The Effect of Social Media on Mood and Anxiety Disorders in Youth

This research study will focus on the disadvantages on social media platforms on the youth, particularly their effect certain mood and anxiety disorders. The nominal definition of social media refers to the platforms on the internet used to exchange information and networking. The operational definition of social media usage in the context of the research study includes the number of social media platforms an individual has, coupled with the frequency of operation (Watson, 2018). Mental health, the other concept of interest in the study, is nominally defined as psychological and emotional well-being. The operational definition is the susceptibility of an individual to fall into depression, anxiety, or suffer frim low self-esteem, body dysmorphia, and other common mood and anxiety disorders. The study classifies body dysmorphia as a mood disorder because it affects an individual’s perception of themselves, and thus, their mood towards themselves and others. It is important to note that the operational definition of mental health is dependent on social media, for instance, the likelihood of people getting body dysmorphia due to peer pressure from Instagram.

Part 3 

How prevalent are mood and anxiety disorders among young people who use social media on a daily basis?

Part 4 

Quantitative research is appropriate for this proposal because it allows for direct comparison of results. This comparison will be necessary because the questionnaire will be provided based on individual social media platforms. Due to the quantitative nature of the data collected, like the frequency of social media use per respondent, it will be easy to compare, for example, the findings from Twitter users with those of Tiktok users. The chosen social media platforms are Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok, Snapchat, WhatsApp, and Facebook. Another advantage of quantitative study in this context is that it can accommodate the large samples required to make the research efficient (Sukamolson, 2017). The goal is to survey groups of up to two hundred participants each for every social media platform chosen. The approach will also allow for diversity, a key component for the success of the research, to ensure the data reflects views from all kinds of young people worldwide. Quantitative research will make it easy to collect data uniformly from people in various countries, different cultures, races, sexuality preferences, and even likes and dislikes.

Part 5 

Although there are many platforms, these six stood out because they are the most popular. Participants will be selected randomly from a range of categories based on their social media activity, categories like race and gender, to ensure that every group has individuals varying in the qualities mentioned above. The participants will be chosen from a bot-selected sample of over five thousand social media users. The bot will ensure the users meet the necessary qualities such as age and location. The research moderator will then reach out to the chosen participants through their respective social media handles to inform them of the study. The bot will have short-listed three hundred to three hundred and fifty users for each of the chosen platforms, even though the study requires only two hundred, to accommodate users who may not respond to the request or refuse to participate. Users who will agree to participate will be asked to provide their email addresses to be used for communication thereafter.

Part 6 

The method of data collection will be self-administered questionnaires. The main advantage of doing a research study about social media is that disseminating questionnaires will be easier. Participants will be emailed the questionnaire then given a reasonable amount of time before submitting it. The participants will not be required to enter any personal information. Questions are to be answered either with a yes or no or on a scale of one to five, with one being the lowest score and five the highest.

The Questionnaire 

Below is the first part of the questionnaire. It will be standard for every participant. The second part will be customized for each of the six chose social media platforms.

Do you use social media platforms often? Yes/No

Would you go for more than a week without using any social media platform? (Keep in mind that WhatsApp and YouTube count as social media platforms) Yes/No

On a scale of one to five, how much do you enjoy social media?

On a scale of one to five, how much does the use of social media influence how you view yourself?

Have you ever been diagnosed with any mental disorder? Yes/No

Have you ever experienced any form depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, suicidal thoughts, or body dysmorphia? The symptoms for these mood and anxiety disorders include irritability, loss of appetite and weight, insomnia, and a short concentration span. Yes/No

On a scale of one to five, how likely is it that the use of social media caused either of the conditions named above?

Part 7 

The complete questionnaire will contain eight yes/no questions and twelve scaling questions, making it a 40% to 60% ratio. However, the questions will be scored in the same way. The scales one and two will have the same score as a no, while three, four, and five will score as much as a yes. This approach will reduce the workload and allow uniformity.

There are two variables in this study, social media and mental health. Since the goal is to determine whether social media plays a role in poor mental health among the users, the level of comparison will be the frequency of social media use against the extremity of mental illnesses. Descriptive statistical analysis is the best approach since it will allow for the use of visual representation (Myers et al., 2019). The influence of each of the six social media platforms on mental health will be tabulated, then compared using graphs. The final results will be presented as a graph with the six platforms as the entries on the horizontal axis and their influence on mental health on the vertical axis, where the influence will be measured percentage-wise.

Part 8 

The main strength of the research plan is that the abstract factors of social media and mental health will be reduced to numbers. For instance, determining the presence and rate of depression in the youth is difficult enough without comparing it with the use of social media because so many people are unaware of its symptoms hence do not know when they suffer from it.. Similarly, identifying which social media platforms are likely to cause depression or anxiety would be difficult. However, with this study, the frequency of social media usage and the extremity of mental illness due to social media is measured on a scale. The graphical representation of the final results will make it easy for scholars and lay individuals to interpret the data.

Ironically, the argument for the strength above is similar to the argument for the main limitation. By turning mental illness and frequency of social media usage into numbers, other influencing factors are ignored. First, although respondents may claim social media influence their mental health, they are prone to biases and inaccuracy. Thirdly, and most importantly, other factors are at play even when social media do influence mental health. For instance, a person suffering from body dysmorphia due to the high expectations for beauty on Instagram may have been exposed to these standards in adverts and television shows. Further, the mood and anxiety disorders investigated in the study could be caused by internal factors unknown to the researcher. Sometimes, peer pressure is unconscious; although the perfect pictures on Instagram might trigger it, it may have been initiated by a different experience.

Part 9 

An ethical consideration to be seriously considered in this study is confidentiality. Even though no personal information like names or addresses is requested, issues concerning mental health are very sensitive. Therefore, the study must respect the fact that the participants volunteered such sensitive information about their personal life. In that vein, there will be no interaction with the participants aside from the questionnaire to ensure they do not feel judged or scrutinized.

References 

Myers, J. L., Well, A., & Lorch, R. F. (2019).  Research design and statistical analysis .

Routledge.

Sukamolson, S. (2017). Fundamentals of quantitative research.  Language Institute 

Chulalongkorn University ,  1 , 2-3.

Watson, R. (2018). Quantitative research.  Nursing Standard (2014+) ,  29 (31), 44.