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Positive and Negative Effects of Social Media on Adolescent Well-being

Prepared for:

Mr. Raymund Francia

Prepared By:

Mark Anthony M Loreño

December 20, 2021

ABSTRACT

Social media use is rapidly growing among adolescents, studies cite that the rates of “constant use” doubled from 2015 to 2018 (Anderson & Jiang, 2018; Lenhart, 2015). Social media use can have a serious negative impact on areas of well-being including feelings of depression, anxiety, fear of missing out, body image, bullying and sleep. Mojtabai, Olfson and Han (2016) cite the problematic use of mobile phones and social media applications as one of the trends aligning with the increase in major depressive episodes. Conversely, use of social media can promote positive feelings of well-being including creating a sense of community, providing access to needed health information, helping create new relationships and maintain existing ones and offering a platform for self-expression and creation of self-identity. The purpose of this study was to compare the positive and negative impacts of the top four social media platforms used by adolescents on 14 areas of well-being. SPSS was used for data analysis to compare well-being scores for Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube. Analysis was also completed to see if there was a relationship between time spent online and perceived well-being. Consistent with research, the majority of adolescents cite that their smartphone is the primary way they access social media. YouTube was identified as having the most positive impact on adolescent well-being while Instagram was perceived as having the most negative. Time spent online indicated a weak, positive correlation to well-being with only YouTube.

INTRODUCTION

Social media is defined as “electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities and share information, personal messages and other content” (“Social Media”, 2004, para. 1). The most cited reason for internet usage in households located within the Philippine is the desire to engage in communication between family and friends and looking for information (Anderson & Jiang, 2018; Duggan & Smith, 2013; Fallows, 2004; Kennedy, Smith, Wells & Wellman, 2008). Facebook, the largest social media platform, acknowledges the desire for connectedness and information in their mission and vision statement; to see “people use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world and to share and express what matters to them” (Facebook, n.d., para. 2). Information seeking behavior is cited by Duggan and Page (2016), who found that over half of Americans get their news via social media and learned about the 2016 presidential election from various social media news feeds. media is an increasingly popular tool with 77% of respondents within the Philippine owning at least one social media profile in 2018 (Edison Research, 2018). Social media use has grown from approximately 56% of users having more than one profile in 2016 to the average consumer citing use of more than four different social media platforms in 2018 (Duggan & Page, 2016; Smith & Anders, 2018). Social media is used for various reasons including making communication faster and information available within seconds, providing opportunities for collaboration and support, delivering a global network of entertainment, helping users form a sense of self-identityand offering access to employment opportunities. Different social media platforms are created, and continue to be created, to fit these demands. Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Vine, Snapchat, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest, Tumbler, Redditt, and WhatsApp are some of the different social media platforms currently offered. Facebook continues to

lead the social media world. In 2017, Verto Analytics (2018) found 239 million users accessed their profiles at least once a month; with over half logging in on their mobile phones.

2018). There are six constructs in the Theory of Reasoned Action and Planned Behavior: attitude, behavioral intention, subjective norms, social norms, perceived power and perceived behavioral control (LaMorte, 2018). Only the first construct is measured in this study; analyzing the attitudes of adolescents toward different aspects of social media that affect their overall well-being. A key factor in the Theory of Reasoned Action and Planned Behavior is understanding attitudes toward certain behaviors, if positive attitudes exist correlating behaviors are more likely to be present (LaMorte, 2018). Adolescents positive and negative attitudes toward four different social media platforms will be analyzed in this study. If adolescents perceive positive outcomes on well-being within certain social media platforms, the Theory of Reasoned Action and Planned Behavior predicts thatadolescents will be more likely to use those platforms. If negative attitudes toward well-being concepts exist within certain social media platforms, it is important to understand why adolescents are using those platforms. The goal of this study is to analyze adolescent attitudes toward the four most commonly used social media platforms in an effort to understand how each social media platform impacts well-being.

Participants

Participants within this study are male and female high school students aged 15 –18 years old, residing in a rural country. The study is targeting high school students to gather information on perceived affects social media has on overall adolescent well- being. The sampling technique that will be used for this study is convenience sampling. Convenience sampling is “drawn by selecting any available participant from an intact group” (Cottrell & McKenzie, 2011, p. 133). Students enrolled in public high schools within the county of interest are conveniently available to participate in this study. The participants will be recruited from both mandatory and elective health and physical education classes they are currently taking. Each school district in the county varies in the grade levels (freshman, sophomore, junior or senior year) that students are required to take health and physical education classes. The type and number of elective classes in health and physical education offered also vary by school district. Fifteen years old was selected as the lower age limit because most social media platforms require users to be at least 13 years of age to create a profile. Another reason is that for participants to provide a more accurate assessment on how social media impacts areas of well-being, participants need to be able to understand well-being terms used within the survey questions. Experience with social media is also beneficial. The upper age limit of 18 was selected because seniors in high school have the potential to be 18 years of age during the spring of their senior year.

Instrumentation

The Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) describes a cross sectional survey, entitled #StatusofMind, that was used to find out how adolescents in the United Kingdom feel that Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and YouTube “impact their overall health and well-being (both positively and negatively) and to make comparisons between these platforms…” (Royal Society for Public Health, 2017, p. 17). The instrument used in #StatusofMind will be the same instrument used in this proposed study. Similar to #StatusofMind, this study is also aiming to compare adolescents perceived positive and negative impacts on well- being of the top four social media platforms: Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube.

The survey is an online instrument, comprised of 62 questions. The survey begins with demographic information to determine the participants age, gender, perceived importance of social media, most important social media platform, a self-reported estimate of daily time spent on each social media platform and how they access their social media accounts. The second portion of the survey goes on to ask 14 questions, each relating to a concept of well-being. Each panel of 14 well-being statements is assessed for each of the four social media platforms being measured. The participant is asked to assess how each social media platform impacts the following 14 concepts: awareness of other’s health experiences, access to expert health information, emotionalsupport, depression, loneliness, sleep, self-expression, self-identity, body image, real world relationships, community building, bullying and FoMO. Participants are asked to rank each statement using a five-point Likert- type scale with the option to choose if that specific social media platform makes statements 1-14: -2 (A lot worse), -1 (a little worse), 0 (has no effect), +1 (a little better), +2 (a lot better). There are 14 questions for each of 4 social media platforms, equaling 56 statements measuring the perceived impacts of social media on well-being (Royal Society for Public Health, 2017). The demographic portion of the survey will determine the age and gender of the participant, as well as importance of social media to the participant, methods by which social media is accessed, average time spent on social media platforms and participant’s most preferred social media platform. The first two questions are nominal, demographic data asking students to select their age from the options of 15, 16, 17 or 18 years and selecting gender; asking participants to identify as male, female or unspecified. The survey then uses a five-point modified Likert-type scale to identify participant’s perceived level of importance of social media using the options: Extremely Important, Important, Unsure, Unimportant or Extremely Unimportant. Time spent on social media platforms will be an open-ended question, asking participants to estimate the amount of time per day they spend on each platform. The last two demographic questions ask the participants to select from a list of options. Question four asks participants to identify their most important social media platform, having to choose between the four platforms being measured, and only being able to choose one. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or Snapchat are the options listed. Question five asks participants to identify one or moreway(s) they access their social media accounts, choosing among the following options: smartphone, tablet, iPad, desktop computer or laptop. This survey draws on the Theory of Reasoned Action and Planned Behavior to help determine the first construct, attitudes toward performing a particular behavior. The questions that analyze social media’s impact on well-being break down the concept of well-being into 14 specific statements. The use of the five-point Likert scale for each statement will identify potential attitudes toward specific areas of well-being that each social media platform may affect. Perceived positive measures could explain why adolescents are using these platforms and perceived negative measures could identify areas of concern regarding social media use and feelings of well-being.

Data Collection Procedure

Data collection happened in public school districts within Goodhue County. Health and physical education teachers at the high school level were asked to take 10minutes of time to have students complete the online survey, using the online survey tool Qualtrics. Permission was granted at the district level by the superintendent or principalsand classroom teachers. Parents received a letter home asking for signed consent to allow their student to participate in a study analyzing the positive and negative impacts of social media platforms on adolescent well-being. Signed, informed consent wascollected a minimum of two days before the scheduled start of the survey.

Snapchat: Survey questions 35 -48 (mean of each question and mean of total platform) YouTube: Survey questions 49 -62 (mean of each question and mean of total platform) (total median scores) measures ANOVA

2. Which social media platform has highest perceived negative impact on adolescent well-being? Facebook: Survey questions 7-20 (mean of each question and mean of total platform) Instagram: Survey questions 21 -34 (mean of each question and mean of total platform) Snapchat: Survey questions 35 -48 (mean of each question and mean of total platform) YouTube: Survey questions 49 -62 (mean of each question and mean of total platform) Interval/Ratio (individual survey items) Descriptive Statistics including measures of central tendency and measures of dispersion.Repeated measures ANOVA What is the relationship between timespent on social media and perceived adolescent well-being? Question 5: Please estimate the amount of time per day you spend on each of the following Social Media platforms: YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat.Facebook: Survey questions 7-20 (mean of each question and mean of total platform) Instagram: Survey questions 21 -34 (mean of each question and mean of total platform) Snapchat: Survey questions 35 -48 (mean of each question and mean of total platform) YouTube: Survey questions 49 -62 (mean of each question and mean of total platform) Ordinal Data Interval/Ratio (individual survey items) Descriptive Statistics including measures of central tendency and measures of dispersion. Spearman Rho Correlation, post hoc tests to determine significance.

RESULTS/FINDINGS

This study collected data with the purpose of comparing the positive and negative impacts of the top 4 social media platforms used by adolescents in Goodhue County on well-being. This study aimed to answer the following research questions.

1. Which social media platform has the highest perceived positive impact on adolescent well-being?
2. Which social media platform has highest perceived negative impact on adolescent well-being?
3. What is the relationship between time spent on social media and perceived adolescent well-being? Data for this research study was collected in the form of an online survey. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) (IBM,

2017. was used to analyze descriptive statistics, frequency distributions, measures of central tendency, comparisons and correlations. This chapter discusses the findings from the survey, organized in alignment with the research questions.

Demographic Results

The findings include data from four public high schools with Goodhue County, Minnesota .The demographic data of the research participants are represented in Table 1. Demographic data collected included age, gender, how social media is primarily accessed, the overall importance of social media in their lives, which social media platform they believe to be the most important, and to estimate the amount of time, in hours, they spend on each social media site. The average age of those surveyed was 15.9 (SD = 1.12) while the majority of the population surveyed were female (n = 163, 56%). A smartphone was indicated to be the favorite way of accessing social media, with only twelve of the two hundred ninety-one respondents indicating another electronic device being used for primary access. Snapchat was viewed as the most important social media platform by 60.5% (n = 176) and 74.2% of respondents found social media to be moderately to extremely important in their lives (n = 216) in their lives. Table 1 presents a breakdown of the other demographic data.

Demographics of Participants

Time spent online was grouped in 30 minute segments for analysis and the majority of students estimated being on Facebook between 0 and 30 minutes a day (n = 243, 83.5%), Instagram between 0-60 minutes per day (n = 192, 66.0%), Snapchat between 0-120 minutes per day (n = 184, 63.2%), and on YouTube between 0-60 minutes per day (n = 165, 56.7%). Research Question One: Which social media platform has the highest perceived positive impact on adolescent well-being? Participants were asked to consider how Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube affected 14 areas of well-being. Students were asked to rank each statement of well-being on a scale from -2 to 2. A score of -2 was given if the social media platform made that area of well-being “a lot worse”, -1 if it made well-being “a little worse”, 0 if it made well-being “neither worse nor better”, 1 if it made well-being “a little better”, and a score of 2 was given if it made well-being “a lot better”. A composite score for each social media platform was created and Cronbach’s alpha was run to measure the reliability of the data. A score of > .7 is necessary to consider data reliable. Cronbach’s alpha scores for Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube are all at .8, indicating the data is reliable. Table 3 represents the composite mean scores and standard deviations for the four social media platforms measured. The assumption of sphericity was violated and corrected for by using the Greenhouse-Geisser output. A repeated measures ANOVA revealed a statistically significant difference in overall well-being scores between the four social media platforms (F2.33, 674.7474 = 38.81, p < .001). YouTube has the highest mean score, 1.09 (n = 291, SD = 7.16) or was the most positively associated with overall well-being. YouTube is also the only platform that scored a positive mean when compared to the other three social media platforms, that all scored negatively. This result indicates that YouTube may have the most positive impact on well-being. See Table 3 for mean comparisons on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Composite well-being scores

Post hoc tests using the Bonferroni correction revealed significant differences between Facebook (M = -1.22, SD = 5.90) and YouTube (M = 1.09, SD = 7.16); Instagram (M = -2.90, SD = 7.92) and YouTube; and Snapchat (M = -1.93, SD = 8.27) and YouTube. YouTube was perceived as being an average of 2.31 well-being rank points higher than Facebook (p < .001), 4.0 well- being rank points higher than Instagram (p <.001), and 3.02 well-being rank points higher than Snapchat (p < .001), thereby having the most positive impact on overall well-being. Research Question Two: Which social media platform has highest perceived negative impact on adolescent well-being?

Composite data from research question one was also used to answer research question two. Table 3, above, represents the composite mean scores and standard deviations for the four social media platforms measured. Instagram had the lowest mean well-being composite score, -2.90 (n = 291, SD = 7.91) or was perceived as having the largest negative impact on well- being. See Table 3 for mean comparisons on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube. Similar to question one, the assumption of sphericity was violated and corrected for by using the Greenhouse-Geisser output. A repeated measures ANOVA revealed a statistically significant difference in overall well-being scores between the four social media platforms (F2.33, 674.7474 = 38.81, p < .001). The Bonferroni adjustment detected significant relationships between Instagram(m = -2.90, SD = 7.9)) and Facebook (m = - 1.22, SD = 5.90), Instagram and Snapchat (m = -1.93, SD = 8.28) and Instagram and YouTube (m = 1.09, SD = 7.16). Instagram was shown to have a more negative impact on well-being at a significant level. Instagram was -1.68 well-being rank points lower than Facebook (p < .001), -.97 well-being rank points lower than Snapchat (p = .002) and -4.0 well-being rank points lower than YouTube (p < .001), thereby having the most negative impact on well-being. Research Question Three: What is the relationship between time spent on social media and perceived adolescent well- being? Survey participants were asked to estimate the amount of time they spend on each of the four social media platforms per day, in hours. Time in hours was converted to minutes due to the number of students that cited social media time under one hour (Facebook, n = 244; Instagram, n = 77; Snapchat, n = 68; YouTube, n = 100). Data was determined to be non-parametric. Time spent on social media contains outliers, plots for time on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube do not follow a normal bell curve, and show a slight linear pattern using a scatter plot graph. Estimated times in each platform were compared to the platform’s composite well-being score using a non-parametric test of correlation, Spearman rho. Facebook (r (289) = -.014, p = .40),Instagram (r (289) = .056, p = .17), and Snapchat (r (289) = .051, p = .19) showed no significant relationship between time spent online and perceived well-being. Time spent on YouTube and perceived well-being showed a weak, positive, significant correlation (r(289) = .237, p < .001). All correlations were found to be significantly weak.

CONCLUSIONS

As social media use continues to increase and become an everyday form of communication, there is a need to continue research. There is a solid base of research on visual platforms like Facebook and Instagram and how they affect areas of well- being, particularly depression, anxiety and cyberbullying. Research is lacking on those platforms teens cite using most and consider most important, like Snapchat. It is important as educators to understand why adolescents are using these platforms and what benefits they see from their use. Students have access to more information and people than ever before. Education needs to continue to help students learn to use social media intelligently. Social media can help create and extend relationships with people who can teach and support adolescents. Adolescents need to be able to identify valid and

of research specifically in the areas related to mental health like depression, anxiety, loneliness, sleep, bullying, body-image and FoMO. One area of interest identified in data cleaning comes from the surveys that were removed from the study during data cleaning. Out of the 45 surveys that had missing data, 23 were missing data specifically related to depression, loneliness, anxiety, bullying, body-image, sleep and FoMO, with respondents not answering any of the questions related to those topics, on any of the social media platforms. While we cannot say for sure that this 51% of missing data was missed accidentally or skipped on purpose,it does identify a potential area of interest, especially when identifying problem areas and the attitudes that are driving use of social media.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Recommendations for Practice Twenge et al. (2017) discusses that time online is rapidly replacing some of our other day to day activities including reading, participating in non-sedentary activities, and conversing with people face-to-face, all protective factors against mental illness. Anderson and Jiang (2018) indicate that smartphone ownership has doubled since 2015. Current concerning research on social media and adolescents highlights the negative impacts on mental health, cyberbullying, digital distraction, negative body- image and self-esteem, as well as sleep. Twenge et al. (2019) cites that the adolescents experiencing major depression within the past 12 months has grown 52% since 2008, corresponding to the rise in smartphone ownership, digital communication, and the decline in sleep duration. Understanding adolescents perceived impacts of social media helps parents and educators in understanding the drive toward adolescent use while grasping the importance of social media monitoring and education for all. Parent influence and social media modeling is cited as being a major influence over adolescent’s social media behavior (Burnette et al., 2018). Lewis et al. (2015) discovered that parents who consider their children more competent in technology and more informed about social media tend to feel their authority over their child is compromised. Parents discussed feeling family routines were disrupted and events chaotic due to a child’s online activity (Lewis et al.,2015). Parents cited they desired more information on strategies to help them manage their parent/child relationship in a digital world, including monitoring strategies.

The Parent Internet Mediation Guidelines (Livingstone, Mascheroni & Staksrud, 2015) outline the need for education of parents, educators and children on social media and online activity. Common Sense Media, START, and New York’s Department of Education have created resources to fit this framework and need. All identify the need to educate within the community as well as within the homes. New York’s Department of Education outlines resources on their webpage for student and parent social media guidelines in two categories, for those with children twelve and under and for those with children over age thirteen. Within these resources are talking points, learning activities and monitoring suggestions. Common Sense Media promotes parent and child learning together, outlining the Learn, Do, Reflect model for both in school curriculum and lessons to be run through various community groups for adults and kids together. START offers an opportunity for parents to come together and offer support and advice for limiting and monitoring technology use within their own communities, promoting community wide social media monitoring, specifically within the area of usage time. All programs aim at understanding and outlining boundaries for social media use, appropriate use of social media as well as coping strategies for both adults and children. One example of a specific lesson within the classroom to identify social media stress could be to have students pull out their phones the beginning of the hour, turn on all notifications, and keep their phone out on their desk. As the lesson on chronic

stress, aligned with the national health standards and mental health benchmarks, progressesstudents make tally marks to note each notification they receive. Instruct them to interact with their phones as they would if they were outside of class. Toward the end of the hour have them take their notification tallies and create a comprehensive total on the board. Discuss the number of notifications they got and how social media could create stress in their lives, making sure to talk about students who maybe did not receive many, or any, notifications and how that could also cause a stressful response. Ask students if they were able to focus on the stress lesson and talk about the distraction caused by constant connection. Discuss how constant access could be causing stress and distraction from other important things or people in their lives. Finish by brainstorming and considering ways to monitor social media use to reduce stress. Recommendations for Future Research A rise in the understanding of digital distraction has led several colleges and high schools to remove personal technology from the classroom, a few going as far as limitingall classroom use of technology (Berdik, 2018). A study by Beland and Murphy (2015) found the removal of personal devices in the classroom led to a significant increase in test scores and information retention for lower-achieving learners, however there was no significant result for high-achieving learners. The study found that students were less likely to be distracted during a lesson and more likely to engage in the lesson when phones were removed (Beland & Murphy, 2015). These findings, along with the current study’s findings, that teens need to check their phones twenty-four hours a day, create an opportunity for further research into the relationship between academic achievement and access to social media within the school day. Another area focus could be the lack of research on Snapchat, and its impact on well-being. Snapchat is cited as the most important social media application and used by the majority of students who responded to this survey. Extended research into use of filters and their impact on body image and self-esteem when compared to filtered images that are identified as “edited” could be helpful when comparing the impacts on perceived body image and self-esteem Hamm et al. (2015) reported that young adults are more likely to use passive strategies in response to cyberbullying like blocking, defriending and ignoring. A platform specific qualitative study on cyberbullying and Snapchat could help identify student coping strategies when feeling bullied or targeted and how well they feel these strategies work.

APPENDICES

1 How old are you? o o o o Q2 What is your gender? o Male oFemale o Unspecified

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Pages

Abstract ........................................................................................... 1

Introduction ..................................................................................... 1-

Methodology .................................................................................... 2-

Results/Findings ............................................................................. 7-

• Conclusion
• Summary 11-
• Recommendation 12-
• Appendices 14-