Overall time on social media is not related to teen anxiety and depression

Eight-year study shows screen time isn't the problem

October 22, 2019

Science Daily/Brigham Young University

The amount of time teenagers spend on social networking sites has risen 62.5 percent since 2012 and continues to grow. Just last year, the average time teenagers spent on social media was estimated as 2.6 hours per day. Critics have claimed that more screen time is increasing depression and anxiety in teenagers.

However, new research led by Sarah Coyne, a professor of family life at Brigham Young University, found that the amount of time spent on social media is not directly increasing anxiety or depression in teenagers.

"We spent eight years trying to really understand the relationship between time spent on social media and depression for developing teenagers," Coyne said about her study published in Computers in Human Behavior. "If they increased their social media time, would it make them more depressed? Also, if they decreased their social media time, were they less depressed? The answer is no. We found that time spent on social media was not what was impacting anxiety or depression."

Mental health is a multi-process syndrome where no one stressor is likely the cause of depression or anxiety. This study shows that it is not merely the amount of time spent on social media that's leading to an increase in depression or anxiety among adolescents.

"It's not just the amount of time that is important for most kids. For example, two teenagers could use social media for exactly the same amount of time but may have vastly different outcomes as a result of the way they are using it," Coyne said.

The goal of this study is to help society as a whole move beyond the screen time debate and instead to examine the context and content surrounding social media use.

Coyne has three suggestions to use social media in healthier ways.

Be an active user instead of a passive user. Instead of just scrolling, actively comment, post and like other content.

Limit social media use at least an hour before falling asleep. Getting enough sleep is one of the most protective factors for mental health.

Be intentional. Look at your motivations for engaging with social media in the first place.

"If you get on specifically to seek out information or to connect with others, that can have a more positive effect than getting on just because you're bored," Coyne said.

In an effort to understand teenagers' mental health and their social media use, researchers worked with 500 youth between the ages of 13 and 20 who completed once-yearly questionnaires over an eight-year span. Social media use was measured by asking participants how much time they spent on social networking sites on a typical day. To measure depression and anxiety, participants responded to questions with different scales to indicate depressive symptoms and anxiety levels. These results were then analyzed on an individual level to see if there was a strong correlation between the two variables.

At age 13, adolescents reported an average social networking use of 31-60 minutes per day. These average levels increased steadily so that by young adulthood, they were reporting upwards of two hours per day. This increase of social networking, though, did not predict future mental health. That is, adolescents' increases in social networking beyond their typical levels did not predict changes in anxiety or depression one year later.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191022174406.htm

Teens who can describe negative emotions can stave off depression

June 28, 2019

Science Daily/University of Rochester

Teenagers who can describe their negative emotions in precise and nuanced ways are better protected against depression than their peers who can't. That's the conclusion of a new study about negative emotion differentiation, or NED -- the ability to make fine-grained distinctions between negative emotions and apply precise labels -- published in the journal Emotion.

"Adolescents who use more granular terms such as 'I feel annoyed,' or 'I feel frustrated,' or 'I feel ashamed' -- instead of simply saying 'I feel bad' -- are better protected against developing increased depressive symptoms after experiencing a stressful life event," explains lead author Lisa Starr, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Rochester.

Those who score low on negative emotion differentiation tend to describe their feelings in more general terms such as "bad" or "upset." As a result, they are less able to benefit from useful lessons encoded in their negative emotions, including the ability to develop coping strategies that could help them regulate how they feel.

"Emotions convey a lot of information. They communicate information about the person's motivational state, level of arousal, emotional valence, and appraisals of the threatening experience," says Starr. A person has to integrate all that information to figure out -- "am I feeling irritated," or "am I feeling angry, embarrassed, or some other emotion?"

Once you know that information you can use it to help determine the best course of action, explains Starr: "It's going to help me predict how my emotional experience will unfold, and how I can best regulate these emotions to make myself feel better."

The team found that a low NED strengthens the link between stressful life events and depression, leading to reduced psychological well-being.

By focusing exclusively on adolescence, which marks a time of heightened risk for depression, the study zeroed in on a gap in the research to date. Prior research suggests that during adolescence a person's NED plunges to its lowest point, compared to that of younger children or adults. It's exactly during this developmentally crucial time that depression rates climb steadily.

Previous research had shown that depression and low NED were related to each other, but the research designs of previous studies did not test whether a low NED temporally preceded depression. To the researchers, this phenomenon became the proverbial chicken-and-egg question: did those youth who showed signs of significant depressive symptoms have a naturally low NED, or was their NED low as a direct result of their feeling depressed?

The team, made up of Starr, Rachel Hershenberg, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Emory University, and Rochester graduate students Zoey Shaw, Irina Li, and Angela Santee, recruited 233 mid-adolescents in the greater Rochester area with an average age of nearly 16 (54 percent of them female) and conducted diagnostic interviews to evaluate the participants for depression.

Next, the teenagers reported their emotions four times daily over the period of seven days. One and a half years later, the team conducted follow-up interviews with the original participants (of whom 193 returned) to study longitudinal outcomes.

The researchers found that youth who are poor at differentiating their negative emotions are more susceptible to depressive symptoms following stressful life events. Conversely, those who display high NED are better at managing the emotional and behavioral aftermath of being exposed to stress, thereby reducing the likelihood of having negative emotions escalate into a clinically significant depression over time.

Depression ranks among the most challenging public health problems worldwide. As the most prevalent mental disorder, it not only causes recurring and difficult conditions for sufferers, but also costs the U.S. economy tens of billions of dollars each year and has been identified by the World Health Organization as the number one cause of global burden among industrialized nations. Particularly depression in adolescent girls is an important area to study, note the researchers, as this age brings a surge in depression rates, with a marked gender disparity that continues well into adulthood.

Adolescent depression disrupts social and emotional development, which can lead to a host of negative outcomes, including interpersonal problems, reduced productivity, poor physical health, and substance abuse. Moreover, people who get depressed during adolescence are more likely to become repeatedly depressed throughout their life span, says Starr. That's why mapping the emotional dynamics associated with depression is key to finding effective treatments.

"Basically you need to know the way you feel, in order to change the way you feel," says Starr. "I believe that NED could be modifiable, and I think it's something that could be directly addressed with treatment protocols that target NED."

The team's findings contribute to a growing body of research that tries to make inroads in the fight against rising rates of adolescent depression, suicidal thoughts, and suicide. According to the most recent CDC data, about 17 percent of high school students nationwide say they have thought of suicide, more than 13 percent said they actually made a suicide plan, and 7.4 percent attempted suicide in the past year.

"Our data suggests that if you are able to increase people's NED then you should be able to buffer them against stressful experiences and the depressogenic effect of stress," says Starr.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190628120447.htm

Speed and ecstasy associated with depression in teenagers

April 18, 2012

Science Daily/Montreal University

A five year study conducted with thousands of local teenagers by University of Montreal researchers reveals that those who used speed (meth/ampthetamine) or ecstasy (MDMA) at fifteen or sixteen years of age were significantly more likely to suffer elevated depressive symptoms the following year.

"Our findings are consistent with other human and animal studies that suggest long-term negative influences of synthetic drug use," said co-author Frédéric N. Brière of the School Environment Research Group at the University of Montreal. "Our results reveal that recreational MDMA and meth/amphetamine use places typically developing secondary school students at greater risk of experiencing depressive symptoms." Ecstasy and speed-using grade ten students were respectively 1.7 and 1.6 times more likely to be depressed by the time they reached grade eleven.

The researchers worked with data provided by 3,880 students enrolled at schools in disadvantaged areas of Quebec. The participants were asked a series of questions that covered their drug use -- what they had used in the past year or ever in their life -- and their home life. Depressive symptoms were established by using a standard epidemiological evaluation tool. 310 respondents reported using MDMA (8%) and 451 used meth/amphetamines (11.6%). 584 of all respondents were identified as having elevated depressive symptoms (15.1%). The range of questions that the researchers asked enabled them to adjust their statistics to take into account other factors likely to affect the psychological state of the student, such as whether there was any conflict between the parents and the participant. "This study takes into account many more influencing factors than other research that has been undertaken regarding the association between drugs and depression in teenagers," Brière said. "However, it does have its limitations, in particular the fact that we cannot entirely rule out the effects of drug combinations and that we do not know the exact contents of MDMA and meth/amphetamine pills."

The study's authors would like to do further research into how drug combinations affect a person's likelihood to suffer depression and they are keen to learn more about the differences between adults and adolescents in this area. "Our study has important public health implications for adolescent populations," said Jean-Sébastien Fallu, a professor at the University of Montreal and study co-author. "Our results reinforce the body of evidence in this field and suggest that adolescents should be informed of the potential risks associated with MDMA and meth/amphetamine use."

study received funding from Fonds Québécois de Recherche sur la Santé et la Société (FQRSC, 2007-NP-112947). Frédéric Brière is affiliated with the University of Montreal's School Environment Research Group. Jean-Sébastien Fallu is affiliated with the University of Montreal's School Environment Research Group, School of Psycho-Education, and Public Health Research Institute. The University of Montreal is officially known as Université de Montréal.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120418203520.htm