Social Depression: The Causes And Consequences Of Social Media

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Americans today tend to believe that social media has benefited them to connect with others quickly. Nearly two-thirds of Americans (65%) use social networking sites, up from 7% when Pew Research Center began systematically tracking social media usage in 2005 (Perrin). Technology has contributed many benefits for our society to enjoy and one of this is social media. Social Media refers to an online application such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr, or Pinterest that people enjoy to share photos or videos. These applications can be accessed through computers, laptops, IPads, tablets, and smartphones. Today nearly two-thirds of Americans own a smartphone, and 19% of Americans rely to some degree on a smartphone for accessing …show more content…

Social media is like a virus, you can’t stop people from going online. Depression itself has no remedy, people just have to balance it by therapy and medication. There is no solution to the growing rates of social media connecting to depression, but there has been many studies that proves it to be true. Counseling psychologist, Katey Baruth claims that “participants who did not believe their friendships were of great quality or value on social media sites were also found to be at much greater risk for the development of depressive symptoms”. She explains how social media users believes that social interactions are not valuable which is likely for them to experience the depressive symptoms. It goes back to personal perception, people can choose to use social media to connect with others or they can put themselves down. Of course, many older generations will probably disagree with this assertion that people can’t just choose how they feel. Older generations will blame social media itself, how everything is complicated because it’s easier to find resources and it decreases our social interaction. Marche mentions Moira Burke, a graduate student at the Human-Computer Institute at Carnegie Mellon who studied Facebook users, she believes that, “People whose friends write to them semi-publicly on Facebook experience decreases in loneliness… [Versus] scanning your friends’ status updates and updating the world on your own activities via your wall… correlates to feelings of disconnectedness”. She clarifies that choosing how to communicate online can affect the individual’s mood. It’s a tool for people to choose for socializing or just expressing their

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