BIO

Julia Johansen comes from Jacksonville, Florida and is a second year Marketing and International Affairs student. Long-term, Julia is interested in combining her two majors to pursue a career in international business and marketing. She is currently involved in the Brazilian Student Association as Project Manager and has previous experience in being staff of a non-profit, in an organization called CISV for many years. In her free time, she enjoys being with her friends and spending time outdoors.

Students and Social Media: Teen Social Media Use in Relation to Happiness

Abstract

As teenagers continue to participate in social media, researchers believe that there are significant effects to their mental well-being, more than anticipated. To observe this, our study transcribed interviews and video diaries as well as transferred qualtrics survey responses into a spreadsheet to further analyze the data. This process was done in a case study fashion focusing on 30 subjects to understand the details surrounding their mental states, habits, and their relationship with social media. Three different correlation tests were performed; reported Average Life Happiness versus reported Average Social Media (SM) Happiness, reported Time Spent on SM versus reported Average Life Happiness, and reported Time Spent on SM versus reported SM Happiness. The correlation between Average Life Happiness and Average SM Happiness found a moderately strong correlation with an R² = 0.50. The other 2 correlation tests found weak correlations between the variables with R² values of 0.13 and 0.04. We believe that these results, while not being significantly strong, will highly contribute to the ongoing research of new findings on the relationship between mental health and social media as it allows future researchers to approach this inquiry through different means.

Keywords: mental health, social media, teenagers