ILA #1

How does social media affect people’s mental health? The use of social media, among all
age groups, is increasing every day. There is also a spotlight being shown on the subject of
mental health and how these disorders or psychological problems come about, how they can be
treated, and why so many people seem susceptible. In an effort to answer or explain that
question, Leah Asmelash wrote an article for CNN and Anya Kamenetz wrote an article for NPR.
I simply typed “social media and mental health” into Google and looked through the results. I
decided on these two sources because they were articles that came from established, well known
and respected news outlets. These sources were also credible because they seemed to remain
unbiased and were written for the general public.
In the CNN article, written by Leah Asmelash, the focus was on teenagers mental health
and how social media plays a role. With this topic, it is difficult to distinct if social media usage
is a direct cause of these mental health issues or if its one of many contributing factors. This
article explains that frequent use of social media disrupts activities such as sleep and exercise
and increases exposure to cyber bullying. She also discusses the differences between boys and
girls, and shows that girls experience greater psychological distress than boys due to their greater
usage of social media.
The NPR article, written by Anya Kamenetz, dives into why so many more teens and
young adults, mainly girls, are reporting being depressed, anxious, even suicidal. She discusses
three different points of views of researchers to give a well rounded look at this topic of social
media versus mental health. The karios of both of these articles are crucial. These were both
written at a time when the discussion of mental health and social media, both separately and
together, was very prevalent and still is.
This topic is important to me because mental health is a very serious thing and we should
be doing all that we can to help those who are struggling with a psychological disorder get better,
learn to cope, find help, or learn that they are not alone. As a psychology major, the idea of
researching psychological disorders and or problems related to mental health and how they may
come about is very interesting to me. I hope to gain a more in depth understanding of social
media’s effect on all of us. This research matters because almost everyone is involved in social
media and people are using it more and more frequently. This means that everyone is being
affected in some way, and through research we can find just how much and whether that effect is
negative or positive.

Works Cited
Asmelash, Leah. “Social Media Use May Harm Teens' Mental Health by Disrupting Positive
Activities, Study Says.” CNN, Cable News Network, 15 Aug. 2019, www.cnn.com/2019/08/13/
health/social-media-mental-health-trnd/index.html.
Kamenetz, Anya. “The Scientific Debate Over Teens, Screens And Mental Health.” NPR, NPR,
27 Aug. 2019, www.npr.org/2019/08/27/754362629/the-scientific-debate-over-teens-screens-
and-mental-health.