Does Social Media Cause Psychological Problems free essay sample

Anybody who has access to this social media website can reveal news of engagements and breakups, job gains and losses, or even news of life and death; its easy to become overwhelmed especially when you need to keep up with friends and families from a distance or in a different geographical location. Social media comes in many forms including blogs and micro-blogs, forums and message boards, social networks, wikis, virtual worlds, social bookmarking, tagging and news, writing communities, digital storytelling and scrapbooking, and data, content, image and video sharing, podcast portals, and collective intelligence. All of these forms makes majority of individuals keep up with technology and be a part of the information hi-way. Since social media website becomes part of the majority of individual’s life, there is an enormous amount of studies that has been made to identify the benefit of utilizing social media. An example of this study is the one made by Maurizio Mauri, Ph. D. , Pietro Cipresso, Ph. D. , Anna Balgera, M. A. Marco Villamira, Ph. D. , M. D. , and Giuseppe Riva, Ph. D. and made an article titled â€Å"Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking† and in the article it stated that the use of social media website can have a positive and negative effect on the individual; however, the increasing use of social media website reveal that people continue to use this because they have a positive experience when they use them. A study made by Researcher Jeffrey Hancock at Cornell University revealed that one positive effect of using a social media website is the boost of self esteem since majority of people choose what they reveal about themselves and filter anything that might reflect badly on a social media websites, feedbacks from friends and family posted publicly on peoples profiles tends to be overwhelmingly positive which can help boost one’s self-esteem. According to Jeffrey Hancock, Unlike a mirror, which reminds us of who we really are and may have a negative effect on self-esteem if that image does not match with our ideal, social media website can show a positive version of ourselves. Since both studies showed a positive effect of using social media websites, one may ask about the other side of it. What about those studies that have been made to show the negative effect of using social media website? The Australian Psychology Society created a survey and according to their findings, twenty eight percent of the participants experienced negative effects that can lead to psychological problems. These participants were asked to provide further information about the negative experience and for the most correspondents revealed that unwanted contact or people posting inappropriate or upsetting information online and specified having online bullying and provided examples such as abusive messages and harassment that can soon lead to low esteem. This kind of negative experience from social media website can be compared to what happened to Megan Meier, a thirteen years old resident of Dardenne Prairie, Missouri who ended her own life by hanging herself inside her room that was later investigated that it was a result of cyber bullying. There is also another cause of low self esteem that does not involve abusive messages and harassments like what was mentioned earlier and this is comparing one’s self to another. As what Jeffrey Hancock at Cornell University mentioned earlier that most people reveal only the good side of themselves or their life to boost their self esteem, this gives the opportunity for other people to compare their lives with other people who have more fun and lead more exciting lives. Since social media give people opportunity to post pictures and comments about their lives like vacations, perfect children, family outings, their promotions at work, how their love life, how they are always eating fabulous meals and busy social lives, other people see this as a comparison to their own life and develop frustrations and look at their life as imperfect. Comparing with other people is a natural tendency that we all do to some extent. It can be normal as long as you only evaluate similarities and differences. It’s also productive if you’re inspired to emulate another’s impressive traits but there are instances that this becomes dysfunctional when it develops envy and jealousy, if a person judges themselves as less fortunate than others, and then there is a greater chance that low self esteem will develop. Another study about social media website and other technology that can have negative effects on the mental health of children and teenagers was conducted by Dr. Larry D. Rosen, a professor of psychology at California State University. In the 119th Annual Convention of the American Psychology Association in Washington D. C. on August 4-7, 2012, he revealed that in his study entitled â€Å"Poke Me: How Social Networks Can both Help and Harm Our Kids†, teenagers and young adults who are continuously logged on to Facebook are more often to show psychological disorders, like mania, paranoia, aggressive tendencies, antisocial behavior and increased alcohol use. These teens also more often displayed narcissistic tendencies, which are fed by their ability to constantly broadcast information about themselves through Facebook. This study can closely be related to the researched done by Jeffrey Hancock at Cornell University where some individual uses social media website to boost their self esteem. Dr Larry D. Rosen’s study also revealed that children, pre-teens and teenagers who used Internet and social media websites on a regular basis  have more stomach aches, sleeping problems, anxiety and depression and because of this, they miss school more often. Young adult experience the same effect but instead of missing school, they miss work and often call-out on work. This study can be associated to the study made by Dr. Michael Fenichel, Ph. D. that is named â€Å"Facebook Addiction Disorder† where based on his clinical study reveals that vast amount of time and energy are spent at work, at home, at school, and now while even on the move, that people are engaging and/or log on to Facebook thus creates the chain of effect. Missing school means missing out on class and school activity that can somehow affect their school performance creating insecurities towards their peer groups that can eventually lead to anxiety and depression. In addition to Dr. Rosen’s study, 48 percent of 18-34-year-olds check Facebook when they wake up and 28 percent before they get out of bed, this habit drives them to lose focus on the workday ahead of them. Since young adults that are so much engage in a social media website spend the most of their time on it, they even do this at work which makes them less productive and missing out on great opportunities to promote themselves at the work place thus again creating insecurities towards their co-workers who are performing better and will eventually lead to low self esteem and depression. Another result to Dr. Rosen’s study was targeted to middle school and high school and not surprisingly, middle school and high school students who logged into Facebook at least once during a 15-minute study session received lower grades. Rosen and his team found that most students were only able to maintain focus on their studies for two or three minutes before distracting themselves with the Web and spend more time on it than their studies. Although social networking sites provides some positive effects to its users, the negative effects of these social networking sites overweigh the positive ones. These sites, according to each and every study that was conducted, have not only caused some negative psychological effect to an individual, but to a group or society itself considering the huge amount of users of a social networking sites. The students and young adults become victims of social networks more often than anyone else. This is because of the reason that when they are studying or searching their course material online or at work, they get attracted to these sites to kill the boredom in their current situation, diverting their attention from their studies and work. http://www. enichel. com/pokeme. shtml http://www. chabad4israel. org/tznius4israel/newdisorder. pdf http://www. psychology. org. au/Assets/Files/Social-and-Psychological-Impact-of-Social-Networking-Sites. pdf http://online. liebertpub. com/doi/abs/10. 1089/1094931041291295? journalCode=cpbamp; http://www. commonsensemedia. org/research/social-media-social-life/key-finding-2%3A-teens-more-likely-to-report-positi ve-impact http://online. liebertpub. com/doi/abs/10. 1089/cyber. 2010. 0377? journalCode=cyberamp; http://www. news. cornell. edu/stories/2011/03/facebook-walls-boost-self-esteem-finds-study