“Facebook Depression?” Social Networking Site Use and Depression in Older Adolescents

Summary Of The Research Article

The purpose of the study was to assess the link between the usage of social networking sites and the onset of depression among older adolescents. It was hypothesized that the use of social networking sites causes depression in older adolescents.

In the article, the experience sampling method was used. The total sample consisted of 373 undergraduate students, of whom 273 participants completed the survey. Of those, 193 participated in the Experience Sampling Method study. As a sample, undergraduate students between the ages of 18 and 23 years were recruited from an introductory communications course to complete an online survey. The participants were awarded course credits for completing the survey and were asked to participate in the Experience Sampling Method phase. Forty-three surveys were administered to each participant for seven days using text messages sent and received on the participant’s personal cell phones. The surveys were administered randomly between 6 A.M. and 1 A.M.

Logistic regression was used for analysis with the help of SAS software.

The results of the research did not find any link between the usage of social media networking sites and the onset of depression in older adolescents. The median daily use of social networking sites among participants was low, at 28 minutes. Participants used it at a low or medium level, while a minority of the sample used social media networking sites at high levels (Kross et al., 2013).

The sample size was limited, and the population was one university. In the future, more studies could be done to make the findings more generalizable. More data collection on different cultures may also have some effect on social media networking usage.

Stages Of Adolescents

The period between puberty and adulthood is called adolescence. It has three stages.

• Early adolescence (11-14 years)
• Middle adolescence (15-17 years)
• Late adolescence (18-21 years)

There are three primary cognitive developments that occur during adolescence. In the first place, adolescents develop thinking aptitudes, including the capacity to investigate the full scope of conceivable outcomes innate in a circumstance, the ability to think hypothetically, and the ability to utilize an intelligent point of view.

Second, adolescents build up the capacity to think uniquely. Adolescents move from being concrete thinkers who consider things that they have direct contact with or information about to abstract thinkers who can envision things not seen or experienced. This enables adolescents to have the ability to love, consider deeper questions of existence, and take an interest in further developed science. Youth who remain at the level of concrete thinking focus to a great extent on physically present or concrete objects in problem-solving may, thus, have trouble or disappointment with schoolwork as they progress all through secondary school. Clinicians can enable guardians to perceive this issue to enable adolescents to adapt to the educational pace.

Adolescents may likewise encounter an individual tale because of having the capacity to think all the more uniquely. The individual story is based on the way that, if the imaginary audience (peers) is watching and considering the adolescent, at that point, the adolescent must be unique or extraordinary. For a considerable length of time, this juvenile egocentrism was thought to add to the individual tale of strength and hazard-taking conduct.

Third, the formal operational reasoning typical of puberty empowers adolescents to think about thinking, or metacognition. This trademark enables youth to build up the ability to consider what they are feeling and how others see them. This point of view, joined with rapid emotional and physical changes that happen during adolescence, makes many youths assume that everybody is thinking not about other matters but about the youths themselves.

By late pre-adulthood, many youths have come to recognize nuances of circumstances and thoughts and to extend into the future. Their ability to take care of complex issues and to detect what others are thinking has improved significantly. However, since they are still generally unpracticed in everyday life, even more established adolescents apply these newly developed abilities in their adolescence and, in this manner, may act without considering.

At the stage of older adolescence, which is the mid-stage between adolescence and adulthood, when they are going to enter adulthood, many physiological and psychological changes occur. At this stage, individuals start their careers and are more enthusiastic about building their names in their respective careers. This phase involves struggle and is more realistic than the earlier adolescent phase. Interests change from expectations to reality. The concepts become more concrete than before, and their understanding of the world and their decision-making processes develop enough to allow them to make informed decisions and support those decisions with logical reasoning.

This article is about what is discussed in the textbook related to the development of older adolescents. The result of this article provides supporting evidence of solid development of constructs related to the world. The results revealed no significant association between the use of social networking sites and the onset of depression among older adolescents, which means the psychological development and the area of interest of older adolescents are based on reality (Council on Communications and Media, 2016).