Utilization of social media has increased during the past fifteen years. In 2005, only five percent of adults in the United States reported using a social media site; this percentage has since increased to over seventy percent. The increase in the number of people using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and other social media platforms, as well as the time spent on them, has sparked policymakers', teachers', parents', and clinicians' interest and concern regarding social media's effects on our lives and mental health.
While the research is still in its infancy — Facebook just celebrated its 15th birthday this year — media psychology scholars are beginning to disentangle the ways in which time spent on these platforms affects our daily lives.
A major worry is whether time spent on social networking sites displaces face-to-face interaction, a phenomenon known as social displacement. Fears about social displacement are as old as the telephone, and possibly even older. Jeffrey Hall, Ph.D., director of the Relationships and Technology Lab at the University of Kansas, notes that the issue of displacement has persisted for over a century.
There is always a cultural assumption that technology is replacing face-to-face connection with intimate friends and family, according to Hall.
The research of Hall examines this cultural idea. In one study, participants kept a daily log of the time they spent on 19 various activities between weeks when they were requested to refrain from using social media and weeks when they were not. During the weeks that individuals abstained from social media, they spent more time working, cleaning, and performing domestic tasks. During these similar periods of abstinence, there was no difference in the amount of time participants spent interacting with their greatest social links. The result? According to Hall, there is less evidence that social media replaces genuine engagement with close relationship partners. One probable explanation for this is because we tend to communicate with our closest loved ones across multiple channels, including texts, emails, phone conversations, and face-to-face time.
What of adolescents? Jean Twenge, PhD, professor of psychology at San Diego State University, and colleagues discovered in a recent study that high school seniors heading to college in 2016 spent one hour less per day engaging in in-person social interaction, such as going to parties, movies, or riding in cars together, than high school seniors in the late 1980s. This drop was connected with greater consumption of digital media as a group. At the individual level, however, greater usage of social media was related with increased in-person social engagement. The survey also discovered that adolescents who spent the greatest time on social media and the least amount of time engaging in face-to-face social contacts reported the highest levels of loneliness.
While Twenge and colleagues hypothesise that adolescent face-to-face interactions may be declining due to greater use of digital media, Hall suggests that the connection may be inverted.
The work of Danah Boyd, PhD, principal researcher at Microsoft Research and founder of Data & Society, is cited by Hall. "She [Boyd] argues that it is not true that social media is displacing kids' face-to-face interactions. Instead, she contends that we have the causality backwards," explains Hall. We are reducing adolescents' capacity to spend time with their friends, and they are turning to social media to compensate. According to Hall, both phenomena could be occurring simultaneously — restrictive parenting could be driving social media use, and social media use could be reducing the amount of time teens spend together in person — but focusing on the latter places more blame on teens while ignoring the role of societal forces. The research indicates that social media is popular among adolescents.
According to a 2018 research by Common Sense Media, 81 percent of adolescents use social media, and more than a third report utilising these sites numerous times per hour. These numbers have climbed considerably during the previous six years, most likely due to the growing availability of mobile devices. Along with these statistics, there is a growing interest in the impact of social media on the cognitive development and mental health of adolescents.
Kaveri Subrahmanyam, PhD, a developmental psychologist, professor at Cal State LA, and associate director of the Children's Digital Media Center in Los Angeles, explains, "Generally speaking, social media poses both risks and opportunities for teenagers." Teens benefit from social media by increasing their social networks and staying in touch with peers and distant relatives and family. It is also an avenue for creativity.
More than a quarter of adolescents stated in the Common Sense Media research that "social media is 'very' or'very' vital to them for creative expression." But there are risks as well. 13 percent of adolescents surveyed by Common Sense Media reported experiencing cyberbullying at least once. And social media can facilitate access to unsuitable stuff such as violent images and pornographic material. Nearly two-thirds of youth who use social media said they "often or occasionally" encounter racist, sexist, homophobic, or religiously-motivated hate speech.
In light of these advantages and disadvantages, how do social media influence cognitive development? "What we've discovered at the Children's Digital Media Center is that a significant amount of digital communication use and, in particular, social media use appears to be linked to offline developmental issues," says Subrahmanyam. "If you look at the research on adolescent development, sexuality, identity, and intimacy are the primary concerns of adolescents," says Subrahmanyam. Her research indicates that various forms of digital communication may be associated with distinct developmental difficulties. She discovered, for instance, that adolescents frequently discussed sex in chat rooms, whereas their usage of blogs and social media appeared to be more focused on self-presentation and identity development. Specifically, exploring one's identity appears to be a significant use of aesthetically oriented social media platforms among teens. "Whether on Facebook or Instagram, there is a great deal of deliberate self-presentation, and it appears to serve identity," says Subrahmanyam. "The grey area is that we do not know if this is necessarily useful or harmful."
- Mohsin