Social Media and Depression

Chan, Le Wen (2020) Social Media and Depression. Final Year Project (Bachelor), Tunku Abdul Rahman University College.

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Abstract

Social media has become a necessary daily activity in today’s society. People almost spend a quarter of each day in social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook or YouTube. However, there are many problems are raising up on social media such as internet addiction or clique-forming on privacy issue. People started to put social and emotion on social media. People started to be affected by social media which led them to have feelings of depression, loneliness or anxiety. Therefore, this objective of this research is to find out whether social media will lead to depression. The therories to support this study are FOMO and social comparison theory. FOMO is a fear of missing out refers to the feeling or perception when you are comparing with others. Besides, social comparison theory is strongly linked with FOMO in general tendency which people will constantly evaluating themselves with others such as wealth, success, intelligence and so on. This is because people will present the best images of them in social media to fit in with the others which are linking with the theory of FOMO and social comparison. Besides, overusing social media might be a triggered point for people to have FOMO or social comparison. The method of research is using survey questionnaire and the data have been well collected. According to the data analysis, it have shows that there are weak relationship between the social media and depression. People with high social media use rarely get worried when they find out their friends are having fun without them and they often feel carefree while using social media. As to conclude this research, the social media use will not bring bad-effect on mental well-being and will not lead people to depression.