ENGL 147N Week 5 Assignment; The Impact of Social Media on The Mental Health of Adolescents

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Martha Nussbaum

Category

English

Course

ENGL 147N Advanced English Composition

Institute

Chamberlain

Pages

10

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1 The Impact of Social Media on The Mental Health of Adolescents Student Name Chamberlain University English 147 Professor Doloski Date The rapid developments of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and Tik-Tok have profoundly changed the way we communicate in the past decade. Approximately 3 quarters of teenagers own a smartphone making the use of these platforms prominent in the daily lives of most all adolescents (Guinta, 2018). This has been widely observed in a study with over 2,000 teens, 92% of which reported using social media on a daily basis (Lenhart, 2016 as cited in Guinta, 2018). As social media use is rising among adolescents so are mental health disorders right along with them. The excessive amount of time that teens and young adults spend scrolling through social media has shown significant increases in mental health disorders such as anxiety, depression, and self- esteem issues. Social media has become an important component in the existence of the youth providing possible tons of positive benefits. There is claim on ways social media can benefit as a social support system to adolescents struggling to cope with mental health disorders (Chassiakos et al., 2016 as cited in Guinta & John, 2018). Nonetheless there’s been tremendous emphasis on the negative impact it has caused cognitively, emotionally and behaviorally. The National Institute of Mental Health states that a lifetime prevalence of some kind of mental health disorder among adolescents is 49.5%, and 22% of adolescents will suffer from a severe mental health impairment in their lifetime (NIHM, 2019). Social media has also been shown to increase abusive behaviors like internet addiction and cyberbullying which is a direct correlation to increasing these mental health disorders such as depression, anxiety and in the worst-case scenario even suicide (Duarte et al., 2018). The dangers of social media on mental health highlight the need for implementing special programs and educational curriculums in schools and among parents that teach safe use of social media. Implications for safe social media use is a must in order to combat and reduce the physiological and physical effects it has on adolescents. The age period of adolescents in itself is the transitional period to adulthood, this is significant because it’s a time period where many changes physically, psychologically and socially occur in an adolescent’s life. This transitional period can be a rather confusing time for adolescents as they are developing a sense of identity, intimate relationships and taking on more responsibilities as well as facing challenges along the way. During adolescents is when the pressures of friendships and personal relationships start becoming more a challenge which leaves adolescents more prevalent to mental health issues. It is also around adolescents where mental health disorders are able to be first detected (O’Reilly et al., 2018). Social media has thus far revolutionized the way adolescents communicate and socialize with one another. The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry suggest 90% of adolescent 13 to 17 years of have used some form of social media, 75% have at least one active social media profile and 51% report visiting a social media sit

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