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Julia Cooke

Erin Day

English 1010

8 December 2019

Rise in Teen Depression in Relation to Screen Time

With technology advancing, and more opportunities to interact and be on screens on

devices from smartphones to televisions, social networking and media use is on the rise now

more than ever before. Social media and other social networking sites are platforms and websites

like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, etc. On these platforms, the users are able to share

their lives, along with whatever else they would like to show their followers and other users.

Teens and adolescents also use these platforms to connect socially with other users by direct

messaging and commenting on other posts by other users. With the leap in social media presence

adolescents and teens are rushing to join these sites. This is making them the top users on these

social networking sites, and spend the most time on screens compared to other age groups. With

this rise in social media presence and screen time in teens, along with the fact that this is the first

generation of people that have always had screens of some sort around them since the time they

were born, their well-being is starting to be affected. This means that teenagers have started to

have an increase in depression more so than before, along with other depressive symptoms like a

lower self-esteem, lack of sleep, anxiety, the fear of missing out (FOMO), and even something as

simple as an uptick in life dissatisfaction. Depression is a mental disorder that is associated with

low moods, and a loss of interest in activities which can have a significant impact on daily life of

any individual. As the mental well-being of these teens and other adolescents all around the
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world have started to drop, researchers have started to look at just how the hours spent on screens

and social media have affected it and how a difference can be made. The rise in teen depression,

along with depressive symptoms is due to the rise in the use of screen time, social media, and

other social networking outlets. This expansion of depression and depressive symptoms among

teens and other adolescents around the world can be lowered by a better balanced lifestyle.

Teenagers and adolescents alike use their social media every single day. Using social

media is their way to communicate with another world, an online one. This enables them to see

and do so much more beyond just a conversation with a neighbor. Meaning, they can see and talk

to people from all around the world, in the comfort of their own bed. This power of social media

also has teens posting and sharing what they feel for all others to see, including their depressive

symptoms. In a study done in the country of Turkey by the Department of Child and Adolescent

Psychiatry by Akkın Gürbüz and Hatice Gözde, they compared the use of social networking sites

in teens diagnosed with depression and teens who were not diagnosed with depression. They

found that, “...half of the adolescents in both groups shared depressive symptoms on online

social media; this indicates how widespread depressive symptoms are in adolescents,” (Gürbüz

and Gözde 4). This statement shows how depression is affecting teens on social media that are

both diagnosed and not diagnosed. This means that social media can have a negative impact on

all teens, not just the ones that have diagnosed depression. They continued in the study with,

“Most adolescents shared depressive content in their disclosure, and self-disclosure was reported

more intensely among depressed adolescents,” (Gürbüz and Gözde 5). Although all teens seem

to share their depressive symptoms online, it was the teens diagnosed with depression that were

sharing more negative thoughts than the non-diagnosed teens. This shows how much social
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media is affecting the population of teens all around the world, and especially the teens already

diagnosed with depression. This behavior online can lead to a domino effect of negativity on top

of more negativity for everyone to see, including more teens. The other teens viewing this

negative content could be affected in the same way, leading them into a depression, or having

depressive symptoms themselves.

As teens of all genders use social media and screen time, they use them differently. Girls

are found to use social media and social networking sites when spending time on their screens.

Boys will use social media and other social networking sites as well, but not nearly as much as

girls. Boys choose to spend more time online gaming than social networking according to

Johnson Chun-Sing Cheung, director of a study done in Hong Kong China on the

correspondence of teen depression and loneliness, along with self esteem, in connection to

different internet behaviors. (Cheung et al. 1). This leads to different impacts on each gender.

Cara Booker from BMC in the United Kingdom lead and wrote the study, “Gender differences in

the associations between age trends of social media interaction and well-being among 10-15 year

olds in the UK” which explored the differences in the way that social media affects each gender.

She wrote, “High levels of social media interaction in early adolescence have implications for

well-being in later adolescence, particularly for females,” (Booker 1). Females being on social

media more than males makes them more susceptible to depressive symptoms and tendencies.

This could be because of the perfect worlds they are seeing through their screens instead of real

life ones. The expectations of women on social media, along with the over sexualization of these

women has a long lasting impact on teenage girls, that will be brought with them from their
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adolescence and into adulthood, especially with the amount that these teen and adolescent girls

are seeing everyday.

As teen depression rises, we are also seeing a rise in depressive symptoms, all due to the

use of social media. These depressive symptoms in teenagers include multitudes of different

behaviors. Some of these behaviors include low self-esteem, lack of sleep, anxiety, the fear of

missing out (FOMO), or even life dissatisfaction. In a study published in the European Journal of

Educational Research and written by Aygul Tunc-Aksan and Sinem Evin Akbay titled,

“Smartphone Addiction, Fear of Missing Out, and Perceived Competence as Predictors of Social

Media Addiction of Adolescents” they wanted to be able to analyze the teenager’s fear of

missing out, perceived social and academic competence, and social media addiction. They

sampled hundreds of highschool students using simple random surveys and then shared their

results. They wrote:

As the result of the study, smartphone addiction, fear of missing out, and

perceived academic competence predict social media addiction on high school students.

When the smartphone addiction level and fear of missing out decrease, and also

perceived academic competence improve, students’ smartphone addiction levels reduce.

(Tunc-Aksan and Akbay 1).

This is demonstrating that the amount of teen depression and depressive symptoms among teens

has gotten so common that researchers are now able to predict how much a teenager is on social

media by just having them answer a descriptive survey. The conclusions of this study also point

to what could be a solution in this issue of teen depression in accordance of social media use.

This solution is simply spending less time on screens. When teens would spend less time on
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screens this would enable having more time for doing things like schoolwork and other

homework which is rewarding when finished. This would lead to a higher self-esteem through

the potential feeling of accomplishment, giving teens more motivation to spend more time on

productive activities and less on screens.

As a result of the greater usage of screen time and connection to social media, the older

the teenager or adolescent the more affected. This is because of the many years of use on these

platforms as opposed to just the few the younger adolescents have. The Centers for Disease

Control came out with a chart showing the rates of depression, anxiety, and behavioral disorders

among teens and adolescents of different age groups.

Figure 1 shows the different amount of percentages that each age group has that is diagnosed

with depression, anxiety, or a behavioral disorder. This shows us the rise in depression and
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anxiety over the years that is easily connected by the increased amount of hours spent on social

media and screens as the adolescents and teens age.

As the depression rates rise in teens and adolescents because of the rising amount of

screentime and social media use, teens need to have a better balanced lifestyle. This means

spending less time on screens and spending more time productively. Productivity is up to each

individual, but one thing that works for everyone is an increase in physical activity. This was

studied on a group of teens and adolescents in Iceland. Researchers wanted to see if there was a

correlation between physical activity, depression, and mental health. Soffia M Hrafnkelsdottir in,

“Less Screen Time and More Frequent Vigorous Physical Activity Is Associated with Lower

Risk of Reporting Negative Mental Health Symptoms among Icelandic Adolescents” published

in 2018, writes as a conclusion to her study, “Those who reported a combination of engaging in

less screen time and more frequent vigorous physical activity had the lowest risk [of depression],

suggesting a synergistic relationship between the two behaviors…” This shows the solution to

this world wide problem very clearly. Teenagers and other adolescents that engage in physical

activity, whether that is lifting weights, dancing, hiking, etc. are found to be at less of a risk

when it comes to depression. This balance in lifestyle among these teens and adolescents is

critical, and should be better implemented in a big part of their lives, school. Teens have to go to

school by law, and while they are there the schools shouldn’t push for no phone policies, and

instead push for ways that will encourage physical activity among students, inside and outside of

the school building. This means more physical education classes, and more clubs that involve

being active as well. With more students being active, the less time they will spend on screens

which will increase in their wellbeing.

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Depression and depressive symptoms in teens and adolescents is rising along side of the

use of social media and screen time, and this issue is worldwide. The online world and social

media is showing teens, especially teen girls, unrealistic representations of life which is a huge

cause for concern among the youth. The rising depression and depressive symptoms among teens

and adolescents can be decreased simply in helping them bring better balance to their lifestyle.

This means less screen time, and more physical activity. With this balance, teenagers will be

better suited to the life of an adult, and won’t have to carry the burden of depression to adulthood

with them. Schools have a big responsibility when bringing on students, and this means them

caring about this issue and implementing ways to fix this issue. Not all teens and adolescents

even understand what depression is, and why is could affect them so drastically. Teaching them

this, and healthy ways to cope could be the first step in helping someone come out of a

depressive episode. The rise in depression among teens isn’t going to have a fix all, but a better

balanced lifestyle sure would not prove any harm to the issue.