This scholarly journal article is a primary resource of a study where they interviewed 23 teenagers who have diagnosed depression and asked about their use of social media. The focus of the study was to note how the use of social media affected their mental health. They found that adolescents with mental health issues tend to use social media more frequently than those who do not have severe mental health issues. However, trends show that as adolescents get older the use of social media became less frequent as they learned how to appropriately use it. Of Course there are many different uses for social media that should be specified when looking at the usage and mental health. Some adolescents improved their mental health as they found ways to connect with others socially online. Others who spent hours on end scrolling through their newsfeed filled with others’ status updates and constantly comparing themselves to others saw negative effects on their mental health. The article had the youth describe three different types of social media usage categories which were; stress posting, oversharing, and triggering posts. They found that the most used website was Facebook, followed by Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr. Half of the people interviewed said they were friends with strangers on these platforms and most said they were friends with someone famous on facebook. The group described their reasons for using social media and the overarching answer was for distraction. 

Source:

Radovic, A., Gmelin, T., Stein, B. D., & Miller, E. (2017). Depressed adolescents positive and negative use of social media. Journal of Adolescence, 55, 5–15. doi: 10.1016/j.adolescence.2016.12.002

https://www-sciencedirect-com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/science/article/pii/S0140197116301713