My initial research focuses on social media addiction in teens. But after scanning through the literature, I found that teens that are addicted to social media also suffer from various psychological disorders, cyberstalking and cyberbullying.

I expanded my research to include teenagers being addicted to social media and how said addiction is harmful because of the following studies: According to a study done by the Institute of Public Health Italy, it was found that social media had many problems not limited to social anxiety, dispositional trust, and other harmful effects. The widespread disposal of intelligent gadgets has solicited increased research, mainly focusing on the impact of social media on the young generation or the millennials. In 2019, 96% of American teenagers owned a smart device, if not a smartphone, on which they spent more than four hours a day (Hou et al., 2019). According to this study, it was revealed that 15% of this sample could be termed as heavy reliance on these devices (Hou et al., 2019). That is, they could not afford to be offline for more than two hours. This is an indication that these people suffered from problematic smartphone usage. This problem resulted in other adverse outcomes not limited to sleep disorders, depression, and anxiety. Other findings on the same revealed that people with this problem had decreased productivity and struggled in school.

Another study suggested that social media triggers sadness. The more we use the platforms, the less happy we seem (Altuwairiqi et al., 2019). This research was backed up by the fact that social media tries to provide us a platform to instantly connect, leaving a gap in enhancing human well-being. It continues to say, the more time we spend on social media, the more socially isolated we get to be. Social isolation is harmful to humans, both mentally and physically. All these researches help us understand the significance of this study. Suppose we find a deeper root to this study. In that case, we will clearly define mitigation measures and consider better designs that take care of our emotional, mental and physical well-being. It will provide good bases for later advanced researches on the same research area.

I could use the ABI/INFORM Collection and Medline to see what psychological harm social media addiction has on teens.

References

Altuwairiqi M., Kostoulas T., Powell G., Ali R. Problematic attachment to social media: Lived experience and emotions; Proceedings of the World Conference on Information Systems and Technologies (WorldCIST); Galicia, Spain. 16–19 April 2019; Berlin/Heidelberg, Germany: Springer; 2019

Hou, Y., Xiong, D., Jiang, T., Song, L., & Wang, Q. (2019). Social media addiction: Its impact, mediation, and intervention. Cyberpsychology: Journal of psychosocial research on cyberspace, 13(1).