Hartshorn 1

Lynzie Hartshorn

Professor Stalbird

English 1201

17 March 2019

Online Casebook

My essay’s purpose is to help figure out the relationship between teenagers and social

media. The relationship between the two have grown a lot over the past 10 years, in a positive

and a negative way. The growing rate of depression and anxiety have gone up over the past 10

years.Most articles and psychologist have tend to believe social media has been causing teens to

have depression and anxiety.

The article “Social Media and Social Anxiety Disorder: How to Make Social Media

Work For You” about Social Media and Social Anxiety really brought out the connection that

teenagers have with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Not only can there be negative aspects of

it but there are also positive ones. Cuncic states, “ Some of the benefits and disadvantages of

social media for people with social anxiety are the same as those for those without the disorder”.

It really doesn’t matter if the teenager has any anxiety but could potentially help them but also

hurt them. They could feel more involved with others even though they don’t get that attention at

school or in public. The anxiety would go down because they would be feeling involved with

others even though they aren’t getting the attention span that they could of if they were having

that physical appearance. But there are factors that could lead to either more anxiety or teenagers

without it start to have it. They could feel more left out, looking for the attention from the others

since they have it while they are on social media, or they could potentially rely on having the
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social media all the time. But if they don’t have it all the time they could start having anxiety

again.

Cuncic, Arlin. “Social Media and Social Anxiety: Is It Helping or Hurting?” Verywell Mind,

Dotdash, 2018,

www.verywellmind.com/social-network-use-and-social-anxiety-disorder-4117143.

In the article “Social Media, Loneliness, and Anxiety in Young People”, social anxiety

comes from a lot of different things, but social media has a huge factor in playing a role in

anxiety. Graham states, “Social anxiety is an anxiety problem where a person has an excessive

and unreasonable fear of social situations. Social anxiety is known to facilitate loneliness; but

loneliness also increases social anxiety and feelings of paranoia, and this may represent a

cyclical process that is especially active in the young and in our modern times may be mediated

by the use of social media”. The anxiety has a lot to do with being lonely and lacking the

physical appearance of a friend. Social media has changed the way teenagers look at life. They

are less active and don’t interact with others face to face they do it over facebook and twitter.

Lots of times the anxiety has a huge role with feeling left out and not included in events. They

start to getting isolated to the world and don’t want to go anywhere or meet new people. By

feeling left out the anxiety gets worse and teenagers are on the social media all the time because

this is what they have to calm them down and not have all the anxiety that they normally would.

Davey, Graham C.L. “Social Media, Loneliness, and Anxiety in Young People.” Psychology

Today, Sussex Publishers, 15 Dec. 2016,

www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/why-we-worry/201612/social-media-loneliness-and-

Anxiety-in-young-people.
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The article “Why Are More American Teenagers Than Ever Suffering From Severe

Anxiety?” by the New York times is based around a teenage boy named Jake. Jake is a very busy

kid and seems to excellence in schooling and is a hard worker. Suddenly, he started feeling

unhappy and tried to harm himself. His parents then took cautious care of him and got him help.

Jake still was not happy and was still trapped in this mess and could not get out of any of it. After

a while he was not in a depressed state, but more in a anxiety state and could not control it. Jake

is still having problems and is working out the issues with his family to figure out what is

happening to him and why.

Denizet-lewis, Benoit. “Why Are More American Teenagers Than Ever Suffering From Severe

Anxiety?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 11 Oct. 2017,

www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/magazine/why-are-more-american-teenagers-than-ever-su
ffering-from-severe-anxiety.html.

In the article “Is Social Media Messing with Your Teen’s Mental Health?”

about social media having an affect on teens mental health researchers had looked at 1500

people that were aged from fourteen years old to twenty-four years old. They were trying to

determine if social media had anything to do with anxiety, lack of self-esteem, and depression.

Youtube was the only outcome that came back positive. Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, and

Instagram all had a negative affect. Youtube had the best outcome because the teenager isn’t

really developing any kind of emotion because they aren’t feeling left out and they are watching

videos that make them calm and happy. Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all have

negative outcomes because the teenager can see that they are being left out or made fun of. Even

though there aren’t direct messages or photos towards that the child could be feeling this way

because once they post a picture or send it to their friend they could come back and say
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something that could really bring them down. This will then lower their self-esteem and make

their anxiety shoot back up.

Hurley, Katie. “Is Social Media Affecting Your Teens' Mental Health?” PsyCom.net - Mental

Health Treatment Resource Since 1986, 2018,

www.psycom.net/depression-teens-social-media.

In “The FOMO Is Real: How Social Media Increases Depression and Loneliness”

article, they are talking about how much people use their phones on a daily basis compare to

anything else. 77% of Americans have some form of social media and use it about every day.

These studies have then linked self esteem, depression, and anxiety to social media. To conduct

this experiment, they had 143 students from University of Pennsylvania do a survey. They had

two groups, one which did not use social media and the other used social media. The group that

used social media less had the best mental health. They had less problems with depression and

anxiety compared to the student who did use social media. The researchers found out that FOMO

(fear of missing out) is real among people with the use of social media. Throughout the

experiment they kept finding details out about what was happening with students and their

depression levels with social media.

none. “Social Media Increases Depression and Loneliness.” Healthline, Healthline Media, 2018,
www.healthline.com/health-news/social-media-use-increases-depression-and-loneliness.

Having anxiety comes from having stress and by having this there are different sources

besides social media that can be taken. By having the anxiety it can potentially lead to emotional

factors and physical. Social media is a huge factor that leads to anxiety. By having all of the

anxiety build up it can lead to the way an individual responds and cope. But by not responding it

can build up inside the individual’s body and cause the amount of anxiety to rise. There are
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different ways that anxiety can be solved such as mediation. Mediation is a great way to relieve

anxiety. This calms down the mind and allows the anxiety to decrease.

Pattison, Mansell, et al. “Social Network Mediation of Anxiety.” Healio, SLACK Incorporated,
1 Sept. 1979,

www.healio.com/psychiatry/journals/psycann/1979-9-9-9/%7B7c449681-2c86-4110-ba
2-c5994

eff7676%7D/social-network-mediation-of-anxiety.

This article “6 Ways Social Media Affects Our Mental Health” is about how kids are just

sitting and are not really doing anything. By sitting around all day and being on their devices and

being on social media it’s addictive. Kids are getting worse and worse everyday. By them being

on the devices all the time they are a lot more of cyberbullying going on. But not only is it

addictive it is causing depression and sadness. This is because the child isn’t really doing

anything and they could be the ones getting cyberbullied but don’t want to say anything. They

could also comparing their life to someone else’s life and making them think that they don’t have

everything that they should have or have to fit in with others. But not only is it the emotions

people are meeting people that they don’t know on social media and becoming friends with

them. This can be dangerous but teenagers aren’t thinking that they way because if they don’t

really have friends they are making new ones. All they want to do is talk to them but don’t know

anything about them or have never met them before.

Walton, Alice G. “6 Ways Social Media Affects Our Mental Health.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine,

3 Oct. 2017,

www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2017/06/30/a-run-down-of-social-medias-

effects-on-our-mental-health/#644b71ea2e5a.
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