Social media addiction taking toll on Vadodara teenagers

VADODARA: Remaining hooked to social media is taking a big toll on Vadodara teens’ mental health.
A study by a team from M S University’s Department of Psychology has revealed that the teens are suffering from low self-esteem and other mental health problems as they spend time creating fake identities, expressing fake emotions or exaggerating their real self.The study was conducted on 201 teenagers between the age group of 15 to 17 years from different English medium schools
The research found that there is a discrepancy between virtual impressions and real self amongst teenagers using various social media platforms which in turn is affecting their mental health.
“We had taken students from class IX to class XI as sample to determine the correlation between discrepancy between real and virtual self and self-esteem and correlation because of this discrepancy with their mental health,” said Kiransinh Rajput, who along with Kashyap Rajput – both assistant professors at the Department of Education had guided the study conducted by eight third-year students of education psychology.
The study revealed that there was a difference between the virtual identities and the real identities amongst a majority of teenagers.
Also, many teenagers over-estimate or exaggerate themselves on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Some teenagers ask their friends and siblings to like their posts or exaggerate their friendships and emotions.
“In teenagers, social comparisons are high. They want to impress their peers. So at times, if they are at a tea stall they would fake their location as sitting inside a coffee chain. They might be at home but they would fake their locations as being in Goa enjoying a summer holiday or weekend break,” he said.
But as they create a fake virtual impression, the teenagers are also becoming victims of anxiety, emotional instability, lower life satisfaction and lower adjustment leading towards poor mental health.
“Since, they have presented a virtual identity which is different from their real self, they face constant fear of getting exposed leading to extreme anxiety,” he said.
“Similarly, they themselves get confused about their own identity resulting in adjustment problems with others in the society as well as themselves. And since their virtual identity is exaggerated, they are not satisfied with their real identity and behave aggressively – often losing their tempers and becoming emotional unstable,” said Rajput.
While those teenagers who showcase their real self, have good mental health and their self esteem is also high, the study has also revealed that male teenagers tend to present themselves in a different way on social media platforms compared to their female counterparts.
“Since social comparisons are high amongst teenagers, male students often want to show themselves more rich, impressive, smarter and active,” he added.