SALUD MENTAL EN JÓVENES

Social Media Use and Adolescent Mental Health

Findings From the UK Millennium Cohort Study

Youth mental health is a major public health concern which poses substantial societal and economic burdens globally [1, 2]. 

Adolescence is a period of vulnerability for the development of depression [3] and young people with mental health problems are at higher risk of poor mental health throughout their lives [4]. Therefore, intervening early could have long-term knock on benefits for population health.

 

Social media use, a relatively recent phenomena, has become the primary form of communication for young people in the UK and elsewhere [5, 6]. Undoubtedly, using social media can be beneficial including as a source of social support and knowledge acquisition, however, a mounting body of evidence suggests associations with poor mental health among young people [7, 8]. 

 

Moreover, a recent report using longitudinal data suggests that girls may be more affected than boys [9].

 

Amid the public debate on the pros and cons of social media use taking place in the UK and elsewhere, the British Secretary of State for Health has joined recent calls for social media organisations to regulate use more tightly [10, 11] and an investigation by the Chief Medical Officer into the links between social media use and young people's mental health is underway.

 

Numerous plausible potential intervening pathways relate young people's mental health to the amount of time they spend on social networking sites, and the ways in which they engage and interact online.

 

Widely researched are pathways via experiences of online harassment, as victim and/or perpetrator, which have the potential to impact on young people's mental health due to the ease of sharing of materials that damage reputations and relationships [12–14]. 

 

It is commonplace for young people to sleep in close proximity to their phones [15] and sleep has been shown to be linked to mental health [16, 17]. 

 

Social media use could impact on young people's sleep in multiple ways, for instance spending a long time on social media might lead to reduced sleep duration, whilst incoming alerts in the night and fear of missing out on newcontent could cause sleep disruptions [18–20]. 

 

Screen exposure before bedtime and the consequent impact of this on melatonin production and the circadian rhythm are also possible mechanisms [21]. Sleep quality and quantity could also be affected by levels of anxiety and worry resulting from experiences of online harassment.

 

Young people are particularly vulnerable to the development of low self-esteem [22] and this could be exacerbated by online experiences including receipt of negative feedback and negative social comparisons [23, 24]. The abundance of manipulated images of idealised ‘beauty’ online are linked to individual perceptions of body image and self-esteem which in turn are associated with poor mental health [25, 26].

 

It is also important to acknowledge that a cyclical relationship between social media use and mental health could be at play, whereby young people experiencing poor mental health might be more likely to use social media for extended periods of time.

https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S2589-5370%2818%2930060-9