Middleton 1

Julia Middleton

Ms. Taylor

English 1106

26 February 2020

Annotated Bibliography

Allen, Summer. “Social Media’s Growing Impact on Our Lives”:

Allen, Summer. “Social Media’s Growing Impact on Our Lives”, ​American Psychological
Association. ​2019. ​https://www.apa.org/members/content/social-media-research​.
Accessed 20 February 2020.

Allen Summer starts off this article by explaining that the increase in social media usage
has caused an increase in worries about how social media affects people’s lives. The American
Psychological Association says that a long-time concern is whether or not social media has an
impact on human relationships and decreases the amount of time that people actually spend with
each other in person. In regards to this concern, the article mentions Jeffrey Hall’s work, which
proves that time spent online does not have a huge effect on the amount of time that people
interact with others. The article then goes on to talk about social media’s impact on teenagers. It
refers to Jean Twenge’s work which found that a group of seniors graduating in 2016 had an
hour less of social interaction than seniors in the 1980s. Altogether this study showed that this
was caused by social media use as a whole, but individually face-to-face interaction was
increased. Jean’s study also discovered that teens who were on social media more than they
interacted with others face-to-face were more lonely. The article goes on to say that 81% of
teenagers use social media and that they use it numerous times a day. Summer explains that
social media can be positive because it keeps teens up-to-date with their peers and it can act as a
creative outlet for them, but it can be negative because teens can get cyberbullied and it is a way
for people to post and see “hate content”. Summer also mentions that The ​Children's Digital
Media Center has found that social media has an impact on teen’s cognitive development
because teen’s use it as a way to display their lives and figure out who they are. In conclusion,
this article explains that there are still a lot of questions regarding social media and if it’s impact
on our lives is good or bad.

Key words: ​social interaction, teenagers, development, relationships, social media

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Citations:
Summer references Jean Twenge’s study when he talks about how social media impacts the lives
of teenagers.
Summer also references Jeffrey Hall’s work that studied if people spend more time interacting
with people when they are not using social media. Hall’s work found that there is not much of a
difference in social interaction when people are using and not using social media.

Quotations:
“The study also found that adolescents who spent the most time on social media and the least
time in face-to-face social interactions reported the most loneliness.” -What about teens?

“​Social media benefits teens by expanding their social networks and keeping them in touch with
their peers and far-away friends and family.” -Risk of expanding social networks

Questions:
Are teens the most impacted by both the positives and negatives of social media?
How does social media end up changing the way that teenagers develop cognitively?

Amy Roeder. “Social Media Use Can be Positive for Mental Health and Well-being”:
Amy Roeder. “Social Media Use Can be Positive for Mental Health and Well-being”, ​Harvard
T.H. Chan School of Public Health. 2​ 020.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/social-media-positive-mental-health/​.
Accessed 20 February 2020.

This source starts with Mesfin Bakelu answering the question of how unhealthy and
healthy social media use can be distinguished. He talks about their research where they collected
data on how much time a group of people usually spend on social media and how much they care
about social media. They found that using social media regularly had positive effects and having
an emotional attachment had negative effects on social well-being, mental health and self-rated
health. These findings concluded that regularly using social media does not seem to be an issue
and that it can actually be positive. Bekalu then says that these results can be very surprising to
some people because we are programmed to think that social media use is bad for mental health.
Social media can be vital in maintaining a social network when face-to-face interaction is not
available when life gets too busy. Things such as long distances and bad timing get in the way of
people being able to see each other in person and social media gives people an alternative place
to connect with others. Bekalu does mention that other findings show that social media could be
the culprit of depression and anxiousness and therefore negatively affects mental health. As for is
social media is wholly positive or negative, Bekalu and his co-authors come to the conclusion
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that social media’s impact on a person depends greatly on the “​demographic, socioeconomic, and
racial population” and not only on how much they use it, but how they use it and what they use it
for. Bekalu concludes that social media may affect people with different ages, education, and
races differently.

Key Words​: mental health, social media, well-being, youth, beneficial or harmful, health

Citations​: This source does not reference any other sources because it focuses on just Mesfin
Bakelu and his co-authors, Rachel McCloud and Vish Vinswanath’s work.

Quotations​:
“Routine social media use may compensate for diminishing face-to-face social interactions in
people’s busy lives. Social media may provide individuals with a platform that overcomes
barriers of distance and time, allowing them to connect and reconnect with others and thereby
expand and strengthen their in-person networks and interactions.”

“Our findings suggest that the ways that people are using social media may have more of an
impact on their mental health and well-being than just the frequency and duration of their use.”
(Both from “​We’re used to hearing that social media use is harmful to mental health and
well-being, particularly for young people. Did it surprise you to find that it can have positive
effects?” section)

Questions​:
What are some negative ways that people can use social media that would lead to negative
mental health?

Weinstein, Emily. “The social media see-saw: Positive and negative influence on
adolescents' affective well being”:
Weinstein, Emily. The social media see-saw: Positive and negative influence on adolescents’
affective well being” ​New Media and Society, ​vol. 20, no. 10, 2018,
https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.lib.vt.edu/doi/pdf/10.1177/1461444818755634​.
Accessed 20 February 2020.

Emily Weinstein begins this article by talking about how common social media use is
among teenagers, but the impact of it on their well being is questionable. She begins by talking
about a lot of prior research and secondary sources, some having come to the conclusion that
there is a correlation between social media and lesser well being while others find no relationship
between the two. She also mentions that some research has even found that social media use has
positive effects on well being. Overall, Weinstein says that teens’ social media use is not solely
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hurtful to their well being and that different experiences that they have online can be both
positive and negative to their welfare. Weinstein then goes into her own research which looks at
the different experiences teens have on social media, both positive and negative. She explains her
research methods, which involve surveying and interviewing students and she includes her
findings in the article. She first talks about her survey and about her analysis of the data she
collected. She found that most of the students said that their social media experiences were
positive, that they felt happy and closer to their peers, while a small number expressed their
negative experiences, such as feeling envious, excluded, or having anxiety. Then, she went on to
talk about her interviews and how she aimed to find out how social media made the students feel
emotionally. Through these interviews, she was able to find out how each part of social media (4
dimensions of social media: relational interactions, content and social browsing, interest-driven
exploration, and self-expression) can cause both positive or negative effects on the students.
Weinstein even went in depth giving real examples from her interviews to support this. In
conclusion, Weinstein says that most students portrayed social media as positive but they also
did express that social media does lead to them having some negative emotions. Weinstein’s
work focused on how teens’ experiences on social media are not only positive or only negative,
but that they can be both positive and negative.

Key words​: social media, adolescents, well-being, experiences, emotions, positives and
negatives

Citations​:
Gardner, Howard and Katie Davis. ​The App Generation: How Today’s Youth Navigate Identity,
Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World.​ SSRN, 2013.
https://ssrn.com/abstract=2982119​.
George, Madeleine J. and Candice L. Odgers. “Seven fears and the science of how mobile
technologies may be influencing adolescents in the digital age.” ​Perspectives on
Psychological Science, ​vol. 10, no. 6, 2015,
https://adaptlab.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/George-Odgers-2015-Seven-Fears-the-S
cience-Adol-in-the-Digital-Age.pdf​.
Primack, Brian A., et al. “Use of multiple social media platforms and symptoms of depression
and anxiety: a nationally-representative study among US young adults.” ​Computers in
Human Behavior, 2​ 017, ​http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/35419/​.

Quotations​:
“Rather than an “either/or” model (i.e. social media either support or detract from affective
well-being), findings instead support a “both/and” model: teens experience different
constellations of both positive and negative influences of social media.” -Page 3620
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“To understand a teen’s total experience, we therefore must attend to her positive and negative
experiences related to expression, relational interactions, exploration, and browsing within and
across SMP accounts.” -page 3617

Questions:
How are different types of people affected differently by social media? Can what is positive for
one person be negative for another?