Morgan Harris - Inquiry Project(FINAL DRAFT)

7/30/2019 Morgan Harris - Inquiry Project(FINAL DRAFT)

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Morgan Harris

Instructor: Malcolm Campbell

English 1102

02 April 2013

Facebook: Can it Cause Depression & Low Self-Esteem?

Facebook, a social networking site designed to allow users to communicate and keep in

touch with friends and family, has become an increasingly popular website among teens and

adults over the years. By 2009, 5 years after Facebook’s creation, it had become the most used

social networking site worldwide. In 2011 there were 500 million active users, or one in every

thirteen in the world. At this point in time, there are over one billion active users. Facebook

allows us to stalk our exes, remember birthdays that we might otherwise forget, and annoy the

living daylights out of our friends. Facebook makes it possible to stay connected with friends,

coworkers, and others we might have lost contact with otherwise. There are groups that college

students and high school students can join for their classes in order to help their grades and earn

that A. Sounds pretty great doesn’t it?

As good as all of that may sound, Facebook may have some serious drawbacks. Many

people argue that it has become a national obsession, resulting in a great amount of wasted time

and narcissism. Others argue that people who spend a great amount of time on Facebook are

more likely to be depressed and struggle with self confidence, especially teenagers. Teens in

today’s society are so focused on having the most friends and followers on sites Facebook and

twitter, that they neglect their real life friends and forget how real relationships work. They are

so addicted to their iPhones that they can’t go more than fifteen minutes without checking their



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text messages, or looking to see if anyone liked their latest Instagram photo. Society is becoming

more and more media and technology based.

Teenagers and their Online Addiction

Students today don’t know what life is like without social media. They have grown up

with the idea that friendship happens when someone likes your photo or status on Facebook. This

generation has grown up not knowing how to really interact with people.

Camp Kivu in Colorado focuses on getting teens to disconnect from the online world and

reconnect them to real life. Teens are encouraged to realize that everyone is valuable, and to

celebrate individuality. They are required to put their phones in a box and lock them up for a

week. They spend time in sessions that foster bonding and heart to heart conversations. Andy

Braner, the founder of this camp, says:

If you look at what Facebook’s done to what I call friendship, we’ve created this

illusion of friendship with a click and a ‘like,’ especially in this young generation

of students who don’t know life without social media. For kids entering their

teens, social networking is not a new creation, it’s the norm, and that’s the

problem. This generation doesn’t know friendship without an online component,

and many rely on it for needs that are better suited in a human-to-human

interaction. (Strochlic)

I definitely agree with this quote. I think that teens today spend a ridiculous amount of

time on social networking. I walk around the mall and can’t even go 10 feet without running into

someone uploading an Instagram photo of their nonfat caramel macchiato from Starbucks. It

really does blow my mind.

Self Esteem Issues in Adults



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The negative effects of Facebook can also impact the lives of adults. As a society, we

tend to only post positive things that happen to us on our Facebook profiles. At any given

moment one could log on and see pictures of friends going on fun and interesting trips, smiling

and laughing with their significant other, or writing a status about how wonderful their lives are.

Individuals tend to compare themselves to their friends, whether the realize it or not. It gets a

little disheartening when you log on and see a random friend posting about how he or she has

had two job interviews. You may want to be happy for that person but your self esteem really

takes a hit. Posts like that make you feel like you aren’t as good or as successful as you should

be. Regardless of whether we realize it or not, Facebook use does impact our psychological well-

being.

Lauran Suval posted a blog entry about this very issue. She wrote about a study that was

conducted by The University of Gothenburg in Sweden. A few hundred men and women were

surveyed to determine the link between self esteem and Facebook usage. There was a strong

negative correlation between the two. It was found that as Facebook usage increased, self esteem

decreased. The women in the survey were more likely to feel less happy with their lives, most

likely because they are more likely to write more about their thoughts and feelings about life.

Suval goes on to say:

Personally, I think social networking sites, although convenient for

communication and keeping in touch with people will probably do more harm for

a person’s self -esteem than good. I think this is most true for the people who

frequently log on and less for those who seldom go on just to browse. (Suval)

There was also an article I found on UNCC’s website by Soraya Medizadeh on this topic.

This article discusses how online social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have



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revealed a new method of self-presentation. The article discusses a study that examined how

narcissistic personalities are manifested on the social networking websites. Self-reports were

collected from 100 Facebook users at York University and their web pages were coded based on

the content features. The study revealed that individuals higher in narcissism and lower in self-

esteem were online more often than the happier individuals. (Medizadeh) I found this so

interesting. Basically, individuals who are full of themselves and overconfident are on social

media more than those who are not. It kind of makes you think about how narcissistic our society

is in general. I know people that seemed self aware before they created an account on Facebook,

but became almost obsessed after they made one. It’s almost as if Facebook has changed our

personalities. Medizadeh explains:

In psychology, self-esteem is defined as a person’s overall self-evaluation of his

or her worth. Implicit and explicit self-esteem are subtypes of self-esteem.

Implicit self-esteem is an automatic, unconscious self-evaluation; explicit self-

esteem is a more conscious, reflective self-evaluation. Regardless of the type of

self-esteem, one of the most pervasive facts about this construct is that all humans

have a vital need to maintain and or raise it. (Medizadeh)

It is totally normal to want to raise our self esteem. It really is just human nature to want

to compete with others when it comes to things like who has the most friends, or who is the most

popular. However, there is a point where it becomes unhealthy. Many teenagers in our society, as

well as adults, have reached that point today.

Benefits from Facebook

With all that being said there are other arguments about whether or not Facebook indeed

causes self esteem issues. Some would argue that Facebook can be helpful to those socially



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awkward people who have issues communicating and articulating what they want to say. For

these people, Facebook can be a safe place to let their innermost thoughts and feelings out,

instead of feeling like they need to hold it all in or keep it to themselves. In fact, there are some

studies that show shy people spend more time on Facebook than outgoing people do. This is not

surprising, because naturally outgoing people will normally have more of a social life and not

have as much time to be on social media websites.

Spending time on Facebook can actually reduce stress levels in older adults. It has been

shown to reduce heart rate levels and to simply relax people. There has recently been some new

research that suggests that for adults over 65, it can actually sharpen mental abilities.

Shelley Emling recently wrote an article on Janelle Wohltmann, a graduate student in the

University of Arizona department of psychology, who wanted to see whether teaching older

adults to use Facebook could boost their cognitive performance and make them feel more

connected to the world socially. Her findings suggested that after learning how to use Facebook,

older adults performed about 25 percent better on memory tasks. During her study adults learned

how to post statuses, about one entry daily, that were no more than 3 to 5 sentences long in order

to get used to the brevity of typical Facebook posts. Later on, Wohltman was interviewed about

her research and here is what she had to say:

The idea evolved from two bodies of research. One, there is evidence to suggest

that staying more cognitively engaged - learning new skills, not just becoming a

couch potato when you retire but staying active leads to better cognitive

performing. It's kind of this 'use it or lose it' hypothesis. There's also a large body

of literature showing that people who are more socially engaged, are less lonely,



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have more social support and are more socially integrated are also doing better

cognitively in older age. (Emling)

This research is interesting because you wouldn’t think something as simple as Facebook could

improve mental capacity to this degree. There is so much negative research out there about teens

and younger adults and the older generation has kind of been ignored.

In conclusion, Facebook isn’t all bad. As mentioned before it’s helpful with keeping up

with friends and family, especially if they live far away. I enjoy seeing pictures of my cousins

and grandparents every other week instead of getting the annual letter each year when the

holidays hit. I honestly wouldn’t remember half of my friend’s birthdays if it wasn’t posted on

the front page of Facebook. Like most things in life, in moderation it can be fine. But for the

most part, I feel that the bad outweighs the good.

The effect of social media on personality

It’s important to realize that regardless of whether we realize it or not, Facebook and

other social media websites really do affect us. The more time we spend online, the more it can

have a hold on us. It is critical that our generation keeps in mind how social media can affect

one’s self concept and that we don’t let how many friends we have on Facebook, negatively

influence our lives. I feel that one should never find his or her identity in social media, because

it’s not real life. There should be more of an emphasis on real life friendships, and relationships

that go beyond a post on your Facebook wall every other day. Social media can be a good thing,

but it can also be dangerous.



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Works Cited

Emling, Shelley. “Facebook Benefits Older Adults by Giving Them Cognitive Boost, Study

Says”. Huffington Post. 19 February 2013. Web. 2 April 2013

Mehdizadeh, Soraya. "Self-Presentation 2.0: Narcissism And Self-Esteem On

Facebook." Cyberpsychology, Behavior & Social Networking 13.4 (2010): 357-

364. Academic Search Complete. Web Article. 18 Feb. 2013.

Strochlic, Nina. "Camp Kivu’s Quest to Get Depressed Teens to Disconnect From Social Media”

The Daily Beast , 5 November 2012. Web. 11 March 2012.

Suval, Lauren. “Facebook, Happiness and Self Esteem”. PsychCentral. 5 October 2012. Web. 15

Feb. 2013

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Morgan Harris - Inquiry Project(FINAL DRAFT)