Social Media and Mental Health: Examining the Relationship of the Use of Social Media to Anxiety

Abstract

There is no lack of information in this Post-truth era: everyone discloses, narrates, and comments whatever they want on social media. Granted, the convenience of social software allows people to access or share information with others at any time, but it also conditions them to form dependencies. Once this dependence is formed, people's level of concentration and independent thinking gradually decreases, and stories, news, and videos on the Internet increase the degree of influence on ideas and mindset. This paper aims to examine how social media augments people’s anxiety through its various ways of influencing mindsets, especially focusing on adolescents. This objective is accomplished through literature research and a questionnaire to provide a theoretical basis for the relationship between social media and anxiety. The analyzed documents are selected to set up a framework to deconstruct how social media causes anxiety. The survey, presented in an online questionnaire, targets adolescents who spend time on social media. The questionnaire requires the respondents to describe their emotional experience on social media, including whether they detected negative feelings due to specific moments on things posted on the Internet.