Blog #1

Article: Association Between Social Media Use and Depression Among U.S Young
Adults

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/da.22466/full

I found this source through the UNCC Library database. I searched for articles that had
"social media depression rates" in them. It was one of the first articles that came up. It
looked like a credible resource so I decided to read it.

It was published January 19, 2016. There were many people who contributed in writing
and data collecting. I was not able too much personal information about the people whoe
wrote it, but they all work at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. And most
work in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the University. The head of the
research, Liu yi Lin, received a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to help
aid in the research.

In their research they found people with less education seemed to have higher depression
rates. They also found women had higher depression rates. This raises the question, for
women is technology the main reason for higher higher depression rates or are other
factors responsible? One surprising thing they found was was those with lower internet
usage actually had higher depression rates, but they explained that very few people who
had low internet usage were used in their research so that could have affected it.

The source does offer other source. Most have to do with internet or social media
affecting depression. However there are some that have to do with other issues for
example the economic burden created by depression.

This source makes me want to expand to more than just social media. I think it would be
interesting to look into people who text people more than talking in person. I would also
want to see if depression has an effect on internet usage, to see if kids use the internet
more because they are depressed. Which is flipping my main question around, but cause
and effect is important so it is important to know for sure which one causes the other. One
last thing would be looking into online dating relating to depression.

As I mention before this source has raised many questions that I will use to further my
research on the topic. It also references other studies that looked into a similar topic so I
will probably read those too.

A helpful term I learned from the article was PROMIS. It is a 4-item depression scale. It
is a very accurate test for depression. I will definitely look more into how it was created
and more details about how it determines whether someone is depressed or not.
Article Summary: Those who use social media more frequently have a higher risk of
depression. Age, gender, and level of education also plays into depression with
technology.

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Blog #2

"Facebook Depression?" Social Networking Site Use and Depression in Older Adolescent

Link: http://www.sciencedirect.com.librarylink.uncc.edu/science/article/pii/S1054139X1
2002091

Similarly to the way I found my first source, I searched "social media depression".
However this time I used Google Scholar and this article came up.

It was written in 2013 by Lauren Jelenchick. She is a professor at the University of

Minnesota Medical School. She has written a number of articles, most are about internet
usage in kids today, depression, and effects of social networking.

This article argues a point that I was hoping I would find, but was not sure if I would. In
the study Jelenchick conducted, she found no correlation between social networking
usage and depression. This counters what I initially though, which was social media
usage is increasing depression. This is important to my research because you have to find
both sides to an argument before you jump to conclusions and for sure say something like
social media is causing depression.

This source does offer other sources that I may look at later. Some are about different
types of internet usage effecting depression. Others are a little off my topic, however are
interesting like internet and multitasking in adolescents.

Since this source puts some doubt in me about social media causing depression and
showed me the other side of the social media argument, I would like to expand to other
parts of technology like texting and playing games instead of interacting with friends or
family. I would also like to continue on social media too because I want to see more
sources and arguments for or against social media causing depression.

A search term I may start using is adolescent. I did not think about using it, but it is the
age where kids are trying to figure out who they are and social media is important for
adolescents now, which could play into possible depression.

The article was based around a study of mostly white women who's mean age was 18.9,
they found no correlation between social media use and depression.
A term I learned from the article was PHQ-9. It stands for Patient Health Questionnaire.
It is a nine question survey that can screen, diagnose, measure and monitor the severity of
depression.

I do like Google Scholar because it narrows down your results to useful sources, however
I had to go through the UNCC Library to get the article for free anyway. So it is a helpful
way to find sources, but the UNCC Library website is still my preference for finding
articles for research.

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Blog #3

Article Title: Online Social Support for Young People: Does it Recapitulate in-person
social support; can it help?

Link: http://hl5ka4cm7m.search.serialssolutions.com.librarylink.uncc.edu/?
genre=article&issn=07475632&title=Computers%20in%20Human
%20Behavior&volume=68&issue=&date=20170301&atitle=Online%20social
%20support%20for%20young%20people%3A%20Does%20it%20recapitulate%20in-
person%20social%20support%3B%20can%20it%20help%3F&spage=456&pages=456-
464&sid=EBSCO:Academic%20Search%20Complete&au=Cole,%20David%20A.

To find the article I used the words "social media" and "depression" in the the Academic
Search Complete resource on the UNCC Library's website.

The article was written in February of 2016. The man who wrote it, David Cole, is a
Psychology and Human Development professor at Vanderbilt University.

This article is important to the conversation and my research because it is another article
that is actually arguing that social media can prevent depression. One of the big things the
study found was social media gave people with weak in-person social skills a social
support mechanism. They also found that social media using strategically can enhance
social support systems for kids.

This source does not refer to other resources in the article itself, but it does a reference
page at the bottom of the article.
This source makes me want to know more about the pros social media can have on the
mental health of kids and why. This source also makes me want to know if the social
support from peers online is as affective as social support in real life. I do not think it is
personally, but I am just guessing so I would like to see what people who have researched
in more say about it.

This source is going to help me find other resources because it has given me some key
terms and I will look into some of the references at the end of the article to possibly
continue my research.

I really did enjoy this article, it was very well written and enjoyable to read and I am glad
I was able to find another resource that is for social media use.

People talk about the danger of social media, but rarely talk about the good benefits.
Social media can offer social support to kids

At the beginning of the article they actually listed the key terms and they are "social
support, social media, internet, victimization, depression, and self esteem." The one that
stood out to me in this article the most was social support.

This source was different because it offered a different perspective, they did not go into
the bad things social media can do the only went into the good things it can do for kids.

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Blog #4

Title: Adolescent Mothers' Use of Social Networking Sites Creating Positive Mental
Health Outcomes

Link: http://hl5ka4cm7m.search.serialssolutions.com.librarylink.uncc.edu/?
genre=article&issn=22027114&title=Australian%20Nursing%20&%20Midwifery
%20Journal&volume=23&issue=11&date=20160601&atitle=ADOLESCENT
%20MOTHERS%27%20USE%20OF%20SOCIAL%20NETWORKING%20SITES
%20CREATING%20POSITIVE%20MENTAL%20HEALTH
%20OUTCOMES.&spage=50&pages=50-50&sid=EBSCO:Academic%20Search
%20Complete&au=Nolan,%20Samantha

To find this article I searched "social media" and "depression" in the Academic Search
Complete database, but this time I only searched for magazines.
The article was written in June of 2016. I was not able to find any information about the
authors.

This has given me another perspective for the good things social media can do for people.
In this case it is only showing social media helping the small group of adolescent
mothers, but they need more help than most so if social media can help them, it can help
a lot of others too.

The source does not offer other sources, however it does have references at the end if I
want to see similar topics.

This source makes me want to hear more from the other side again. I have only had one
resource about the negatives of social media. I was expecting it to be the other way, a lot
of resources about the negatives and very few about the positives.

This will help me find other resources because it gave me the key term SNS, which I will
be able to use later to find other resources.

This source was very interesting and was my favorite so far. It was much shorter and I
found easier to read because there were less numbers and difficult terms in them. It was
very basic and easy to read, but that is to be expected from a magazine article. I want to
try to find other magazine sources because they are easier and more enjoyable to read.

Summary: Social Media gives adolescent mothers an outlet to vent and relieve stress,
which is leading them to be less depressed and have less anxiety.

A key term I have seen in a few of the other resources, but was very important to this one
was the term SNS. It stands for social networking sites, I will probably use it later to help
find resources because I have been only searching using the words social media so I hope
it will offer more sources.

This source is much different than the other sources I have. All of the other sources are
academic research articles, but this one is a magazine article. This source also focuses on
a smaller group of people (adolescent mothers), where the other sources grouped more
people together.

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Blog #5
Title: Different types of internet use, depression, and social anxiety: The role of perceived
friendship quality

Link: http://www.sciencedirect.com.librarylink.uncc.edu/science/article/pii/S0140197108
001218

I found this source from the source I wrote about in Blog #2. That article was called
"Facebook Depression?" Social Networking Site Use and Depression in Older
Adolescent. It was in the reference section at the bottom of the page on the article.

The author is from the Netherlands and works at Utrecht University. They have written a
couple of articles, all having to do with adolescents and friendship. That is all I was able
to fine on the author. The article was written in November of 2008.

This source makes me wonder if I am going to find another source that says internet does
cause depression because to my surprise all but one have said it does not cause
depression. This article was very interesting to me because it was written before everyone
had smartphones, so it came at my question from a different angle and focused on IM-ing
versus not IM-ing.

This source is related to the source that referenced it because they both ended up finding
similar results, that internet was not causing depression. However the studies were a little
different, this source focused on IM-ing and the other focused on Facebook.

The source actually lists key terms at the beginning of the article. The key terms it lists
are internet use, depression, social anxiety, and perceived friendship quality. The one that
stuck out to me the most was the perceived friendship quality because it was mentioned
several times and it has to do with how people viewed their friends, if they saw them as
close friends or not.

Key claims: There is no correlation between internet usage and depression.

Evidence: "Results showed no longitudinal associations between either time spent IM-ing
or time spent surfing and changes in internalizing problems for the sample as a whole."

Gist: This study examined whether kids going on the internet for communication
purposes(IM-ing) or using it for non-communication purposes had an effect of social
anxiety and depression. They found no correlation between depression/social anxiety and
type of internet usage.

Context: The context for this was people were wondering if children who were using too
much IM or internet was causing long term effect of depression and social anxiety. They
were wondering this because it was the first generation of kids growing up surrounded by
the internet.
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Blog #6

Article Title: Depression and Internet Addiction in Adolescents

Link: http://search.proquest.com/docview/233360520/fulltextPDF/F1537E4FEB8444EE
PQ/1?accountid=14605

In the article, the authors' had 3 main key claims: 1. The more severe the internet
addiction leads to higher depression in adolescents. 2. Adolescents who are addicted to
the internet spend time on the internet for different reasons than people who are not
addicted. 3. Adolescents who are addicted to the internet spend more time on the internet
than those who are not addicted.

The following 3 quotes are evidence for the key claims from the article. 1."We found that
depressive symptoms, among other psychiatric symptom categories, had the most
powerful influence on developing Internet addiction." 2. "In the addiction group, the
main purpose of Internet use was games. In the non-addiction group, on the other hand,
the main purpose was e-mail." 3. "The Internet-addicted subjects spent significantly
more time on the Internet than the non-addiction group, on weekdays and on weekends"

Gist: With new and advancing technology, adolescents are being to become addicted to
technology, which is causing side effects like addiction and depression.

Context: There are two main authors Jee Hyun Ha(Department of Psychiatry, School of
Medicine, Konkuk University) and Su Yeon Kim(Baeksang Neuropsychiatric Clinic).
Both of them work The authors' wrote this and conducted this study because they saw
many studies coming out that they thought were done poorly or incorrectly that said
internet was not causing depression. They did not believe these studies so they wanted to
do their own because despite what other people said they were certain internet was
causing depression in adolescents. The article was written in 2005, but was not published
until 2007.

Summary: There have been a number of studies that say technology and mainly the
Internet has no effect on mental health. However Jee Hyun Ha and Su Yeon Kim were not
so sure how true the studies were. So they did a study of 452 Korean Adolescents. They
wanted to see if there was any correlation between internet addiction and depression.
What they found was internet addiction was associated with depressive symptoms and
obsessive-compulsive symptoms.
This source was one I was looking for because I have ad trouble finding sources that say
internet is associated with depression. This source raises questions about internet
addiction and depression in older people. They only studied adolescents, so I would be
interested in seeing if they found the same results in adults.

One key term is the Internet Addiction Scale (IAS). It is a questionnaire made up of 20
questions with a scale ranging from 1-5 with 5 Likert scales from 1 (rarely) to 5 (always).
The IAS is one of the most used scales for evaluating Internet addiction.

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Blog #7

Article Title: Media Multitasking Is Associated with Symptoms of Depression and

Social Anxiety

Link: http://online.liebertpub.com.librarylink.uncc.edu/doi/abs/10.1089/cyber.2012.0291

I found it in the Notes page 371 for the chapter "The Flight From Conversation" page 25.
I was not able to find a source for my topic from a chapter that was assigned for us to
read.

Key Claims: 1. Multitasking with media is creating series problems relating to mental
health. 2. Although multitasking with media was causing problems, media by itself was
not harmful.

The following 2 quotes are evidence for the key claims listed above. 1. "As hypothesized,
media multitasking was significantly related to overall media use, depression, and social
phobia." 2. "Consistent with the claim that media multitasking represents a unique risk
factor, overall media use was not associated with social anxiety, but multitasking was."

Gist: The use media alone is not as bad of an issue as multitasking mixed with media
usage. Many mental health problems are the result of multitasking.

Context: The article was written by Mark W. Becker, PhD, Reem Alzahabi, BS,
and Christopher J. Hopwood, PhD. They all work in the Department of Psychology at
Michigan State University. It was originally written in 2012. It was written to inform
college student of the effects of multitasking on their mental health. They had them fill
out multiple different questionnaires to measure social anxiety and depression so they
could compare it to their media usage.
Summary: A study was conducted on 319 undergraduate students(222 females and 97
males), the main goal of the study was to see the correlation between multitasking with
media and depression. They claimed there are 12 main forms of media ("television,
computer-based video, music, nonmusical audio, video or computer games, telephone
and mobile phone, instant messaging, SMS (text messaging), email, web surfing, and
other computer-based applications (such as word processing)."). The subjects indicated
how much they used each of the forms of media. As they hypothesized, they found that
depression did correlate with media multitasking.

This source expanded my question a little, my question did not include multitasking with
media and it was just about depression, where they included social anxiety too. My
question was on technology's effect on depression, so it was an interesting source to read.
This is important to the conversation because multitasking with technology is different
than just using one form of media at a time.

One key term is the Media Multitasking Index Questionnaire (MMI). It measures total
media use and media multitasking. It asks how many hours per week they use the 12
forms of media I mentioned earlier.

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Blog #8

Title: Social Media, Loneliness, and Anxiety in Young People

Link: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/why-we-worry/201612/social-media-
loneliness-and-anxiety-in-young-people

I used Google and found a blog written by Ph.D in psychology. I was looking for anxiety
causing social media usage because I have not been able to find many more sources about
social media causing depression. I have mostly only been able to find journal articles so I
wanted something a little different. So I switched what I was searching around and was
able to find an interesting source. I was kind of successful in finding what I was looking
for because the article ended up being more on loneliness than anxiety, but loneliness
relates to depression.

The first key claim is loneliness and anxiety are causing social media usage to the point
of addiction and the evidence is "a study of university students in the UK found that real
life social interaction was negatively associated with excessive use of Twitter, and
loneliness was a significant factor that mediated this relationship[2], so its clear that many
people use social networking sites in general to relieve themselves of their loneliness.".

The second key claim is loneliness is being enhanced by social media and the evidence
is "You can compare your own popularity with that of your peers, and manage that
adolescent fear of missing out (FOMO) by continually monitoring whats going on
socially." and the second piece of evidence is "A study of social isolation in America by
Miller McPherson and colleagues found that between 1984 and 2005, the mean number
of confidants a person had decreased from 2.94 to 2.08 a significant drop in what we
would call real friends".

Gist: As social media becomes more prevalent in people's daily lives, people become
more lonely and as people are becoming more lonely, they are using social media more.
Loneliness and social media are creating a vicious cycle.

This was written in December of 2016. The author is Graham C.L. Davey. He is Ph.D of
psychology and a professor at the University of Sussex, UK. He wrote about this topic
because he is interested in worry and anxiety in people.

This article connects to the article I wrote about in blog 6.

http://search.proquest.com/docview/233360520/fulltextPDF/F1537E4FEB8444EEPQ/1?
accountid=146056. http://search.proquest.com/docview/233360520/fulltextPDF/F1537E4
FEB8444EEPQ/1?accountid=14605 Both sources talk about addiction to social media.
However, they look at it in different ways. This one talks more about anxiety and
loneliness causing internet use which is leading to addiction. Where the other article talks
about internet addiction causing depression.

If I had to choose one of the articles to keep I would keep this one because it provides a
different idea than most of my other sources, where the article I wrote about for blog 6 is
more similar to my other sources.

"Theres no shortage of evidence that loneliness, social anxiety and social isolation can
cause excessive use of social networking sites in young people." I found this quote very
interesting because it mentions a big problem in young people being overuse of social
media and says why it is happening. This quote summarizes what the whole article talks
about, which is loneliness and social anxiety causing social media overuse.

One key term from the source is fear of missing out (FOMO). It is a term for the fear
people have about people doing things without them that they see on social media.

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Blog #9

Title: Is your online addiction making you anxious?

Link: https://www.anxiety.org/social-media-causes-anxiety

I chose this source because I wanted more sources about social media causing anxiety
and this article was short and to the point, but still informative.

The first key claim is social media is causing people to compare their lives to other
people's lives and getting anxiety when their life is not as interesting as the person they're
comparing themselves to. Evidence: "doctored pictures of friends on a vacation in
Mexico seems to make your Dairy Queen-filled weekend pale in comparison, which in
turn can lead to unsettling anxiety".

Second key claim is social media is causing the fear of missing out. Evidence: "pictures
of a party where the user was not invited, or yet another wedding they weren't able to
attend thanks to their grueling work schedule can take a toll on self-esteem, say mental
health specialists."

Third key claim is social media is more addictive than cigarettes. Evidence: "Not only
does social media attract more anxious users, but the University of Chicago found that it's
also more addictive" than cigarettes".

Gist: As people use social media more they are becoming anxious because they are afraid
they are missing something or that their life is not as interesting when they see what
someone else is doing.

It was written in 2013 on anxiety.org to spread the word of what social media is really
doing to people as it creeps into our lives more. I could not find anything out about the
author.

Social media may seem harmless, but according to mental health consultants, it has
become an anxiety creator. One reason it is creating so much anxiety is the idea of
"compare and despair". People are comparing what they are doing to other people, which
is creating anxiety because they are finding their friends doing more interesting things.
Another cause of the anxiety is the fear of missing out. People are see their friends doing
things without them and it is causing anxiety.

It is very similar to the source from blog 8 because they both talk about the fear of
missing out and anxiety. The title was Social Media, Loneliness, and Anxiety in Young
People. The link is https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/why-we-
worry/201612/social-media-loneliness-and-anxiety-in-young-people. They compliment
each other because they both talk about anxiety being enhanced by social media because
people feel like they are missing out or do not have interesting lives. If I had to keep one,
I would keep the source from blog 8 because it is longer and has more information in it
and it talks about more than just anxiety.

The quote that I found most interesting was "Not only does social media attract more
anxious users, but the University of Chicago found that it's also more addictive" than
cigarettes". I do not know if this is true because I do not use social media very much and
do not smoke cigarettes, but it is crazy that social media is seen as such a severe problem
that it is being compared to cigarettes.

One key term is compare and despair. It is the term for looking at what other people are
doing, comparing it to your life, and feeling bad because it is more interesting than what
you are doing.