INTRODUCTION

Social media has taken its place in today’s generation. At this age, anywhere we go, we

see people scrolling through their phones, liking and commenting endlessly day and night. Jacob

Amedie said that it is undeniable that social media played an important role in impacting our

culture, our economy and our overall view of the world. “Social media is a new forum that bring

people to exchange idea, connect with, relate to, and mobilize for a cause, seek advice, and offer

guidance” (Amedie, 2015).

There are so many platforms of social media available to anybody and one of them is

Facebook. According to Elsa Shearer and Jeffrey Gottfried, Facebook, by far, still leads every

other social media site as a source of news (Shearer & Gottfried, 2017). Philippine population is

hooked with everything they did on Facebook. They had seen trends popping here and there, get

updates and news from so many sources, and most importantly, connect with people from different

parts of the globe. These connections are observed in different ways, and having this connection

had become a vital factor in one’s perspective in life. Social media had become some sort of a

public diary wherein anybody shared their emotions, opinions, rants, and grudges, and the like.

Having reachable audience is a great opportunity to spread words and information. That being

said, there armultiple Facebook pages and posts that may or may not be misleading and corruptive

of important information.

According to the report, 95 percent of teens (12 – 17) used the internet, and 81 percent of

them used social media sites. Facebook is by far the most heavily adopted social site, with 94

percent of social media teens reporting that they had a profile there (Sterling, 2013). Facebook

users, sometimes, do not pay attention on what they post or share as long as they connect with

somebody. They engaged themselves to photos, video posts, posts, pages and groups which they
feel belongingness. Based on observation, most who did such thing are adolescents. These

adolescents showed the need to fit-in, to measured up with others, and to blend in, are going

through a risky stage of development as they are susceptible to many things. Adolescents were

generally easy to make judgments, quick to react and implicitly concluded on what they see.” In

general, teens specifically struggled to keep their cool in social situations” (Underwood, 2013). In

their quick judgement, these adolescents had the tendencies to let almost everything on Facebook

influenced their minds and caused them to changed their behavior and perception.

Mental health awareness has been spreading all over the world, and even so in our country.

It enlightened and recognized the importance of mental health in every individual. One of the most

trending topics in mental health was depression. As psychology majors who belong to the

adolescent age, researchers observed that many adolescents are vocal about their current feelings

or emotion. Every now and then, this may be observed through different social platforms,

especially on Facebook. Some are seen sharing posts, and even writing comments about what they

felt or how they relate to these kinds of posts or articles. There are some posts that were vague or

implicit such as adolescents proclaimed that their emotional struggles are depression because of

the seen post about having the said symptoms.