Below is a transcript of our conversation with Katherine Brushaber-Drockton:
David Nicholas:
I'm David Nicholas and this is Central Focus, a weekly look at research activity and innovative work from Central Michigan University students and faculty. As social media sites and platforms have proliferated, so too, as concern over the impact of this new universe is having, especially how engagement affects young people. Clinical psychology graduate student Katherine Brushaber-Drockton has been asking the questions, and she sat down with me to talk about her findings…
Katherine Brushaber-Drockton:
The first thing I was looking at was the relationship between the amount of social media that youth engage in and then that relationship with anxiety and depression. So basically. Do people who use more social media have higher rates of depression and anxiety and? The research, just generally speaking, is very mixed and my study found the same thing. There was a relationship between depression and social media use. People who used more social media had higher rates of depression. However, there was not a relationship between social media use and anxiety. So just like many other studies, it's really not clear that there is some kind of relationship that's consistent because we're not finding it across all studies. We're finding it in some studies. So basically, the thought is that there may be certain ways that we use social media that may be more detrimental than others and…
DN:
In specific sites did are (are) there were you able to (to) zero in on the amount of time on this site versus that site versus another? Did one tend to lead to more negative impact than another?
KBD:
We didn't look at particular sites. There were a group of sites that were looking at, including Facebook and TikTok, just a grouping of different sites, but I know there are studies out there that are trying to look at more specifics, of course. The difficulty is that constantly changing and evolving faster than we can get research out, but I'm not sure if there are certain sites that are associated with more anxiety and depression, but there are certain ways that we use social media. So, for example, there have been studies that have found that using social media more passively so not engaging and liking, sharing content etc. (there) may be links to higher rates of depression, for example. There are also studies that have found a relationship between social media when used by certain groups, such as Autistic individuals using it for finding liked groups or similar groups can, and it can actually be beneficial. So like you said earlier, there are some benefits and then some, maybe not so great. Parts of using social media, but it's just really messy and unclear. What the exact relationship is, and I think what's interesting about that is the fact that there are a lot of. People that believe that just using social media generally could be bad for kids and it just doesn't seem to be that clear cut. And particularly since the pandemic, we found that there are so many benefits to being able to connect with others that we wouldn't be able to otherwise.
DN:
When you say kids then and (and) there is the reference in your official title for your research paper that this is young people, what (what) is the age we were focusing on?
KBD:
It was middle school.
DN:
Did anything point us in the direction of the impact higher or lower on boys compared to that higher or lower for girls?
KBD:
Unrelated to social media use, when looking at rates of anxiety and depression, it seems that nonbinary children had the highest reports of depression and anxiety symptoms. And then the next highest was girls and then boys.
DN:
Katherine Brushaber-Drockton, lots of questions still to be answered, but some good insight as to the impact and how we need to be more aware of what our young people are being exposed to and in, (in) what ways. Thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us. We appreciate it.
KBD:
Thank you.
