usual.