INVESTIGATING THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON THE WELL-BEING OF TEENAGERS

There has been a positive association between screen time and depressive symptoms among adolescents. Research has found that using social media will increase self- comparisons especially if the engagement is passive. This would therefore increase the chances of depression and lower well-being. However, after investigating social media further, I found that the results were counter-intuitive and controversial on an individual level, especially for the youth. The objective of this work is to investigate the effect of social media on the well-being of teenagers. For this research paper, I asked many students to refrain from the use of social media for 33 hours and then tested their happiness score before and after. Then, I conducted a t-Test which showed a statistically significant difference in the mean of happiness scores before and after the experiment.