The Impact of Social Media on Mental Health: A Comprehensive Analysis

1. Introduction

The impact of social media on mental health has been a topic of interest for over a decade, with a growing consensus that it may harm users in a variety of ways. Recent multi-wave longitudinal studies have further supported this hypothesis. However, there is widespread agreement that the causality of social media and mental health is confounded. In the absence of strong experimental evidence, researchers sometimes need to rely on different sources of evidence, such as statistical methods and quasi-experiments. Apart from discussing the evidence base and indicating future directions for research, this paper provides a taxonomy and classification of different mechanisms through which social media might impact users' mental health, in addition to the stigma attached to these platforms. There is ample evidence that the impacts are in many cases not gender neutral, so a gender analysis is also included in the paper. Having presented the risks, section 6 will then focus on the approaches currently applied by the companies producing social media platforms and mobile phones used for social media, with a particular focus on the companies' policies in protecting children and adolescents. Finally, this paper concludes with a summary of key messages.Enjoyed the essay but want something unique?
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2. The Rise of Social Media

Social media use can be seen as the latest in a series of communication revolutions, from the invention of written speech to post, telegraphs, and telephones. Communication, which had always been constrained by time, space, or both, is now instantaneous and without geographic limitation. Furthermore, the interpersonal aspect of communication has also changed as one message is broadcasted to many, rather than one message being shared with a single recipient. The speed, scale, and continuity are aspects seen on a global stage. This means that an individual may be more aware of and witness actual experiences of terrorism, political corruption, poverty, and other social problems. Researchers have highlighted social media to be "content created by the general public; working in conjunction with mass media; content accessed by a broad audience; viral spread or epidemic; blurred lines between content audiences and content producers; and ability to connect with audiences and content providers." While the notion of social media has changed over time, for the purpose of this paper, we refer to social media sites as online platforms which enable people to build networks or communities by sharing information, such as messages, posts, pictures, and videos, which are sourced and moderated by individuals. These platforms are able to come in many shapes and forms, such as blogs, business networks, collaborative projects, enterprise social networks, forums, microblogs, photo sharing, social bookmarking, social gaming, social networks, video sharing, and virtual worlds. Some well-known global social media companies include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Google+, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Each platform has different structures, diverse benefits, and creates unique ways for individuals to connect. For instance, LinkedIn has a focus on professional networking capabilities and public online profiles, Snapchat users can share photos and videos with followers which last a short duration, while users of Twitter can send publicly viewable messages which are limited to only 280 characters.

3. Mental Health and Well-being: An Overview

Mental health is far too often reduced to mere diagnosis. Be it virtue signaling for visibility in the public domain, the portrayal of social media personalities and their mental health stories, or one's own lived experiences in this globalized world, attributing mental health problems to specific and isolated symptoms is a well-established practice and thus, its reflection can be seen in everyday speech. This symptom-based focus overshadows the idea that mental health must be understood as a complex interplay of various aspects stemming from an array of areas such as one's personal history, physiological factors, individual personality, socio-cultural factors notable among which is social media use, and so on. In doing so, separation of 'mental health' from 'mental health disorders' becomes, indeed, problematic; for the former is a far broader umbrella encompassing the latter besides intertwined components such as - but definitely not limited to - the existence of negative affect(s) and impaired affective abilities (once again note that these may very well be manifestations of mental health problems and not necessarily a synonymous term). While deployed as various euphemisms, the hindrance in pertinently recognizing that mental health embodies a collective of p