With the recent emergence of social media into society, there have been growing concerns that social media usage could be a contributing factor to the development of various mental disorders. One such mental disorder that has recently been increasing in prevalence, especially among young people is depression. Consequently, claims that social media use contributes to depression have been becoming increasingly common. The relationship between social media use and depression is not so clear though. Studies have found mixed results regarding correlation between the two, which brings the existence of a relationship between the two into question; thus, it is difficult to support the claim that social media use contributes to depression. From existing
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Establishing such a causation is important as it could assist clinical psychologists with treatment of depression, because it would provide insight into whether they should advise their patients to modify their social media habits. When individual case studies are analyzed and the experiences of the pertinent individuals are considered in relation to the results of the studies establishing the correlation between high social media usage and incidence of depression, it appears that it is depression that contributes high usage patterns rather than the inverse. This paper seeks to investigate this causation between incidence of depression and social media usage and accomplishes this by investigating the correlation between the two, looking into the experiences of depressed persons, and considering the ramifications of these for such a causation. As a response to the concerns raised regarding social media usage, various studies have investigated the correlation between social media use and mental disorder incidence. The results have been somewhat mixed regarding the correlation with depression, but overall it appears that moderate usage has no significant impact on its incidence, though high use appears to correlate with increased depression risk. One such …show more content…
Contrary to these prior studies, a University of Texas study found that greater Facebook use correlates with greater self-reported life satisfaction (Valenzuela et al., 2009, p. 889). Though this seems to directly contradict the results of the earlier studies, the more limited scope of this study means it does not necessarily contradict the previous two studies. This study was limited to only Facebook usage whereas both previously discussed studies investigated the correlation between usage and mental health across social media in general. Hence, this suggests that perhaps the positive correlation is social network specific or only exists for those who use more than one social network. The second possibility is further supported by the results of the Shensa et al study, since both categories that had higher incidence of depression also had above 60% of the members report that they used multiple social networks (2018, p. 121). From the results of these three studies, there appears to be a positive correlation between high social media usage and incidence of depression. It is not entirely clear whether this correlation is dependent on usage of a certain social network or usage of multiple social networks; however, greater social media use in general definitely has a statistical correlation with increased
Establishing such a causation is important as it could assist clinical psychologists with treatment of depression, because it would provide insight into whether they should advise their patients to modify their social media habits. When individual case studies are analyzed and the experiences of the pertinent individuals are considered in relation to the results of the studies establishing the correlation between high social media usage and incidence of depression, it appears that it is depression that contributes high usage patterns rather than the inverse. This paper seeks to investigate this causation between incidence of depression and social media usage and accomplishes this by investigating the correlation between the two, looking into the experiences of depressed persons, and considering the ramifications of these for such a causation. As a response to the concerns raised regarding social media usage, various studies have investigated the correlation between social media use and mental disorder incidence. The results have been somewhat mixed regarding the correlation with depression, but overall it appears that moderate usage has no significant impact on its incidence, though high use appears to correlate with increased depression risk. One such …show more content…
Contrary to these prior studies, a University of Texas study found that greater Facebook use correlates with greater self-reported life satisfaction (Valenzuela et al., 2009, p. 889). Though this seems to directly contradict the results of the earlier studies, the more limited scope of this study means it does not necessarily contradict the previous two studies. This study was limited to only Facebook usage whereas both previously discussed studies investigated the correlation between usage and mental health across social media in general. Hence, this suggests that perhaps the positive correlation is social network specific or only exists for those who use more than one social network. The second possibility is further supported by the results of the Shensa et al study, since both categories that had higher incidence of depression also had above 60% of the members report that they used multiple social networks (2018, p. 121). From the results of these three studies, there appears to be a positive correlation between high social media usage and incidence of depression. It is not entirely clear whether this correlation is dependent on usage of a certain social network or usage of multiple social networks; however, greater social media use in general definitely has a statistical correlation with increased