The International Journal of Indian Psychology

ISSN 2348-5396 (Online) | ISSN: 2349-3429 (Print)

Volume 11, Issue 4, October- December, 2023
DIP: 18.01.231.20231104, DOI: 10.25215/1104.231
https://www.ijip.in
Research Paper

Social Media Addiction and Its Impact on Mental Health Among

Adolescents
Dr. Abinayaa M.1*

ABSTRACT
Most individuals now use social media on a daily basis. Individuals of all ages utilise social
media platforms like as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter for communication and
networking, with Indians spending an average of 2.4 hours a day on social media alone.
Young people aged 18 to 24 spend a lot of time on these apps, with Facebook and Instagram
alone having 97.2 million and 69 million users from this age bracket in India. Mental health
includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. Around 85 per cent of Indian
children have reported being cyberbullied as well as having cyberbullied someone else at
rates well over twice the international average. Cyberbullying is an alarming issue. The
present investigates the relationship between social media addiction and its impact on mental
health among adolescents. The study was conducted among 100 adolescents in the
Coimbatore city. The standardized tools were used in the study. The statistical analysis were
used to analysis the data. Based on the finding from the research study, it is concluded that
majority of students has been affected by social media addiction and has various negative
psychological impact on the adolescents.

Keywords: Social Media Addiction, Mental Health, Adolescents

M ental health is a condition of mental well-being that allows people to cope with
life's stressors, realize their strengths, study and work effectively, and contribute
to their community. It is an essential component of health and well-being that
underlying wellness is more than just the absence of mental illnesses. It happens on a
multifaceted scale, with varying degrees of difficulty and suffering and possibly very
different social and clinical outcomes from one person to the following, individual and
communal capacity to make decisions, form connections, and affect the environment in
which we live. Mental health is a fundamental human right. It is also essential for personal,
communal, and socioeconomic growth. Mental diseases and psychosocial problems are
examples of mental health concerns.

Multiple individual, societal, and structural influences may interact to safeguard or

undermine our mental health and modify our place on the mental health continuum
throughout our lifetimes.

1
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, PSG College of Arts and Science, Coimbatore
*Corresponding Author
Received: December 18, 2023; Revision Received: December 22, 2023; Accepted: December 25, 2023
© 2023, Abinayaa, M.; licensee IJIP. This is an Open Access Research distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use,
distribution, and reproduction in any Medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
 Social Media Addiction and Its Impact on Mental Health Among Adolescents

Individual psychological and biological characteristics such as emotional skills, substance

use, and heredity might increase a person's susceptibility to mental health disorders. People
are more likely to develop mental health problems when they are exposed to unfavourable
social, economic, geopolitical, and environmental circumstances, such as poverty, violence,
inequality, and environmental degradation.

Risks can appear at any stage of life, but those that arise during developmentally sensitive
times, notably early infancy, are most harmful. Harsh parenting and physical punishment,
for example, are known to harm children's health, and bullying is a significant risk factor for
mental health problems.

Low self-esteem, personal unhappiness, despair and hyperactivity, as well as a lack of

affection, are all well-known causes of social media addiction. Many young people seek
them out almost compulsively to experience an intense but inevitably temporary sense of
fulfilment, which can be counterproductive in the long run by making them reliant on the
judgments of others. The typical addict is a young individual aged 16 to 24.

Social media addiction is characterized by a person's obsessive and excessive usage of social
media. Problematic social media use interferes with other elements of one's life and can have
a negative impact in various ways. Restlessness if unable to check social media, greater
dependency on social media as a coping technique, and detrimental effects on one's personal
life are all indications of social media addiction.

Addiction, stress, low self-esteem, and social anxiety are all factors that contribute to social
media addiction. These characteristics motivate a person to use social media excessively to
relieve destructive emotions. Anxiety or despair, increased isolation, decreased physical
activity, low self-esteem, and poor work or school performance are all side consequences of
social media addiction.

Social media, in particular, has become a favourite entertainment and recreation for teens.
Most people think of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other comparable apps when asked
about social media. Social media is a website that allows users to network to establish an
online community that exchanges ideas, information, videos, and inter-messaging.

People have used social media to connect. It is pervasive in our everyday lives, altering how
individuals communicate personally and professionally. The need for social media has
skyrocketed. Through virtual communities in Social media, users may build individual
public profiles, meet other individuals with the same interests, and connect with real-life
friends. Various active social media sites stimulate the creation of SNSs, particularly the
more important ones such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and WhatsApp.

The World Health Organization (2020) classified 'Adolescents' as persons aged 10 to 19 and
'Youth' as those aged 15 to 24. Young individuals may control their mental health quite
effectively using social media. This new media has become a popular forum for young
people. Many of them are inadvertently drawn into virtual activities on social networking
sites.

Social media has influenced people, especially young ones. Young individuals who have
poor self-esteem spend more time on social media. They may get addicted to social media
over time, leading to social media addiction. Individuals typically become addicted to a
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 Social Media Addiction and Its Impact on Mental Health Among Adolescents

specific program that serves as a spark for problematic Internet use. The growing popularity
of social networking sites adds to social media addiction. Within the Internet addiction
phenomenon, five kinds have been identified: cyber-relationship addiction, cyber-sexual
addiction, net compulsion, computer addiction, and information overload. Social media
addiction fits under cyber-relationship addiction because the purpose of utilizing social
media is to develop and maintain connections both online and offline. Social media
addiction has been defined as being too driven by a strong urge to check in to or use SNSs
and dedicating so much time that it interferes with other social activities.

Pathological social media use prioritizes social media interactions above real-life duties and
relationships. The obsessive desire to monitor and respond to social media alerts causes
distractions that disrupt daily tasks and interactions. Social media addiction has been linked
to a significant drop in academic achievement. This may be induced by prioritizing social
media over schooling, as well as a secondary effect of sleep deprivation. Social media
frequently replaces real-life interactions as teenagers and young people favour virtual ties.
The persistent urge to check alerts makes paying attention to real-life conversations and
events hard.

Individuals who deal with social media addiction may get angry or distressed when they are
unable to access social media. A person may be aware of the unpleasant sentiments that
being unable to use social media might elicit, yet they may frequently feel helpless in the
face of the circumstance. Spending much time online: Individuals with social media
addiction may prioritize social media use over other vital activities, resulting in an unhealthy
concentration on social media. Using social media as a coping mechanism: People are
increasingly turning to social media to deal with difficulties or unpleasant emotions such as
boredom, social anxiety, stress, or loneliness.

As social media continues to absorb much of a person's time and energy, school or work-
related responsibilities may need to be addressed. As a social media addict spends more
time in the virtual world, personal connections may deteriorate. Focusing on social may
make a person retreat from family and friends and need help to be alert and attentive.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE
According to 2017 research, the internal factors of social media use are more closely tied to
an individual's personality and interests (Liu et al.). Since personality is a unique attribute of
the individual, this falls under the internal framework classification. In line with the theories
of addiction, a user may develop a dependency on a platform if they believe they are
consistently meeting their personal needs, which are determined by their personality and
preferences in this case. This leads to increased platform usage. Dependency develops
through the tendency to use social media platforms to satisfy requirements one's personality
deems significant.

Facebook depression is a phenomenon that may be brought on "when preteens and teens
spend a great deal of time on social media sites, such as Facebook, and then begin to exhibit
classic symptoms of depression," according to a 2011 study by the American Academy of
Pediatrics (AAP).

The Big Five personality traits were evaluated using Saucier's (30) Mini-Markers Scale in a
research conducted by Seidman. The findings showed that social media is a secure space for
neurotic people to express their personalities and satisfy their demands for belonging. To
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 Social Media Addiction and Its Impact on Mental Health Among Adolescents

keep in contact with others and feel better about their social situations, persons with
neuroses frequently utilize online social media. Another aspect of social media that has been
well studied is narcissism. It has been discovered that narcissistic individuals are more prone
to develop a social media addiction.

Franchina et al. and Scott and Woods, for instance, concentrate on elements that have been
used to explain why people detrimentally use social media at the individual and family
levels, such as childhood maltreatment and FOMO. Additionally, friend-level characteristics
have been investigated to quantify social well-being and understand why specific individuals
use social media maliciously. These factors have shown a strong positive link with lower
levels of friend support.

According to research by Sharif and Yeoh, persons with social media addictions often spend
more money than those without such addictions. Academic performance might potentially
suffer as a result of social media addiction. The likelihood of students with social media
addictions receiving worse marks is higher than that of students without such addictions.

Objective
The aim of the study is to investigate the relationship between the social media addiction
and mental health among adolescents.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Participants
A total number of 150 consists of 64 boys and 86 girls from the Coimbatore city and the
majority of the samples are students. The adolescents' age range from 18-21. The sampling
method is convenient sampling method.

Instruments
• Personal Information Form: Researchers developed a form for participants to
acquire demographic details of the adolescents. It contains several directives to
determine participants gender, age, socioeconomic class, educational qualification,
time spending in mobile and social media.
• General Health Questionnaire (GHQ): The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) is
a screening tool for identifying minor mental illnesses in the general population and
community or non-psychiatric therapeutic settings such as primary care or general
medical outpatients. The shorter, 28-item GHQ was created by Goldberg and Hillier
and includes four subscales: physical symptoms, anxiety and insomnia, social
dysfunction, and severe depression. Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.87 indicates an
acceptable conclusion from the reliability analysis. Inter-rater and intra-rater
reliability have been demonstrated to be excellent (Cronbach's 0.9-0.95), while test-
retest reliability is high (0.78 to 0 0.9).
• Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS): The Bergen Social Media
Addiction Scale (BSMAS) is a six-item self-report questionnaire. The BSMAS was
designed by adapting the items of the well-validated Bergen Facebook Addiction
Scale (BFAS), which was created to assess Facebook addiction. The BSMAS had
elements identical to the BFAS, except that the phrase "Facebook" was replaced with
"social media." Each BAMAS item represents one of the six addiction characteristics
outlined by Griffiths's components model of addiction. Andreassen and his
colleagues developed the BSMAS, which consists of six items, each reflecting an

© The International Journal of Indian Psychology, ISSN 2348-5396 (e)| ISSN: 2349-3429 (p) | 2487
 Social Media Addiction and Its Impact on Mental Health Among Adolescents

essential feature of addiction (i.e., salience, tolerance, mood modulation, conflict,

withdrawal, and relapse) [24]. Participants score these items on a five-point Likert
scale, with one representing very rarely and five representing very frequently. The
higher the total score, the greater the reliance on SNS. A clinical psychologist used a
typical forward-backwards translating approach to analyse the BSMAS's language
equivalency.

Statistical Analysis
Based on the studies, Pearson’s correlation was used to analyse the relationship between the
variables using the electronic version of SPSS software.

Procedure
The data was collected using an electronic version. The Google for, were used in data
collection, the form consists personal data information, General health Questionnaire and
Bergen Social media addiction scale. The form was circulated among the adolescents.

RESULTS
Table 1 Shows that the relationship between social media addiction and mental health
Social Media Addiction Mental Health
Social Media Addiction 1 -.367**
Mental Health -.367** 1

Table 1 shows that there is a significantly negative correlation between Social media
addiction and mental health. Social media addiction has a negative impact on mental health
because of adolescents usage and their pattern of behavior.

DISCUSSION
Due to an overwhelming degree of reliance on social media platforms, social media
addiction (SMA) is a behavioural addiction that impairs a person's ability to function in
daily life. Addiction to these platforms also has detrimental effects on psychological and
physiological levels. According to earlier studies, the likelihood of developing depressive
symptoms in later life is 1.5 times higher for those with moderate addiction.

Using social media platforms, people of all ages communicate publicly and privately with
people they know and do not know and with family. Social media is a valuable tool that they
may use to communicate their ideas and emotions to others. Furthermore, studies have
concentrated on social media as a novel type of networking and its critical role in fostering
an individual's sense of self, distinguishing themselves from the crowd, and building and
sustaining relationships. Everyone is using social media to their full potential in these times.
Therefore, people's well-being is constantly at an extremely high degree. However, people
might also experience adverse effects from high levels of well-being. As adolescents period
is vulnerable to stress, depression and other mental health disorders, the government has to
frame the policy regarding the social media usage among the adolescents.

Online social game addiction can result from a person's craving for online group gaming,
which can have a substantial adverse influence on habit and self-regulation deficiencies. It is
also important to note that teens rank online multiplayer (social) gaming as their favourite
form of entertainment, followed by offline and solitary online gaming. While access and
interaction are commonalities between social media gaming and social media gambling, the

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 Social Media Addiction and Its Impact on Mental Health Among Adolescents

two can provide different rewards. The distinction between online gambling, which yields
financial profits and incentives, and online simulated gambling, which does not.

Another element contributing to social media addiction is the high level of use and
interaction that kids and teenagers have with their phones. Among the things that set off an
overindulgence in mobile social networking is the desire to keep in touch, interact, and avoid
missing anything. Furthermore, according to studies by Primack et al. (2017) and Swar &
Hameed (2017), teens and young users are thought to be very involved with their mobile
devices. As a result, accessing social media on these devices may boost their engagement
with mobile technologies. Furthermore, because social media platforms let people act in an
anonymous manner.

CONCLUSION
The world is growing inside the digital era, this paper investigates the emerging issues
among adolescents. This paper investigates the relationship between the mental health and
social media addiction among adolescents. From the results it is evident that, many
adolescents are addicted to social media and its has a negative impact on their mental health
and day to day life.

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Acknowledgment
The author(s) appreciates all those who participated in the study and helped to facilitate the
research process.

Conflict of Interest
The author(s) declared no conflict of interest.

How to cite this article: Abinayaa, M. (2023). Social Media Addiction and Its Impact on
Mental Health Among Adolescents. International Journal of Indian Psychology, 11(4), 2484-
2490. DIP:18.01.231.20231104, DOI:10.25215/1104.231

© The International Journal of Indian Psychology, ISSN 2348-5396 (e)| ISSN: 2349-3429 (p) | 2490