ap statistics project ideas

ap statistics project ideas

Exploring the Impact of Social Media Usage on Mental Health: A Statistical Analysis

1. Introduction

Much of the existing evidence suggests deleterious effects on mental health as a result of social media usage. Yet, a growing body of this evidence is met with skepticism or fails to replicate without noticeable flaws. This paper aims to highlight the impact of social media usage on mental health, with a particular focus on young adults. It uses a dataset-based statistical analysis following recommendations from robustness checks in the literature to ensure compelling evidence of an established effect. We pay special attention to the practical effect of social media usage on mental health since effect sizes in the existing evidence base vary. Furthermore, it is a challenge to use this evidence to provide better insight into our understanding of the use of social media in our society, which is crucially important for policy.

Social media is an increasingly ubiquitous part of our daily lives and has greatly impacted a variety of sectors, including business and news. But, importantly, it has also affected how we socialize and communicate. The usage of social media is tied to a variety of larger societal phenomena, such as hyper-competitiveness, self-involvement, and a culture of the best or worst humanity has to offer. Given the heart of social media itself—centering the human element—it is of utmost importance to understand its impact on our mental health. This has generated a large body of research that has not frequently replicated results.

2. Literature Review

Though social media has been recognized by the majority as a valuable technology, it is stigmatized by a minority with a penchant for procrastinating and time-wasting while hooked on social media sites. It has become a daily activity for everyone. On one hand, there is the amazing convenience associated with modern technology. However, on the other hand, excessive usage has been shown to have a devastating effect on physical health, including difficulty sleeping, which in return may have further negative health implications. Moreover, concerns have been raised about the negative impact on relationships that may lead to depression, withdrawal, and suicidal tendencies, leading users to peel away from reality to immerse in a virtual existence. Studies exist showing that problematic internet use has been associated with various psychopathological symptoms, negative feelings, family tension, and conflicts. This overuse may lead to uncontrolled over-the-top usage that is extremely harmful. The common characteristics associated with this include escapism, inability to manage time efficiently, and a gradual withdrawal from society.

Internet, once seen as a new utility with boundless potential, has revolutionized the mode of human interactions. Today, chatting and sharing one’s mood online has become the new default. The corollary of the immense influence of social media, however, cannot be neglected. Research has shown that excessive usage may lead to addiction and negative consequences, especially on mental health and relationships. There has been a need by researchers and scholars to academically justify the reasoning set forth by critics and caution by users. Comparing the frequency with which social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, to name a few, are accessed with loneliness and well-being among a nationally representative sample of young adults, the impact of this usage is examined by exploring the psychopathological consequences of problematic Facebook use.

3. Methodology

3.1. Data To explore the causal effect of using social media on mental health, we rely on data from the Multinational Time-Use Survey for 14 countries provided by the Centre for Time Use Research. The dataset offers a broad range of individual and collective social and economic activities (e.g., working, commuting, cleaning, shopping, studying) and includes information on the number of activities and their durations on a 24-hour day. Furthermore, the data also allow the hourly female and male paid and unpaid work rates to be derived, generating the unequal work measure, an index of the unequal allocation of work in each country. The dataset is nationally representative for all countries and covers successive years. Although the annual sample collects data for a one-year period, the collection strategy varies from one country to another. On pages 3-5 of the online ethnographic study, the sampling design is briefly described for each country. For the current study, we combine the 14 countries into one and drop country and year dummies from the estimations.

In this section, we provide a description of the methodology of our empirical analysis. Previous research has mainly relied on self-reported data to gauge the impact of social media usage on mental health and well-being. However, with self-reported survey data, it is difficult to establish a causal relationship between social media use and well-being outcomes due to reverse causation and common-method variance concerns. To further study the causal effect of social media, in this section, we rely on time use data on social media use and focus on young adults and adolescents to avoid concerns with reverse causation. We extend the traditional analysis by incorporating sibling fixed effects models, where we use gender of the respondents as the main variable of interest and validate the results using the number of boy or girl friends as an alternative variable. Furthermore, by exploiting the cross-sectional differences (alongside the within-sibling differences), we examine gendered effects using quantile regression models.

4. Data Analysis and Findings

In addition, the demographic variables of gender and employment status showed a significant difference in the levels of depression and anxiety. The study explicitly states that its conclusions are weakened because the DASS-21 instrument includes questions that address social media usage, preventing a lack of independence between the independent variable and the dependent variable. The responses of the participants were based on self-reporting, which can cause bias within the sample. Furthermore, the survey was conducted in the UK and did not include a diverse range of different income levels; this might not allow the results to be generalized. The descriptive statistics section also shows that the sample was predominantly college/semester students, so this might impact the results.

This study used the SPSS 20 and STATA 14 software to find the relationship between the usage of the most active social media types – Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram – and depression, anxiety, and stress (mental health). According to the DASS-21 scale that was used, 88% of the sample had normal levels of depression. The value of the PTS score was negative for all three social media applications. The sample in this study had lower levels of depression, anxiety, and stress levels as the number of times checking on social media increased – in particular, Snapchat and Instagram. The results of the study are inconsistent with some other relevant studies in the area of social media usage and mental health.

5. Conclusion and Implications

Similar to several previous academic works, this study provides an open window onto the reality of social media usage and its negative side effects. As such, this work contributes valuable insights for theory-building in health psychology and applications in mental health interventions. If academics and practitioners develop socially responsible strategies, social networking can pave the way for a significant number of private and public wellness initiatives. This is of major interest due to the ubiquity of accidents, loss, and mental health disruptions worldwide that call for a response. Social media venue choice-based interactions are diverse, too, individually determining the subset of friends with whom an individual interacts. The variations in posting, viewing, and lurking (passive) behaviors have been found to be significant as well. By researching into the leading global venue (Facebook) and its peers, using account-level data, this study provides novel insights, compared to the majority of previous works, which are based on self-reported questionnaire data.

This empirical study provided novel insights into the underlying structure of social media usage and its association with symptoms of mental health. The impact of social media venues has been shown to differ in terms of both usage intensity and symptom presence using a unique hierarchical set of variables. The most substantial conclusions cover the impact of Facebook, which was shown to be negatively related to state anxiety and positively related to emotional exhaustion. These associations are not universal across the different venues and can drive significant conclusions as to the effects of their users. Other implications include a positive relationship found between “likes” activity and state anxiety and a negative relationship between length of time as a user and the presence of depressive symptoms.