Social Media, Youth & Depression

The more connectivity, the more loneliness.

By Pornkamol Prapapornvorakul

1/3 OF THE WORLD population IS USING SOCIAL MEDIA

Although social media are believed to help connecting people, it can also be a cause in loneliness and depression in young adults.

Social Media PLATFORMs are growing nonstop!

When you look around, anyone is either looking at their phones virtually connecting to ones on the other sides or hiding behind laptops, updating what happens around the world online.

The growth of social media platforms is not so surprising, but how dramatic the increasing trend is might amaze you. Ten years ago, in 2010, only 1 billion users were using social media at least once a month. As you can see from the graph, this number dramatically grows to around 7.5 billion in 2018, which is more than a 700% rise. Now, in 2020, this trend is continuing.

This absolutely reminds us that the world, especially the virtual of social media platforms, has changed ultimately so fast for the last ten years. It seems to be a long time but, if you are a first jobber now, ten years are when you already were in middle or high school. If you are a parent of a teenage kid, ten years is when your child went to primary school. Thus, to be updated and prepared for the future changes for yourselves or your families is what you might consider useful!

Most of THE USERS are young adult (age 18 - 29)

Here comes the question of who might be influenced the most from this trend. Let's look at the proportion of who is using these virtual community platforms the most! In 2018, it was reported that as high as 88 percent of young adults who age between 18 and 29 use social network at least one platform. Adults and middle-agers are the next two heaviest social media users at 78% and 64%, respectively.

As social media is known for help "getting connected," these users might have been building their relationships online, which can never be done before without these platforms.

No matter it is positive or negative consequences from the social network, the one who uses will be affected. Therefore, according to these statistics, those teenagers tend to have a higher chance of the consequences mentioned.

While most of us might be able to guess that we use a lot of social networks and our youths are the heaviest users, there is one hidden fact that you might not notice.

let’s play this game. You will be shown a chart and let's guess who do those bars stand for?

Despite high engagement in social media, it is also the teenagers who have the highest chance to experience depression.

This is the whole new story. Depression used to be linked with the elderly or working adults. However, having chance to connect with loads of friends and stay updated to the latest news every minute on social networks, young adults are the group with the highest percentage of depression. In 2017, as high as 13.2% of people age 18 to 25 years old reported that they had experienced depression at least once within the last 12 months. In contrast to the high number for teenagers and, possibly, your assumptions, only 3.2% of the elderly suffered from depression.

For the trend above, what more surprising is that younger people are the only group that experiences an increasing patterns of depression. Conversely, steady trends or only little changes are found for other age groups over these eight years shown.

Let's take a closer look at the relationship between social networks and depression.

Only the line graph for the young adult is growing higher for the chance of depression. Are there any other trends that correspond with this?

The following chart displays a relationship between the booming social network and depression rate in teenagers. After these two sets of information were mapped together on the same year axis, it is found that there can be a correlation between them.

As you can see in the charts below, social network platforms apparently became hit in around 2012 and continued to rise afterward. In the period, the depression rate in younger people started to increase as well.

Understand more,

How and why can social media cause or affect mental health and depression in teenagers?

53% higher rate to be depressed for ones spendings more hours on social media

Why?

To feel connected or to be a part of the community is one of the factors maintaining good mental health and life satisfaction. However, the more people socialize through the virtual platform and the less they interact in person, the more dangerous on their health. Social networks can lure their users into believing that they are building healthy relationships through the media, which might not always right. This can worsen the situation because people tend to ignore the sign of their problems as they believe that they are on the right track.

“The less you are connected with human beings in a deep, empathic way, the less you’re really getting the benefits of a social interaction. The more superficial it is, the less likely it’s going to cause you to feel connected, which is something we all need.”- Alexandra Hamlet, PsyD, a clinical psychologist at the Child Mind Institute.

There are several issues and drawbacks related to the teenager's depression from social media such as to be afraid of missing out (FOMO) or losing their self-esteem etc.

Fear of Mission Out, FOMO

It's great that we can receive every update of what is happening around the world and what activities our friends are doing, which we have never accessed in the ear before the internet. However, this transparency destroys the boundary between privacy and publicity of social groups' information. This way, teenagers might be spending all the time to catch up with what their friends are doing or being regret not being invited to their activities, which otherwise they would not notice without social media. This behavior can be called FOMO.

A loss of self-esteem and image-driven platform

Another possible cause of depression might be a loss of self-esteem, which occurs when teenagers start comparing themselves with the abnormally perfect photos posted by others.

“Many girls are bombarded with their friends posting the most perfect pictures of themselves, or they’re following celebrities and influencers who do a lot of Photoshopping and have makeup and hair teams. If that’s their model for what is normal, it can be very hard on their self-confidence.” - Dr. Hamlet.

These symptoms are linked explicitly with image-driven social network platforms such as Instagram or Snapchat because, in these platforms, there is more chance for young adults to access to tons of images from abundant sources. Shown in the bar charts, 2 out of 3 social media which teenagers use more than other age groups are image-driven platform. This further emphasizes the relationship between social networks and their impact on youth's mental health.

Let's make a change!

It’s an alarming issue... However, with understanding and an awareness of its shortcomings, we can utilize the best out of those beneficial platforms for both our younger generations and for ourselves.

Just be aware and observe how you and your loved ones using online social platforms! Here are some guidelines which you may start with.

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