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The Emersion of Depression Through Social Media

Defined by Jade Wu in Does Social Media Cause Depression? It's Complicated, It is

said that there is a complicated explaination behind the connection between social media’s
activities and depression. The reason why it is complicated is because sometimes social
media brings joy to some people whenever they use it. It is often used to heal people
boredom, make people happy by seeing funny things such as memes and so on. It also can be
a media for people to maintain their relationship with others, especially those who hardly
ever meet them. On the other hand, some people use social media to compare their life to
others’ and end up trying hard to reach such a delusional kind of life that other people show
in their social media. Through these reasons, clearly social media has both positive and
negative impacts. So, which one is caused a greater impact?

As stated by Jade Wu, people are increasingly opinionated about the potential problems
of social media. Things like cyberbullying, screen addiction, and being exposed to endless
filtered images that make it impossible not to make comparisons between yourself and others
often make the news. There is a big study came out in the uber-prestigious journal JAMA
which is titled "Association of Screen Time and Depression in Adolescence." This big
headline seemed to confirm what a lot of people have been saying—that screen time is
horrible for young people. The study followed over 3800 adolescents over four years as part
of a drug and alcohol prevention program. Part of what the investigators measured was the
teens' amount of screen time, including time spent on social media, as well as their levels of
depression symptoms. One of their main findings was that higher amounts of social media
use were associated with higher levels of depression. That was true both when the researches
compared between people and compared each person against their own mental health over
time. The relationship between social media use and depression turns out to be having several
caveats.

The first caveat said that the association between social media use and depression is, on
average, tiny. In the JAMA study that has already mentioned before, the investigators
compared social media use and depression between teens and found that those who used
social media more had higher depression scores. Specifically, for every hour per day that one
teen spent on social media more than her peers, she likely had a 0.64-point higher depression
score. Within each teen, increasing their daily social media use by 1 hour was also associated
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with a .41-point increase to their own depression score. That 0.64-point increase means that
depression was measured on a 28-point scale, so these less-than-one-point increases are tiny.
For comparison, girls had depression scores that were, on average, 2.79 points higher than
boys. In this sample of teens, an average boy would need to use social media for 4-5 more
hours per day than his female peer for his depression score to catch up to hers. In this context,
social media use doesn't seem like the biggest fish to fry when it comes to addressing
depression in young people.

The second caveat stated that not everybody has the same relationship with social
media. A different study published in 2018 identified five distinct types of social media users.
The take-home finding was that "problematic social media use" was one of the main themes
for people whose mental health was affected by social media. The researchers adapted the
Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale to cover all forms of social media. It includes questions
like, "You use Facebook in order to forget about personal problems," "You feel an urge to use
Facebook more and more," and "You have tried to cut down on the use of Facebook without
success." These sound awfully similar to questions about other types of addiction like
alcoholism. People can have alcohol in their life without it being a problem, or their alcohol
use may become problematic. It's the same with social media.

The third caveat sounds like that the writer wants people to think positively about social
media. It is said that, “We don't know if it's really social media use causing depression”. The
writer thought that another possibility is that something else entirely is causing some people
to have both high levels of depression and social media use. For example, one interesting
study shows that childhood maltreatment was associated with greater current social media
use. The researchers discovered that having the experience of being mistreated as a child, for
some reason, predicted using social media more as an adult. It's not hard to imagine that
people mistreated in childhood also had higher levels of depression. In this case, depression
may have nothing to do with how much someone is using social media now. Instead, it has
everything to do with a totally different set of experiences they had as a child. There could be
many other factors like this that we haven't researched yet.

The last caveat convinced me more that the writer wants people to see that social media
has made both negative and positive impacts to people’s life. The writer claims that social
media can be a double-edged sword. A 2018 study that reviewed all existing research,
specifically on LGB people's social media, use showed that there are both benefits and
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drawbacks. On the one hand, LGB participants often described social media as a valuable
way to cope with stress. It could also be a safe space where they could come out to a
supportive community if they didn't have one in real life. On the other hand, cyberbullying
via social media was also a common experience for these participants. Some also said that
constantly checking their own social media profile was stressful.

In conclusion, we can not ignore that social media is such a useful platform in this
century. But, I think the writer wants to hightlight the reasons why it is see as a bad thing. It
is clearly because of people;s habit like noticing that social media use is interfering with their
work or real-life relationship, being unable to enjoy real-life events because they are
constantly thinking about their profiles, and finding it hard to cut down their social media
use. So, is social media is the reason behind depression? It turns out that, like many other
psychological questions, this one isn't black-and-white. It's certainly possible that experiences
like cyberbullying, comparing yourself to idealized images, and constantly monitoring your
profile, are bad for your mood. It's also true for many that social media offers community
support and positive messages. Given the inconclusive research, the writer think sit's safe to
say that at least we shouldn't write off social media altogether. The key to benefitting from
social media may lie in using it in moderation and to stay socially connected, instead of using
it as a crutch for coping with other stressors and mental health problems. So I kind of agree
with the writer’s opinion because based on my experience, sometimes social media is not as
scary as it sounds. Instead, I often find that it is useful for me. But, the main problem could
be the way people nowdays use social media that makes it looks so toxic.

Source:

https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/health-fitness/social-media-depression?
utm_source=sciam&utm_campaign=sciam