SOCIAL MEDIA AND WOMEN’S MENTAL HEALTH 12
How Social Media can Affect Women’s Mental and Physical Health
Texas Southern University
CM 550 Qualitative Methods
Dr. Toniesha Taylor
September 16, 2020
Introduction
Background Information
The use of social media is an increasing phenomenon because of the growing technological advancement and globalization. Most people in the 21st-century own internet-enabled phones, which enable them to access social platforms. The number of people owning internet devices has grown significantly in the recent past. According to O’Dea (2020), there are at least 3.5 billion smartphones worldwide as of 2020. Pew Research Center (2019) reports that 96% of Americans own cellphones, while 81% of the population owns a smartphone. Most of these phones are internet-enabled devices, allowing users to access the internet. Besides, more than three-quarters of American adults own personal computers while half own tablet devices and half of them own e-readers (Pew Research Center, 2019). There is a close relationship between the high numbers of internet-enabled devices with the number of social media accounts ownership. A person owning such a device is likely to have a social media account. As of 2019, 247 million, an equivalent of 79% of Americans, were active on social media (Clement, 2020).
Pantic (2014) says that social media has caused significant changes in people’s interactions and communications. The application of social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram has resulted in numerous benefits, including online learning, increased connectivity, and sharing ideas (Pantic, 2014). Human beings are social creatures, and social media provides them with platforms where they can interact and share their experiences. These sites are a source of identity formation and social enhancement for many people.
Social media creates social networks, which contribute to an individual’s psychological and physical well-being. However, social research shows that social media is likely to compromise the users’ quality of life. Bekalu et al. (2019) believe that a growing body of research links social media use with negative health-related outcomes, with women and youth as the most affected. However, social media’s mental and physical effect has become a growing health concern among individuals, specifically teenagers, and the impact on women remains limited. When women spend a lot of time on social media, they tend to compare themselves with other users resulting in psychological distress, which leads to mental and physical problems.
Researchers have found a connection between the increased use of social media and deteriorating health (Livingston et al., 2014; McCrory et al., 2020). Many researchers have focused on the effects of social media and the psychological well-being of the users. Health experts have continued to blame social media for the growing mental issues among people of different ages (Berryman et al., 2018; De Choudhury et al., 2016). Though social media affects both boys and girls, research says that girls are more vulnerable to these effects than their male counterparts (Ducharme, 2019) are. Women have grown very active on social media due to their expressive nature. Women more than men upload photos on Facebook, Instagram, and other sites more than men do. Though women are underrepresented in many areas, social media gives them a platform to socialize and interact. Social media has continued to bridge the man-women gap in social media by giving both genders an equal opportunity to represent their views. With women having a significant online presence than men, they have been victims of social media handling, including cyber harassment. The study examines how detrimental social media has been on women’s mental and physical health.
Problem Statement
Women are a significant proportion of the productive population in every economy. With growing social media use, women’s participation level has grown over the last years. Women use social media to connect with people and form new relationships. Females share their personal issues, including relationships and family matters, more than males. Women prefer discussing and sharing certain feminist topics on social media. Such topics attract more likes, views, comments than male-related subjects do. Women also prefer visual platforms where they can exchange images. Women’s desire to make a good impression on social media users compels them to use visual content. The disparities among male and female communication reflect their social media interaction differences. Research indicates that social media has multiple physical and mental impacts on users. However, research has paid little emphasis on social media and women’s health. This study, therefore, examines how continued social media use among women can be detrimental to their mental and physical capabilities.
Study Objectives
The study’s general objective is to determine how social media can affect women’s mental and physical health. The specific objectives include;
To examine the social media effect on women’s psychological well-being.
To investigate whether females using social media suffer physical health outcomes.
Research Questions
How has women’s participation in social media changed over the last 15 years?
Has there been a change in the status of women’s psychological and physical health with an increase in the use of social media?
Is there a correlation between women’s mental and physical health and the usage of social media sites?
Purpose of the Study
Social media is an important platform for empowerment. The platform provides limitless global connectivity to women. Gender-based differences in social media users provide insight into its role and impact on men or women. Social media has been associated with numerous challenges in the contemporary society. Examining these impacts based on some specific groups of social media users helps access the behavior disconnect. Social media allows women to be both consumers and creators. Social media is a source of postfeminist empowerment, and to attain this understanding, the possible negative impacts of social media use would be critical. The study will enhance understanding of women’s experiences on social media usage and their impact. The findings will inform policymakers and social media experts on the necessary measures to adopt to facilitate healthy social media use. The study will shed light on women and help them focus on responsible social media usage.
Literature Review
Women’s Use of Social media over the years
Women form a significant proportion of social media users in the world. According to Anderson (2015), Pew Research reported a 15% gap between men and women on social media use in 2010. Though recent data shows that the gap has been narrowing over the years with many men using social media, the number of women using the sites has also been steadily rising. Research conducted in 2014 on media use indicated that 80% of women use social media while 73% of men are active social media users (Anderson 2015). The survey showed that women dominated Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram. Women were also seen to use picture-sharing sites more than men. Statistics indicate that proportion of women using LinkedIn has increased from 12% in 2010 to over 25% in 2015 (Pew Research Center 2019). Therefore, women, more than men, use social media.
Social media serves as an important platform for women to channel their issues and raise their voices to heard. According to Loiseau and Nowacka (2015), India and Turkey increased social media usage among women to combat discrimination and promote their rights. Women have increasingly used social media to seek gender equality. Perrin (2015) believes that women are dominant on social media because they share similar communicative logic. Baer (2020) states that women are the highest users of almost every social media platform except LinkedIn. According to research, women share links and photos, unlike men who prefer linear social media (Perrin, 2015). Women have an emotional component that tends to make them more attracted to touch pictures and catchy features; thus, becoming more compelled to engage in social media use.
Women are becoming a target of many brands. According to Baer (2020), women have recently influenced many areas, including technology, beauty, tourism, etc. As a result, industries are taking advantage of targeting women and using them to disseminate any internet messages. An intel study to investigate social media use among women showed that 80% of them communicate with family and friends through chats (Anderson 2015). Figure 1 shows the proportion of men to women using different social media platforms.
Figure 1: Social media Use between men and women
Source:https://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-research/social-media-usage-statistics/
A survey conducted in 2013 in the US on the adoption of social media between men and women revealed the latter to have dominated the platforms (Richter, 2013). The survey showed that women more than men had an account with at least seven social networks. Statista shows that as more people get acquainted with social media use in the US, the gap between men and women using social media is narrowing. However, more females are increasing their usage. A Pew Research survey (2017) on social media use by gender between 2005 and 2019 showed rising trends for both genders. According to the survey, only 4% of women used social media in 2005 compared to 78% in 2019. Technology growth allowing most people to own a smartphone, and globalization is a major contributor to the increased social media use by women over the years. Figure 2 shows the social media trends for both genders for the last 14 years.
Figure 2: Social media Use for both genders over the last 14 years
Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/chart/social-media-use-by-gender/
Social media Use and Women’s Psychological Health
Social media has become part of every individual’s daily activities. Today, people can hardly spend a day without having access to social media. As Scirrotto Drames (2016) states, platforms such as Facebook and Instagram act as social agents. Women share different subjects related to body shapes, sexuality, attractiveness, weight management, among other feminine topics. Literature reveals that media is a source of stress and dissatisfaction among women who find their body image unattractive after comparing themselves with images in fashion magazines (Krasny, 2015). As a result, women from stereotypes which give them the pressure of wanting to become as popular as others. The pressure that comes with women, mostly teenagers competing to become like the magazine images, causes stress. Previous research provides consistent results that indicate women to be more vulnerable to mental risks compared to men when using social media (Karim, Oyewande, Abdalla, Ehsanullah & Khan, 2020). The Displaced Behavior Theory explains why women’s mental well-being is mostly affected by social media use. The prolonged use of Facebook with women being the majority is linked to anxiety, stress, and depression.
Social comparison is a source of stress and depression for many girls using social media. The growth of suicide rates and depressive symptoms among females since 2010 reveals the increasing psychological effects of social media use among women since the rapid increase of smartphones. A 2018 study to assess the impact of social media use among girls aged between 14 and 17 showed that frequent users reported higher depression levels than boys whose social media use was relatively low (New Port Academy 2019). The Pew Research on social media stress showed that women reported an average score of 10.5 stress levels out of 30 compared to 9.8 among men (Hampton, Rainie, Lu, Shin and Purcell, 2015). More women than men tend to form close social ties in different social media platforms, which causes them more stress events. Studies show that women more than men are more bothered by comments about their negative comparisons and appearance on social media sites (Krasny, 2015). Research to compare the social comparison effect on mental well-being on various social networking sites (SNS) showed excessive use of these sites to cause anxiety and depression. Women using Facebook were the most vulnerable to poor self-image and stress.
References
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Bekalu, M. A., McCloud, R. F., & Viswanath, K. (2019). Association of social media use with social well-being, positive mental health, and self-rated health: disentangling routine use from emotional connection to use. Health Education & Behavior, 46(2_suppl), 69S-80S.
Clement, J. (2020). Percentage of US population who currently use any social media from 2008 to 2019. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/273476/percentage-of-us-population-with-a-social-network-profile/
De Choudhury, M., Kiciman, E., Dredze, M., Coppersmith, G., & Kumar, M. (2016, May). Discovering shifts to suicidal ideation from mental health content in social media. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 2098-2110).
Ducharme, J. (2019). Social Media Hurts Girls more than Boys. https://time.com/5650266/social-media-girls-mental-health/
Hampton, K. Rainie, L. Lu, W. Shin, I. and Purcell, K. (2015). Psychological Stress and Social Media Use. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2015/01/15/psychological-stress-and-social-media-use-2/
Karim, F., Oyewande, A. A., Abdalla, L. F., Ehsanullah, R. C., & Khan, S. (2020). Social Media Use and Its Connection to Mental Health: A Systematic Review. Cureus, 12(6).
Krasny, J. (2015). Why Social Media Stresses Out More Women than Men. https://www.inc.com/jill-krasny/pew-study-women-social-media-and-stress.html
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Richter, F. (2013). Women Lead Men in Social Media Adoption. https://www.statista.com/chart/1147/social-network-adoption-in-the-united-states/
Scirrotto Drames, T. (2016). The Impact of Internet Social Networking on Young Women’s Mood and Body Image Satisfaction: An Experimental Design.
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