Student Research Report: Media Frenzy

In Fall 2021, students in Dr. Emily Stark’s Research Methods and Design course completed multiple hands-on data collection projects. They were also assigned a blog paper where they discussed one of the topics they chose to research and explained their findings to a general audience. The goal of this assignment was to give students an opportunity to explore a different form of writing from APA-style research papers. Some of these blog papers will be featured here throughout the spring to showcase the students’ findings. Please feel free to contact Dr. Stark through the contact form on this site for additional information about this course or the assignments used.

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By Annie Grund

It is 2021, finding someone who doesn’t have a social media account is rare. Growing up in a digital world was the default for many kids born in the 20th century. Scrolling, posting, and messaging have become such a mundane everyday activity, that we don’t even question it. Something else that millennials and gen Z holds close to their hearts, other than their smart phones, is mental health advocacy and awareness. In the past decade, stigmas have been broken down and conversations have been opened up about mental health struggles.

Social media has benefitted from the movement of mental health advocacy by lending a platform to spread awareness. However, does social media also have a negative effect on mental health? The relationship between social media and mental health has been explored before, such as in the following study. In a study formed by scouting participants via Instagram, it was found that stress levels were significantly higher for college students in April of 2020, the cusp of the Covid-19 pandemic (Cohen, Dull, Hoyt, Maker Castro, & Yazdani, 2021). To me, it was eerily coincidental that stress levels increased as life turned virtual. Another investigation of social media and mental health by HelpGuide.org takes a look at both the positive and negative aspects that social media has on our lives. Most negative effects have to do with effects on mental health, such as social media creating feelings of isolation, depression, anxiety, and inadequacy (Robinson & Smith, 2021).

I had the opportunity to corroborate these results. I wanted to try and answer this question myself, specifically within my demographic and at my own university. As a part of a research methods course at Minnesota State University, Mankato, I was able to do so via a survey curated by our class. This survey was electronically sent out to college students and was completed by 214 participants. The survey consisted of questions surrounding aspects of mental health, such as stress levels and overall happiness rating on a scale of 1-10. Another subset of questions included in this survey asked about social media habits. The question I used to gather data was daily social media usage on a scale of less than 1 hour, 1-2 hours, 2-4 hours, or more than 4 hours. I hypothesized that there would be a relationship between the variables such that as daily social media usage increases, stress levels would increase and happiness ratings would decrease.

My hypothesis stood true, and I was able to find a correlation between social media and mental health. The participants who reported higher daily social media usage also reported higher weekly stress levels. I also explored the relationship between overall happiness ratings and social media. However, I did not find any significant results. Meaning that I could not support my hypothesis that as social media usage increases, happiness ratings would decrease. If I were to do this experiment again, I would do more to eliminate the limitations of this study. I would want to dig deeper into why I got the results that I did. I want to investigate what parts of using social media causes stress in individuals. I hypothesize that stress could spawn from social media usage taking up time that could be used to be productive. Stress could also result from the content that is consumed on social media, such as current events, or feeling insecure. In addition, I would like to try and get significant results with the relationship between happiness and social media. Although my experiment did not find a significant relationship, I still think there is one. To find my desired results I would expand the details of what happiness entails. I would want to be able to do a more extensive study with just social media and different feelings that it may evoke.  There is definitely a lot to explore within this topic. And these results have only scratched the surface.

In my opinion, this topic is more important than ever to research. It is safe to say that we all consume media in some way. For some people it’s a career, and some just a hobby. Just how we find it important to investigate how the foods we eat affect our body, it’s important to investigate how the media we consume effects our minds. Finding a relationship means finding a solution. The pattern in the last decade has been increasing mental health incidents and increasing social media usage. With mental illnesses and mental health struggles continuing to plague our society, it is important to learn about anything that could possibly lessen the occurrence. I believe that investigating this relationship further could eventually lead to better social media habits, and ultimately better mental health overall. I encourage you to evaluate your own personal relationship with social media. Be honest with yourself about what you are gaining and what you are sacrificing within your relationship with social media.

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References

Cohen, Hoyt, L. T., & Dull, B. (2020). A Descriptive Study of COVID-19–Related Experiences and Perspectives of a National Sample of College Students in Spring 2020. Journal of Adolescent Health, 67(3), 369–375. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2020.06.009

Robinson, L., & Smith, M. (2021, December 3). Social Media and Mental Health. HelpGuide.org. Retrieved December 5, 2021, from https://www.helpguide.org/articles/mental-health/social-media-and-mental-health.htm.