Social Media Use and Stress Relationship - Report Example

?Social Media Use and Stress Social media have advantages (e.g. communication and unity to a global network) and disadvantages. However, thepresent paper would like to highlight more on the disadvantages of social media that depend on how those somehow change the lifestyle of people like increasing people’s chance to become over attentive with it and lose the track to one’s health. The findings of the study show that social media are positively moderated to stress (physical reaction of the body) and anxiety (psychological disturbances like the inconsistency and ambiguousness). However, the study found that participants, particularly the young ones who age from 18 years above, were more stressful and anxious after using social media websites than before using them. However, the demographics of the participants which are used as moderators were found to be low negatively correlated with social media that could mean how gender, age, and ethnicity could serve as factors that could affect one’s level of stress with social media. Introduction Social media have sites that could serve as “web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within the bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system” (Boyd & Ellison, 2007 as cited in Brunty & Helenek, 2012, p. 1). Therefore, a sense of communication could be constant through social media. Personal information with emails, birthdays, age, address, and photos could be shared in social media. The example websites of social media include facebook, twitter, tumblr, instant messaging, instagram, MySpace, and personal e-mails. The advantages of social media include how people in the world could be united (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Another would be the ability of the people to easily share important news and information to others. Moreover, businessmen could seem to be comfortable in communicating to their clients through social media (Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy, & Silvestre, 2011). However, there are people nowadays that are overusing social media that could already affect their health and personal lives. With this, the purpose of the present paper would delve on the relationship of social media and stress. Method The present paper will conduct a survey relative to how social media could affect one’s health and the emotional aspect. Researchers for the current paper will distribute the questionnaires to random population; thus, the survey forms have no age limit when it comes to different age group. Snowball sampling could be used as a research technique to gather participants in a convenient way. After letting the participants answer, SPSS will be used as a tool to generalize how social media could be correlated to stress. Results Table I. The table shows the percentage of the frequency of participants who would agree or disagree from feeling stress (that life feels unpredictable, uncontrollable, and overloaded) in the past month. ____________________________________________________________________________ Percent Valid ____________________________________________________________________________ Strongly Disagree 14.1 Somewhat Disagree 22.5 Neutral 36.6 Somewhat Agree 26.8 Total 100 ____________________________________________________________________________ The table above shows the highest number of answers are neutral (36.6%) pertaining to how the participants felt anxious during the past month. The neutral answers of the participants could have affected the results of the study because 36.6% of the results of the study could also be ambiguously undetermined. However, there are 26.6%, which is the second highest percentile of participants who agreed that they are stressed. Table II. The following category shows the range of age of the participants ____________________________________________________________________________ Age Valid Percent ____________________________________________________________________________ 18-24 57.7 25-34 15.5 35-49 15.5 50-84 11.3 Total ____________________________________________________________________________ Table II shows that the highest number of participants who answered the survey are those whose age ranges from 18-24 (57.7%), to be followed by the participants whose age ranges from 25-34 and 35-49 years old (both age group have 15.5%). This could mean that teens to young adults outnumbered the group of participants for this research survey. Table III. The following table shows the percentage of age of the participants ____________________________________________________________________________ Gender Valid Percent ____________________________________________________________________________ Valid Female 67.1 Male 32.9 Total 100.0 Missing System ____________________________________________________________________________ Table III shows that the highest number of participants based on gender is females (66.2%) compared to males (32.4%) regardless of how one participant had missed to fill-up his sexual identity. Table IV. The following table shows the degree level of the participants. _____________________________________________________________________ Valid Percent _____________________________________________________________________ Some High School 78.8 Some College 1.5 Associate Degree 4.5 Bachelor’s Degree 7.6 Graduate/Professional Degree 6.1 Total 100.0 Missing System Total ______________________________________________________________________ Table IV shows that the highest percentage of participants based on their degree level are the high school participants that accumulated 73.2% out of 71 respondents. This is followed by the seven percent of participants who had a bachelor’s degree, and 5.6 participants who have a graduate degree. Table V. Items of stress before (SBSM: items 1-7) and after social media (SASM: items 8-14) and anxiety before (ABSM: items 15-21) and after social media (AASM: 22-28 items) _____________________________________________________________________ Social Media Valid Percent _____________________________________________________________________ SBSM1 Facebook 21.1 SBSM2 Myspace 23.9 SBSM3 Twitter 38.0 SBSM4 Tumblr 15.5 SBSM5 Instant Messaging (IM/Chat) SBSM6 Instagram SBSM7 E-mail (Personal) 5.6 SASM8 Facebook 1.4 SASM9 Myspace 1.4 SASM10 Twitter SASM11 Tumblr SASM12 Instant Messaging (IM/Chat) SASM13 Instagram 5.6 SASM14 E-mail (Personal) 5.6 ABSM15 Facebook 7.0 ABSM16 Myspace 5.6 ABSM17 Twitter 14.1 ABSM18 Tumblr 8.5 ABSM19 Instant Messaging (IM) 9.9 ABSM20 Instagram 7.0 ABSM21 E-mail (Personal) 5.6 AASM22 Facebook 5.6 AASM23 Myspace 2.8 AASM24 Twitter 4.2 AASM25 Tumblr AASM26 Instant Messaging (IM) AASM27 Instagram AASM28 E-mail (Personal) 1.4 _____________________________________________________________________ The table above shows the percent per frequency to social media. For items one to seven which refer to stress before using social media, Twitter got the highest percentage with 38%, to be followed by Myspace with 23.9%, and Facebook with 21.1%. With regard to items SASM (stress after social media), instagram and personal e-mail got the highest percentages which are equal to 5.6. For items of ABSM (Anxiety before Social Media), twitter got the highest percentage with 14.1 to be followed by Instant Messaging (9.9%). For items of AASM (Anxiety after Social Media), facebook got the highest percentage (5.6) to be followed by twitter which is 4.2%. Table VI. Correlations of SMU and Stress with Demographic Effects Table V shows that the generalizability of the participants could be stress which means that they be inconsistent and unpredictable which are positively correlated to their anxiety that could be shown up in their physical and emotional conditions. However, being stress and anxious psychologically and physically are negatively correlated to age, gender, and ethnicity or level of degree of the participants. Table VII. The next table will show up how stress and anxiety could be correlated when using social media. Table VII shows that there is a greater positive correlation of anxiety (physiological symptoms) and stress (psychological inconsistencies) after using the social media than before using the social media Discussion The results showed the significant differences of stress and anxiety to the impact of social media. The results had also found out the low negative correlation of anxiety and stress to the effects of gender (where females outnumbered the males) and age (where teens and young adults outnumbered the middle to late middlehood stage respondents). This could mean that females are more anxious and stress when using social media, especially to those who to teenagers. However, regardless of gender and age, respondents are stress in relation to its moderate and positive correlation after using the social media. The findings of the study imply how it could affect the personal and social life of a person as its health and psychological condition starts to be imbalance (Das & Sahu, 2011). Accordingly, social networking sites are becoming rampantly negative. These realistic conditions that are becoming obvious nowadays have been pervasive. Moreover, the factors that could have affected the stress and anxiety of individuals who are becoming addicts to social networks could be due to environmental, peer influences, and lack of sleep due to over attention to these networks like facebook (Das & Sahu, 2011). Accordingly, this could imply that the individuals especially the young ones like the teens could have already adopted a “facebook addiction disorder.” Zeldman (n.d.) had termed this in a more general way which is known as “Social Media Stress Syndrome.” Such could be diagnosed to people who overused facebook or other networking sites like twitter for more than an hour, and to use more time with these kinds of sites compared to doing a more important task like work or school related assignments or jobs (Das & Sahu, 2011; Hunco, Heigebert, & Loken, 2010). Nevertheless, individual’s relationship to others will also be affected when one tends to overused social networking sites. Regardless of how Twitter and Facebook could be helpful for educational information (Hunco, Heigebert, & Loken, 2010), the means of overusing them and in combination of disrespecting the private information of others and using them with cybercriminal activities could be used as major reasons that could not only affect the health condition of individuals like stress, but could affect one’s whole reputation and personality as well (Das & Hau, 2011). However, Zhang & Chong (2012) had explained that gays or bisexuals are the one who could be victims of cyberbullying in these social networks. Indeed, social networking could not only affect one’s stress to life, but could also affect the reputation and self-esteem of anybody regardless of different sexual orientation that one possesses. The findings of the study with regard to the effects of gender and age are consistent to the study that Malik (2009) has shared. Accordingly, females are found to love updating themselves through facebook everyday which could make them stressed since there were an approximate number of at least 69 percent of females compared to men who are only 39 percent. This would also go along to Chill Pill Survey which found how social media could produce stress (Malik, 2009). Moreover, the survey had also indicated that young age individuals that age from 18 years and above are prone to stress in relation to social media. The implications of this study in association to the findings of the present study indicate that females are more advisable to lessen their involvement in social networking. Shortcomings and Recommendations for Future Studies However, one could somehow interrogate the need for men to also lessen their time when it comes to computer games. Further studies must need to cover not just the social networking side, but also the factor of computer games if it could also affect the level of stress of an individual. The study had also interconnected their results to bisexuals and homosexuals based on the Zhang and Chong’s (2012) study; however, future studies must clarify more the sexual orientations of the respondents to know the factors that could affect the gender differences of females and males relative to stress on social media. Moreover, the present study is limited with proper monitoring to the surveys that the respondents had filled up because there were missing information and numbers that were skipped. Hence, future studies are recommended to give attention to the respondent’s survey forms after answering them. References Brunty, J. L., & Helenek, K. (2012). Social Media Investigation for Law Enforcement. Burlington, MA: Newnes. Das, B., & Sahoo, J. S. (2011). Social networking sites-A critical analysis of its impact on personal and social life. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 2(14), 222-228. Junco, R., Heigebert, G., & Loken, E. (2010). The effect of Twitter on college student engagement and grades. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 1-14. Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons, 53, 59-68. Kietzman, J. H., Hermkens, K., McCarthy, I. P., Silvestre, B. S. (2011). Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media. Business Horizons, 54, 241-251. Malik, S. (2009, November 29). NSW: Social media increasing stress levels. AAP General News Wire. Zeldman, S. (n.d.). Are you suffering from the Social Media Stress Syndrome? Retrieved from http://vaughanchamber.ca/wp-content/uploads/Social-Media-Stress.pdf Zhang, N., & Chong, E. S. K. (2012). Mitigation of minority stress via uses and gratification of social networking sites among Gay/Bisexual Men in Hongkong. Retrieved from http://www4.cuhk.edu.hk/icare/icare_ media/Projects/Research/2011/i.care_research_r14_11.pdf Read More