Marcus Hendricks

Mr. Campbell
24 October 2016
Annotated Bibliography
How social media perpetuates the fad of mental illness.

Lin, Liu Yi, Jaime E. Sidani, Ariel Shensa, Ana Radovic, Elizabeth Miller, Jason B.
Colditz, Beth L. Hoffman, Leila M. Giles, and Brian A. Primack. "Association Between Social
Media Use And Depression Among U.s. Young Adults." Depression and Anxiety Depress Anxiety
33.4 (2016): 323-31. Web. 18 Oct. 2016.
Depression in young adults is increasing every year. 1,787 young adults between the ages 19 and
32 were questioned as part of this research. The questions were based on the most popular social
media platforms. On all of the adults studied about 60 minutes of social media was being logged
on average and one-fourth of those studied were said to have high indicators of depression.
Adults who rarely went on social media, versus those who went on social media frequently saw a
2.7 times increase in their depressive qualities. Many factors were kept at a minimum in order to
study on the effects on social media and depression. The reason for this increase in depression is
linked to the amount of glamorization you are subjecting yourself to. While you browse your
preferred media, what you are looking at isnt a persons normal day to day life, but a highlight
of all of their greatest moments. Because of this, people will begin to compare their life with
other peoples filtered, glamorized lives. The overall consequence of this makes your life seem

uneventful, which could then lead to signs of depression. Another cause could be that simply
going on social media may in turn make people feel like they arent making any meaningful
impact with their life and in cause negatively affect their mood. Finally there is also the
possibility that a person is being bullied online which would also lead to depression. Being a
paper I find this to be a very reliable source to use for my inquiry. This article is helpful to me
because I can use it to show why depression would be more common in people who use social
media very frequently. I think that this paper representing a very strong point and I think that it
helps in a piece of my EIP.

Hypochondriacs: Inside Health Anxiety Disorder. Hypochondriacs: Inside Health Anxiety

Disorder. Digital Right Group Limited, 2007. Web. 19 Oct. 2016.
This video was a documentary of many different cases of hypochondria. This is a good source
because it shows examples as to how much the internet effects people with hypochondria.
Hypochondria is the obsession of the idea of having a serious, undiagnosed medical condition. I
think this condition is rampant upon many teenagers. The term for hypochondria has also
evolved into a term suitably dubbed cybercondria. This form of hypochondria simply implies
that the internet was used to diagnose your condition. I got this video form a scholarly video
database so it should include a lot of trustworthy information that I can use loosely in my project.
This concept is very valuable for my EIP because I think this is the overlying condition effecting
so many teenagers. Being obsessed with having a mental disorder has become almost a fad in a
sense.

Gates, Gary J. "LGBT Demographics: Comparisons among Population-based Surveys."

(n.d.): n. pag. Oct. 2014. Web. 12 Oct. 2016.
This is an analysis of a total of four surveys all polling the demographics of the LGBT
community in the United States. Overall the population of the LGBT community in the US is
around 4%. This number varies greatly depending on age, race and how much money you make.
For instance the population under the age of 18 years old is around 6-7% while people over the
age of 60 may fall to about 1.7%. The total LGBT population percent is expected to grow slowly
over the years. You can infer as to why the younger generation has a higher percentage than the
older generations and that will be something that I am going to talk about in my paper. Overall I
think this survey will prove useful to see how this demographic is changing. Over the last 20
years the percentage has raised a percent or two. Hopefully I can use this data to add substance
to my topic on how much social media is changing people. Maybe its because people are
becoming more comfortable with each other, which would explain the increase in earlier years.

Weninger, Tim. "Watch "Changing the Hivemind - How Social Media ..." N.p., 3 Mar.
2014. Web. 13 Oct. 2016.
In this Ted talk Tim talks about how he was able to manipulate the media in a really small way in
order to make very large changes down the line. News outlets have a desirable reason to change
what their audiences see, money. If one person can change what others see imagine what a
company with money and power can do. Overall this talk doesnt speak much for my topic. But
what I am getting most from this video is his point on social medias collective hive mind.
Everyone may think that they are getting all the most unbiased views from whatever source they

look at, but the reality is, its probably not. This holds a strong point when you go back to my
first source where it was pointed out that depression can be caused by people seeing a glorified
life of others. When you log on to Twitter or Facebook, you only see what you want to see.
Your feed is highly filtered, if someone says something that you dont agree with, all you have to
do is unfollow, or unfriend them. This causes a cyclical means of surrounding yourself with
media that you agree with. This gets you stuck in a position where you cant get an outside
opinion. If you surround yourself by hundreds of people online who have similar views it
becomes a hive mind and everyone begins to act like each other turning them into one person.
Overall this TED talk was useful in its underlying meaning but not in the big picture. I might
benefit from finding a similar but more specific source.

http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/08/media-phony-depression.html