Journey 5 - Anxiety and Social Media
This journey post going to be a bit different. As it is a sensitive topic in todays media, I don’t want to provide incorrect information so I will be discussing scientific reports about the correlation between anxiety and social media.
In the article “Social media behaviours and symptoms of anxiety and depression”, researchers ask the question, “Does social media use predict mental health problems in adolescents?”. They used four age cohorts (10, 12, 14 and 16 years) in Norway. They ultimately found mixed results and typically small effects. They concluded that the frequency of posting, liking and commenting on social media is unrelated to future symptoms of depression and anxiety.
Steinsbekk, S., Nesi, J., & Wichstrøm, L. (2023). Social media behaviors and symptoms of anxiety and depression. A four-wave cohort study from age 10–16 years. Computers in Human Behavior, 107859.
This article contradicted the methods used in prior research as prior research that indicted a negative effect of social media used self report measures of social media use which can be subjective and unreliable. Instead, researchers measured participants baseline social media use for one week, then told one half to suspend social media use and the other half to continue as normal. Researchers found no evidence for a causal effect of social media use on sleep or anxiety.
In most of the research, I found that researchers either found no evidence for the effect of social media on anxiety and sleep or researchers found a bidirectional effect (either way).
I am NOT a political person but I thought this would be funny. In 2019, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care spoke on social media, young people and mental health. Prepare yourself because this speech was done by the one and only Matt Hancock. Here are some of my favourite quotes from this speech because I don’t want to bore you.
“Facebook is 15 years old now, which in tech years is about… 46” - amazing Matt, thank you.
“Sorry, there’s no punchline - I just wanted to talk about our England cricket team, who I met on the way over here” - …
Matt says he takes “inspiration from the first modern labour law in this country, introduced by a Conservative” (great (!)). This law he is talking around was from 1802 (when slaves existed) “…that cotton mill owners needed to better protect the children working with this new-fangled machinery.”Well I’m glad you want to protect the children Matt!
In the end he just said that “it comes down to this: responsibility : everybody playing their part… research… and resilience: teaching the right way to respond to challenges”.
GOV.uk, 16 July 2019. Social media, young people and mental health. 4 July 2023