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Anxiety on Social Media

The graph below shows the results of a chi squared test conducted for a study examining the effects of social media on Indian youth. Although this excludes the rest of the world, it gives an interesting insight, as it analyses various key points that appear to have a direct correlation with the regular usage of social media networks. These points include: anxiety, depressed mood, sense of positive well-being, self-control, general health and vitality. It really supports my point of how negative the impacts truly are, alongside revealing crucial points that had not come to my attention before such as the idea of self-control. I find this concept interesting, as this is something marketing campaigns will target customers with. By constantly seeing these forms of perfection, brands work closely together with models and public figures, to promote mainly beauty related products. These usually include makeup, revealing clothing, amongst other beauty enhancing products such as hair removal lasers or self-tanning creams.

I do not want to go into depth about the chi squared process and the null hypotheses, but this table gives a quick insight to current data that is being collected globally, in order to understand the phenomenon that is social media and its effects on youth and adolescents particularly. It is also argued that social media has multiple positive effects as these individuals have large platforms, and are often used to “do good”, calling important topics such as climate change into the spotlight. However, this is only a minor component of these public figures profiles, and essentially can harm followers more than it can benefit them. As mentioned, social media has no relation to the overall happiness of individuals, but has rather turned into an addiction, more severe than that of nicotine.