Social media: Benefits vs. negative impact

Over the last 20 years, social media has risen from relative obscurity to become a fully accepted and integrated part of everyday life. However, despite social media’s ubiquity, the research on how it affects mental health remains inconclusive.

What do we really know about social media and mental health? Image credit: Colin Anderson/Stocksy.

So far, most research investigating the effects of social media on mental health has focused on the potential negative aspects.

For instance, a 2019 study involving 6,595 teenagers from the United States concludes that those who spend more than 3 hours per day on social media may have a higher risk of mental health problems than those who do not.

But the degree to which social media actually harms mental health is debatable. A recent review, available as a preprint, found that most studies investigating the link between social media and mental health demonstrate “weak” or “inconsistent” associations.

Another review found that while there may be a small negative association between social media use and mental health, the link is complex and depends on exactly how researchers define mental health and social media use.

Meanwhile, other research suggests that social media may even benefit mental health, especially for people belonging to LGBTQIA+ communities and those living with mental health conditions.

These conflicting findings make it challenging to navigate the research investigating the effects of social media on mental health and how best to use social media. With this in mind, Medical News Today sought the input of seven psychology experts at the intersection of social media and mental health.

“One promising area of research is the role of online peer networks, where it appears that connecting online with others who share similar mental health challenges can offer important benefits for feeling less alone, learning coping skills, and being able to offer/receive emotional or informational support from others,” Dr. John Naslund, Ph.D., an instructor in global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School, told MNT.

Dr. Niklas Johannes, a postdoctoral researcher in the Adolescent Well-Being in the Digital Age program at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, agreed that social media might be linked to some mental health benefits. However, he added that more research is necessary to confirm the direction in which this connection lies.

“There’s a lot of research out there that suggests social media are a

McDonald’s Instagram promoting might harm the health and fitness of younger folks in low-income countries, a study indicates. Graphic credit rating: NurPhoto/Getty Photographs.

A new research reveals that rapid food items companies, these as McDonald’s, are concentrating their advertising on lower-earnings international locations.
They do this utilizing well-known social media web pages, these kinds of as Instagram (IG), and other digital media platforms.
This report suggests McDonald’s might use IG advertising and marketing adverts that concentrate on young individuals around the world.

McDonald’s media outreach is world — it operates in 101 countries. In accordance to a new report, the internet marketing advertisements it utilizes to goal young people may perhaps play a part in the meals intake styles that lead to health problems afterwards in lifetime.

The study’s direct researcher, Dr. Omni Cassidy — assistant professor of Populace Wellbeing at New York University’s Grossman Faculty of Drugs — and her collaborators documented the effects in a paper that appears in BMJ Nutrition Avoidance and Health.

The study randomly chosen 15 nations to find how McDonald’s marketplaces its solutions on different continents. The scientists needed to see if the company’s advertising methods differed by the client environments in the decided on international locations.

They targeted their examine on IG because it is one of the most well-known social media platforms among the adolescents and youthful grownups.

This review followed randomly chosen official McDonald’s IG accounts for 4 months, from September to December 2019. In April 2020, it quantified the range of followers, likes, remarks, and online video views linked with each account. The scientists released their benefits in December 2021.

The scientists divided the international locations into a few teams according to 2019 Planet Bank Databases criteria. These were being significant-revenue nations (HIC), upper-center-earnings nations around the world (UMIC), and decrease-center-income nations around the world (LMIC). Their intent was to uncover if McDonald’s promotion techniques varied according to the monetary standing of a region.

The study confirmed that McDonald’s posted much more IG advertisements and applied selling price promotions, giveaways, and child-targeting advertising practices in LMICs. These advertisements are powerful the place the selling price of meals and drinks is vital in buyer purchasing conclusions.

Speaking to Professional medical News Today, Dr. Cassidy remarked that: “Marketing on these platforms offers McDonald’s a way to produce advertisements that are partaking, ‘cool,’ and can be simply customized

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