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The Relationship between Social Media and the Increase in Mental Health Problems
Social media has become an indispensable aspect of young people’s digital interactions, as they use it mostly for entertainment and communication purposes. Consequently, it has the potential to have both positive and negative effects on them. Deterioration in mental health is one of the side effects...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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MDPI
2023
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9915628/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36767749 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20032383 |
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author | Beyari, Hasan |
author_facet | Beyari, Hasan |
author_sort | Beyari, Hasan |
collection | PubMed |
description | Social media has become an indispensable aspect of young people’s digital interactions, as they use it mostly for entertainment and communication purposes. Consequently, it has the potential to have both positive and negative effects on them. Deterioration in mental health is one of the side effects stemming from social media overuse. This study investigates the relationship between social media and the increase in mental health problems in Saudi Arabia. The population considered for analysis includes young people from Saudi Arabia, with a sample size of 385. A closed-ended survey questionnaire was used to collect data on different social media features and criteria. Using the Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP), the researcher analyzed data to compare the effect of different social media features on mental health. The social media features included in this paper are private chats and calls, group chats and calls, browsing posts, games, media sharing, adverts, likes/comments/followers, and pages. The researcher adopted entertainment, information, social interaction, privacy, esteem, and communication as the criteria in the AHP process. Among these criteria, the study found that entertainment was the most significant, while privacy was the least significant. Findings suggested that likes, comments, and followers were the biggest contributors to poor mental health (total utility = 56.24). The least effective feature was ‘games’ (total utility = 2.56). The researcher recommends that social media users be cautious when interacting with social media features, especially likes, comments, followers, media, and posts, because of their significant effect on mental health. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9915628 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-99156282023-02-11 The Relationship between Social Media and the Increase in Mental Health Problems Beyari, Hasan Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Social media has become an indispensable aspect of young people’s digital interactions, as they use it mostly for entertainment and communication purposes. Consequently, it has the potential to have both positive and negative effects on them. Deterioration in mental health is one of the side effects stemming from social media overuse. This study investigates the relationship between social media and the increase in mental health problems in Saudi Arabia. The population considered for analysis includes young people from Saudi Arabia, with a sample size of 385. A closed-ended survey questionnaire was used to collect data on different social media features and criteria. Using the Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP), the researcher analyzed data to compare the effect of different social media features on mental health. The social media features included in this paper are private chats and calls, group chats and calls, browsing posts, games, media sharing, adverts, likes/comments/followers, and pages. The researcher adopted entertainment, information, social interaction, privacy, esteem, and communication as the criteria in the AHP process. Among these criteria, the study found that entertainment was the most significant, while privacy was the least significant. Findings suggested that likes, comments, and followers were the biggest contributors to poor mental health (total utility = 56.24). The least effective feature was ‘games’ (total utility = 2.56). The researcher recommends that social media users be cautious when interacting with social media features, especially likes, comments, followers, media, and posts, because of their significant effect on mental health. MDPI 2023-01-29 /pmc/articles/PMC9915628/ /pubmed/36767749 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20032383 Text en © 2023 by the author. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Beyari, Hasan The Relationship between Social Media and the Increase in Mental Health Problems |
title | The Relationship between Social Media and the Increase in Mental Health Problems |
title_full | The Relationship between Social Media and the Increase in Mental Health Problems |
title_fullStr | The Relationship between Social Media and the Increase in Mental Health Problems |
title_full_unstemmed | The Relationship between Social Media and the Increase in Mental Health Problems |
title_short | The Relationship between Social Media and the Increase in Mental Health Problems |
title_sort | relationship between social media and the increase in mental health problems |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9915628/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36767749 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20032383 |
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