With the advent of the internet came the advent of social media and social networking alike. Social media is an integral part of the world today, especially among teens and adolescents. Whether they use professional social networking sites, like LinkedIn, or social sites for community and pleasure, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and or Snapchat. An average users of social networking sites spends an average of 1.72 hours a day (Jones, J. R. et al, 2016.) Many current studies have been conducted to determine if there is a correlation between anxiety and social media in the teen population. Many studies have been conducted and conclude that there is a significant amount of data in regards to the causes of anxiety, moderators of anxiety, who is at risk to developing anxiety, and the aspects of social media that help overcome anxiety among the teen population.
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Causes of Anxiety
Many studies have found that time spent on social media is the number one cause and predictor of an individual developing anxiety. As teens spend more time on social media they are more susceptible to developing an addiction to the internet (McNicol et al., 2017) and severe health risks such as upper respiratory infection (Campsi st al., 2017). How an individual expresses and copes with their emotions also play into the development and fostering of anxiety through social media. Many teens are at risk for negative emotional contagion and fall victim to corumination. Who's At Risk?
As adolescents are the leading group for experiencing anxiety due to social media, many researchers have found what the actual risk factors are that make this statement true. It has been found that many factors play a role in who is most at risk for experiencing anxiety due to social media among adolescents. Adolescents who suffer from emotional investment, rumination, psychological distress, self-esteem, anxiousness and so on, are the most at risk for experiencing anxiety due to social media. McNicol found that there was no differences in gender among who experienced anxiety more over the other. She also found that the younger the age the more at risk an individual is to becoming anxious due to social media. |
Moderators of Anxiety
Moderators of Anxiety include the amount of emotional investment a teen puts into their social media and how much they rely on social media. The amount of sleep a teen gets has also been linked to anxiety. This is especially important to discuss when recently the number one cause of teens not getting good night’s sleep is mobile phone use and internet addiction. There is also a link between how teens use social media (actively or passively) and whether they develop anxiety. Another moderator is the level at which a person seeks out approval from others and the level of extroversion they exhibit. Overcoming Anxiety
Overcoming anxiety focuses on ways to resolve and lessen the effects anxiety from internet addiction. Interventions become the main key to help resolve this issue. The Social Compensation Hypothesis claims that the internet and social networking sites are beneficial to individuals who are anxious and shy in offline settings. You can adjust your thoughts and ideas before publishing them to the world. (Valkenburg, et al., 2010). Lastly, it ends with discussion about the positive effect social media can have on anxiety. Ellen DeGeneres states laughter is a great cure for resolving anxiety and stress. |
Additional resources on the correlation between anxiety and social media.
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