Explore social media's profound effects on children's mental health, depression, anxiety, cyberbullying via documentary analysis of recent UK research studies.
At the pace of digitalization, the use of social media is increasing rapidly among all age groups people whether children, teenagers or adults. For students seeking assignment helper in UK, this topic offers critical insights. Social media leads to significantly influences children`s mental health. Greater use of social media leads to an increase in screen time among children which results in increasing the risk of doubling mental health problems like depression and anxiety. Additionally, exposure to curated content motivates children to engage in negative social comparison behaviour correspondingly impacts self-esteem as a result increases mental health problem. Excessive use of social media adversely influences the behavioural aspect among children by demonstrating the impacts of poor sleep, social comparison, lack of learning as well as exposure to cyberbullying and negative content. It leads to worsening depressive symptoms. The report will include a documentary analysis of three articles related to the impact of mental health on children in the UK. This article will help in understanding the impacts of social media on children`s mental ability in a significant manner. Lastly, it will discuss the findings of the related article and support this with the help of the media views.
The article “Social Media and Adolescent Mental Health: The Good, bad and Ugly” documentary analysis is as under:
The author of the article: Michelle Oreilly
Author’s background: Michelle O`Reilly, conducted a study to identify the social media influence on the mental health of adolescents considering factors whether good, bad as well or ugly. The author, Dr Michelle O`Reilly works as an Associate Professor at the University of Leicester, United Kingdom. Michelle works for the Greenwood Institute of Child Health. He significantly furnishes research support to several practising clinical professionals within the young people, families and children directorate. The author’s interest area for research study includes child mental soundness, family therapy, and Sociology of health and illness.
5 Years | MPhil
Publication owns by: It was published on 28 January 2020 on the online platform. Journal of Mental Health is the publisher of the concerned article. The news publication owned by Ray Hodgson was established in March 1992.
Publication Aim: The publication aims to identify the effect of the increasing use of social media on adolescents. The author published a wide range of papers and books in the study area including “Doing mental health research with children and adolescents, ‘Examining mental health via social constructionism’ and so more. The publication aims to recognize the risks of social media on mental soundness.
Representation of article: Qualitative research type is used to conduct the study and to get an in-depth insight into the social media risk to mental health (O’Reilly, 2020). Further, it is identified that the article does not demonstrate any kind of bias as the researcher uses collected data to conclude.
Biasness: The author reports the findings accurately according to collected data results and there is no bias within the study.
Suitability: The article or study is suitable for academic study as it represents facts and figures, leading to making the study more informative, reliable and accurate.
The documentary analysis of the article “Is Social Media Screen Time Actually Related to Poor Adolescent Mental Health?” is as under:
Following is the documentary evaluation of the article “The internet and children`s psychological wellbeing”.
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According to Biernesser et al, (2020), greater usage of social media leads to increasing mental distress, self-harm as well as suicidal ideation among teenagers. Referring to the first article it is identified that social media has good, bad and worse influences on adolescents. Social media is responsible for promoting strong and effective peer relationships and social skills correspondingly furnish support to psychological well-being. On the other hand, a bad influence of social media articulated by the article includes lowering self-esteem, fear of missing out, disturbing sleep patterns and increase in level of anxiety and depression. The ugly influence of social media evaluated from the research article is the risk of self-harm and suicide. Apart from this, the news article of the Financial Times also supports the discussion of the article. The news article outlined that excessive social media usage has a great relation to higher anxiety as well as depression. The NHS data demonstrate that the number of mental health conditions has increased in recent years (Teenage social media use strongly linked to anxiety and depression, 2024). In the opinion of Islam and Islam (2023), adolescents and children who excessively use social media usually feel isolated, bored, and unhappy as a result face difficulty in social interaction and coordination, resulting in suffering from psychological health conditions such as anxiety and depression. In addition, referring to the views of West, Rice and Vella-Brodrick (2023), spending more time on social media adversely impacts the behaviour of the children as they become, short-tempered, aggressive and more stressed as compared to the past generation. Further, social media shows negative content as well, it leads to building negative behaviour and habits among the children such as stalking and cyberbullying as well as a result harms the self-esteem of the children. Thus, it is important to have a limit on the use of social media as well as there should be some kind of restrictions imposed by the appropriate authority on the content quality.
Lavis and Winter (2020) explain that content that prevails on social media usually normalizes self-harm while causing teens to initiate self-harm behaviour and wound themselves via inappropriate content. It has become one of the serious reasons for the increasing risk of suicide in the young generation. By evaluating the findings of the article it is identified that excessive spending of time on social platforms effectively increases the risk of self-harm as well as depression and it is one of the reasons for decline in the self-esteem. The Guardian article also supports that the use of smartphones as well as social media becomes one of the reasons for mental illness among adolescents. Between the years 2010 and 2015, in the UK the cases of young people with anxiety, depression as well as suicidal tendencies rapidly increased. Besides this, according to the opinion of Islam and Islam (2023), increasing exposure to social networking the self-harm behaviour increase among children and adolescents. Social media includes negative messages that promote self-harm behaviour. Children and adolescents are influenced by this kind of video and strive to copy this, as a result when they become depressed they adopt negative practices such as suicide. Moreover, according to the views of Cauberghe et al, (2021), intense social media use is one of the causes of more likelihood of self-harm in girls as compared to boys. In addition, the nature of bullying, stalking as well and harassment are strongly related to self-harm in boys as compared to girls. Moreover, the pandemic has also resulted in increasing use of social media and resultantly the overall use of social media has increased.
Tørmoen et al, (2023) define that social media influences the psychological well-being of children as greater use of the internet and social media makes the children inactive, resulting in a direct impact on their psychological well-being. Increasing use of social media declines sleep quality, and sleep duration as well as makes it difficult for children to sleep on time. As a result of this, children feel fatigued, and tired correspondingly children find it hard to do well in their studies. In support of this, the reports of new scientists also outline that increasing use of social media and screen time significantly harms the psychological well-being and mental health of children resulting in eating disorders, depression, less socializing nature, poor physical fitness and so more (smartphones have created a gen Z mental health crisis, 2024).
Lippke et al, (2021) depict that children with intense use of social media experience several psychological issues such as stress, feelings of isolation, depression, low self-esteem, loneliness, low academic success, fear of attending school, high levels of social anxiety and so more. The frequent social platforms use related to different changes in the developing brain results in impacting functions including emotional learning, behaviour, emotional regulation and impulse control (The truth about social media and screen time's impact on young people, 2024). In addition, Ellis, Dumas and Forbes (2020) explain that increasing feelings of isolation is the effect of social media use that leads to making children less active. This de-motivates children to participate in school activities, social celebrations and so more as a result this declines their communication and social skills. Proportionately, this makes children more isolated from the real world as a consequence of these adverse impacts on psychological well-being.
Conclusion
In sum, it is inferred that frequent use of social media has several direct as well as indirect impacts on children's mental health. It is identified that social platforms have become an important part of the daily life of people including children. Platforms such as Tik-Tok, Instagram and Snapchat influence engagement and self-expression, allowing individuals to find a safe space to be themselves. However, from the present study by evaluating three recent studies in the UK, it is analysed that there is an intense influence of social media on the mental health of children. By evaluating the articles it is assessed that social media leads to increased depression, anxiety, insomnia, and eating disorders among children which directly impact mental health as well as psychological well-being. In addition, due to greater screening time on social media children interact with negative content which leads to negative behaviour even self-harm and suicidal tendencies. Apart from this, intense use of social media makes the children socially isolated as a result declines self-esteem among the children.
References
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