Annotated Bibliography

Brailovskaia, Julia and Jurgen Margraf. "Comparing Facebook Users and Facebook

Non-Users: Relationship between Personality Traits and Mental Health Variables

- An Exploratory Study." Public Library of Science 11.12 (2016): 1-17.

This source took data from over 900 participants, mostly Facebook users

but also some non-Facebook users. Facebook users were shown to exhibit higher

scores on narcissism, self-esteem and extraversion tests then non-users. This

data suggests that Facebook users have certain personality traits and positive

variables promoting good mental health.

This will provide a solid argument for social media use as it usually

implies that Facebook users exhibit positive personality traits. This may be a

skewed study in some people's eyes though, as it provides MANY more Facebook

users than non-Facebook users in its data.

Ceglarek, Peter J.D. and L. Monique Ward. "A tool for help or harm? How associations

between social networking use, social support, and mental health differ for

sexual minority and heterosexual youth." Computers in Human Behavior 65

(2016): 201-209.

The main argument of this article is that positive and negative responses to social

media interaction often are related to a user's motivations for using social media.
 For example, those that use social media as a support group often find positive

results, while those who just fish for "likes" are often disappointed by results and

find negative reinforcement.

This article is useful as it provides a solid argument for both aspects because it

differentiates motivation and results. This could lead to a discussion of social

motivation.

Fergie, G., K. Hunt and S. Hilton. "Social media as a space for support: Young adults

perspectives on producing and consuming user-generated content about diabetes

and mental health." Social Science and Media 1 December 2016: 46-54.

The goal of this study was to "explore how engagement with user generated

content can support people with long-term health conditions." The article separated

users into three main types: prosumers, tacit consumers and non-engagers. The

article mainly focused on the support group of diabetics in their late teens to late

twenties. the study suggests that while there may be certain small benefits to using

social media as a support group the majority of users found little benefit to their

overall mental health and outlook.

This study will be interesting to cite as it provides a solid neutral ground as

opposed to the rest of my sources. This article provides a good reason for its

relatively neutral opinion as well, providing an interesting contrast to the

highly opinioned articles that I have chosen otherwise.

Kite, James, et al. "Please Like Me: Facebook and Public Health Communication."

Public Library of Science 11.9 (2016): 1-16.

This article also sought to study the benefits of Facebook posts which sought to

promote positive mental health for patients. One big area of discovery was that

videos generated the most positive responses from individuals suffering from

illnesses. Generally, posts that involved sponsorships discourage user

interaction and are therefore much less effective at providing relief.

The information in this article may be useful to explain the failures of other

studies that explicitly state that social media interaction has negative effects.

Some of the negative effects may simply be because people don't like to feel

like their being sold on something constantly.

Lau, Kam Man, et al. "Social media and mental health in democracy movement in Hong

Kong: A population-based study." Computers in Human Behavior 64 (2016):

656-662.

The main purpose of this article was to explore the effects of negative social

media interaction with a focus on "unfriending". The study hypothesizes that

unfriending may be correlated with increased symptoms of depression and

anxiety. The study showed that people did experience depression with social

media loss but not anxiety. Strangely, the study also only showed symptoms past a

certain age; 39 and older. The most believable demographic, that of young adults

18-38, was largely unaffected.

 This study will be useful in providing real academic data to show that social

media usually doesn't effect young users' mental well-being. For this reason, it

can be argued that effective use of social media can be useful to promote various

causes, even if the attempt is unsuccessful.

Radovic, Ana, et al. "Deptressed adolescent's positive and negative use of social media."

Journal of Adolescence 55 (2017): 5-16.

This article focuses on the way that teenagers use social media when

clinically depressed. The study showed that many of them would post far too

often, post negatively or in extreme cases cyberbully others. After the study, the

vast majority of young people began to post and consume in a much more positive

manner.

Potential uses for this could be to show that negative interaction on social

media doesn't cause depression, but depressive thoughts could cause negative

usage.

Shepherd, A., et al. "Using social media for support and feedback by mental health

service users: thematic analysis of a twitter conversation." BMC Psychiatry 15

(2015): 29.

The focus of this study was utilizing Twitter to create a conversation and

support group for those with mental illnesses. The study was relatively successful,

generating 515 individual communications with twitter users.

 This study could be useful to show that when used effectively social media can

benefit and aid those with mental illnesses.