Young people with some kind of mental disorder spend more time to social networks and, in addition, use them differently from those who do not suffer, especially those who suffer anxiety and depression, according to a study by the University of Cambridge.
These young people, who spend an average of 50 minutes more a day on social networks, are more likely to compare with others in this environment, are less able to control the time they dedicate to these platforms and are more vulnerable to the comments received and the “I like it”.
The study is based on information on clinical evaluations on mental health and on the data of a Digital NHS survey -organism responsible for providing information on digital use to the National Health Service of England- to 3,340 adolescents between 11 and 19 years of the United Kingdom.
The research, published Monday in Nature Human Behaviour, is one of the first to evaluate the use of networks among adolescents and combine this information with the data of clinical mental health evaluations.
“The relationship between the use of social networks and the mental health of young people is subject to heated debates, but almost no study focuses on young people who already suffer from clinical symptoms of mental health,” laments Luisa Fassi, a researcher at Cambridge and main author of the study.
“This study shows that young people with mental health problems use social networks differently from young people who do not suffer from them,” which “could be due to the fact that mental disorders influence the way in which adolescents interact with platforms or perhaps that the use of networks contributes to their symptoms. At this time we cannot say what is first, only that these differences exist,” says Fassi.
“Friendships are crucial during adolescence, since they make up the development of identity”, but on social networks friendships are numbered, “which makes social comparisons more striking,” explains Fassi.
“And for young people fighting with mental health problems, this can increase existing feelings of rejection or isolation,” he warns.
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How do social networks affect people with mental health problems?
The study analyzed the differences in the use of social networks between young people with “internalizing” disorders, such as anxiety, depression and post -traumatic stress disorder, which cause internal emotional anguish that can be invisible to others, and “externalizing” disorders, such as the attention deficit disorder (ADHD) or other behavioral disorders, which manifest with behaviors that affect people of the environment.
Most of the differences in the use of social networks were indicated by young people with internalizing disorders. For example, the “social comparison” with the others was twice among adolescents with these disorders (approximately one in two) than among those who did not suffer (24%, approximately one in four).
Teenagers with internalizing disorders were also more likely to declare humor changes in response to social networks (28%, approximately 1 in 4) compared to those who did not suffer (13%, approximately 1 in 8).
They also declared lower levels of self -control over the time they passed on social networks and a lower disposition to be sincere about their emotional state when they were online.
“Some of the differences in the way in which young people with anxiety and depression use social networks reflect what we already know about their experiences outside the Internet. Social comparison is a well -documented part of the daily life of these young people, and our study shows that this pattern also extends to their world online,” explains Fassi.
But “there are many factors that may be behind someone to develop a mental health disorder, and it is very difficult to find out if the use of social media is one of them,” he adds.
“We need to understand how the different types of contents and activities of social media affect young people with a series of mental health conditions, such as those living with eating disorders, ADHD or depression. Not including these little studied groups, we run the risk of losing the complete panorama,” he concludes.
With EFE information
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