Long-duration social media engagement affects young minds

Youngsters these days are investing most of their time in social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and so on. Most of the people are concerned about the mental health risk that are associated with excessive use of social media.

A study was conducted on 467 young adults in which a survey was done, and people were asked questions like how much time they spent every day on social media, importance of social media in their day-to-day life and what are the ways to use social media. These people were also asked about the mental health issues like social anxiety, loneliness, decreased empathy and suicidal thoughts.

The researcher found a little association between the time spent by people on social media and mental health problems.

The main concern of the researchers was on the process called “vaguebooking” in which, an information is written in such a way that it grabs a person’s attention towards the post and develops a concern in the mind of the people.

The people writing sensitive posts were lonely and bear some deadly thoughts like suicidal ideation. The research reported that social media acted as a medium that said, ‘cry for help’ for people, who were already suffering from certain mental health problems.

Chloe Berryman of the University of Central Florida said, “Overall, results from this study suggest that, with the exception of vaguebooking, concerns regarding social media use may be misplaced.”

She finally concluded, “Our results are generally consistent with other studies which suggest that how people use social media is more critical than the actual time they spend online with regards to their mental health.”