Sources:

Haidt, Jonathan. “The Dangerous Experiment on Teen Girls.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 14 Feb. 2022

Nesi, Jacqueline. "The impact of social media on youth mental health: challenges and opportunities." North Carolina medical journal 81.2 (2020): 116-121.

This was written by Jacqueline Nesi and comes from the North Carolina medical journal. She studied at Brown University and is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior. This article points out various different statistics about social media and how it's been negatively affecting the mental health of young adults.

Schønning, Viktor, et al. "Social media use and mental health and well-being among adolescents–a scoping review." Frontiers in psychology (2020): 1949.

This article was written by Viktor Schonning and was published in 2020. He is affiliated with the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. This article will mainly be used in my paper to prove implicit causation and association between mental health and social media as well as talking about what “cause and effect” actually is.

Singh, Manvir. “It's Easy to Blame Mental Health Issues on Tech. but Is It Fair?” Wired, Conde Nast, 30 Mar. 2022

Twenge, Jean M. “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 19 Mar. 2018

Viner, Russell M., et al. "Roles of cyberbullying, sleep, and physical activity in mediating the effects of social media use on mental health and wellbeing among young people in England: a secondary analysis of longitudinal data." The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health 3.10 (2019): 685-696

This article was written by Russell Viner and was published in 2019. He is affiliated with the University College London. This article will be used to mention how the issue of social media impacting the mental health of children is not just an American issue, but rather a worldly issue.

Abstract:

My project analyzes the effects of social media on adolescents ages 12-19. As a society, we have seen an increase in mental health issues go up as social media has become more popular within adolescents. Rates of anxiety and depression have started to increase faster around 2010 (meaning that this problem is comparatively new compared to other issues) and has been getting worse with each passing year, and it has been getting worse faster for teen girls. In addition to this, Instagram also launched October 2010 to the public, which seems to have correlation to mental health issues. Some argue that with social media, especially with the use of Instagram, teenagers have never been more lonely nor with more mental health issues as today. Others argue that social media actually helps distract us from “real” problems that can cause mental health issues. According to those who believe that social media causes mental health issues, this problem takes place everywhere and harms every group that participates in social media. This is because technology keeps the world connected, which is normally seen as a good thing, but it seems to be a double edged sword that can also be used to cyberbully and set unrealistic precedents to the adolescent population within clicks.

What is considered mental illness? Why is mental illness problematic for the society as a whole? What are companies doing about this? Why are teen girls mainly affected? My paper argues that there is indeed a correlation between mental illness and social media usage.