Barthorpe, A., Winstone, L., Mars, B., Moran, P., (2020) Is social media screen time really
associated with poor adolescent mental health? A time use diary study. Journal of
Affective Disorders, 274, 864-870

Introduction:
Social media has become a popular form for people to communicate and now a day’s adolescents have grown up in a world where social media had been present. Social media is use among adolescents every day and the usage has rapidly increased over the 16 years. They said that findings from several studies have suggested that social media usage may be associated with poor mental health in adolescents. Their question was whether social media usage is more intensively by females and may it be an important contributor to the gender difference. They used cross-sectional questionnaire data derived from the Millennium Cohort study and they found out that the time spent on social media at age 14 was associated with depressive symptoms and a stronger association on females than males. They will use time use diaries to provide a less biased measure of social media usage.

Method:
They used a cross-sectional data from sixth sweep. 13-15. They interviewed about 11.884 individuals and their sample comprised od 2,864 13 years old, 8,860 14-year-old, and 160 15-year old’s. About 10,337 were invited to submit time us diaries and they performed a 48-time period, and they were recorded on paper, online or via an app. Social media TUD data were available for 4,032 participants. Social media use Time use Diaries or TUD were used to record time spent on social media and they were explored separately for weekday and weekend use. Self-harm, the participants would respond yes or no questions to the following question “In the past year have you hurt yourself on purpose in any way?” Depressive symptoms were assessed using the short mood and feeling questionnaire. Self -esteem was assessed using the 5-item shortened Rosenberg scaled measuring self-satisfaction and the responders were asked to indicate agreement or disagreement with five worded statements.

Results:
They followed adjustments for cofounders, a greater amount of time that was spent on social media was associated with an increased risk of self-harm in females. Their finding was similar for weekday and weekend use

Discussions:
Based on the novel time use diary data they saw that the greater amount time spent on social media was indeed associated with increased levels of self- harm and depression. They also found lower levels of self-esteem in females. Their finding was consistent with the previous research that demonstrated negative associations between social media screen-time. Gender differences were demonstrated in the study and it was consistent and there was evidence of negative association between social media screen-time and mental heal generally more common in females than males. Even though females were overrepresented in the study and it indicated that female adolescents reported to spend more time on social media and reported to have poorer mental health than the males. The found out reasons as to why the difference in screen time are unclear, the increased risk of poor mental health in female adolescents compared to males was established and it was a variety of contributing factors which
included biological, environmental, pressure to conform to societal expectations of body image. They also found out that chatting or interacting with friends on social media platforms on a school day at the age of 10 was associated with lower happiness and poorer mental well being in females. They also found out that there have been no prospective studies exploring the relationship between social media use and self-harm. They found out instead that it was more likely that they would turn on social media for sources for comfort and support, and it was possible; t that they were viewing self-harm or suicide related imagery that was posted by other on social media. Their finding was inconsistent on demonstrating negative associations between retrospectively self-reported social media screen time and wellbeing.