Below are three interesting articles that discuss the correlation between social media and depression.
I found this article extremely interesting. The article mentioned how social media platforms want to keep their users on as long as possible, "To achieve this goal, social media applications use addiction triggers to reward individuals for staying online longer. In the same way that dopamine, the neurotransmitter responsible for feelings of reward and pleasure, is released when gamblers gamble or when alcoholics drink, social media applications are littered with dopamine release triggers." After reading this quote we learn that the release of dopamine is what causes social media to be addictive.
Knowing that social media is addictive, now we have to understand how this correlates to depression. This study talks about how it is unhealthy to constantly be comparing yourself to others. With social sites like Instagram and Facebook, we find ourselves scrolling endlessly and comparing ourselves to our friends and family. People tend to make themselves look better off than they really are. In any case, it's not good to compare yourself to others who seem "better off" than you.
Our final article discusses more of the negative effects of social media. It states, "Today’s youth miss out on critical social skills development when they spend the majority of their free time connected to and interacting through a screen. The article also talks about how cyberbulling is a new problems teens face. The article also mentions that they discovered through a study that, "Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and SnapChat all had negative effects on mental health."
Check out my summary page to get a summary of my findings: My summary page.
I believe that social media correlates with depression in teens. Here's a look at the searches of social media vs the searches about depression.
This chart shows the correlation between the google searches of social media and depression in the U.S. over the last five years.
The blue line shows the searches for depression. The red line shows the searches for social media.
This next chart shows the google searches of social media and depression, within the bay area.
Finally, this chart shows the correlations between the searches for depression and social media worldwide ."