Social Media & Teen Mental Health

Teenagers are spending a lot time on social media and online: 45 percent of teens report using the internet “almost constantly”.

Unfortunately, all of this time spent on their phone can negatively affect their mental health.

For instance, research shows that eighth-graders who spend 10 or more hours a week on social media are 56% more likely to report being unhappy than those who spend less time. And social media platforms like Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook are associated with increased feelings of anxiety, depression, loneliness, poorer sleep, and a negative body image.

SELFIES & SELF-WORTH

Teenage girls in particular suffer from social media-induced anxiety and lower self-esteem as they struggle to take the perfect ‘selfie’. Almost half of teen girls admit that social media has made them feel bad about themselves because it sets unrealistic standards for how they should look.

Many adolescent girls are turning to apps that digitally touch-up photos of themselves. Constantly seeing retouched pictures on social media can take a toll of their self-worth and distort their body image, as they internalize impossible beauty standards and become dissatisfied with their bodies.

SOCIAL MEDIA AND ‘FITTING IN’

The reason why social media is so popular is because it is social. Teens are at a point in their lives when they want to expand their social circle and grow their friendships. And social media provides an easy way to do that. They can chat and share things with their friends and maintain a social media ‘profile’. Many teens consider having a strong social media presence as essential for their social status and to ‘fit in’ — especially when they perceive that everyone else is on social media.

But striving to fit in can come at a cost: According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, 29% of teens feel ‘a lot’ of pressure to look good, and 28% feel ‘some’ pressure to fit in socially.

Examples of social media-induced stressors:

• Feeling left out: seeing posts about events to which they weren’t invited
• Digital ‘FOMO’: fear of missing out because they weren’t keeping up with the latest on social media
• Pressure to be liked: feeling like they need to post positive and attractive things about themselves or their life in order to get comments and likes from friends
• Feeling powerless: having others post things about them that they cannot change or control
• Discomfort from high levels of communication: feeling that a friend, classmate, or partner wants to text more than they are comfortable with