social media is addictive
There’s always going to be people like that, especially on social media where you can be like no-one will know who you are cos you’re completely hidden. (P2, Leicester year 10, aged 14–15 years)
There are a lot of people who are nasty on social media or say things are actually too scared to say it to their face and it’s an easy way out really. (P4, Leicester, year 11, aged 15–16 years)
Then people take advantage of their being anonymous and then people just come and target you with loads of rude comments and that can make you feel really insecure. (P3, London, year 11, aged 15–16 years)
The adolescents in our study emphasized the anonymity of some forms of social media as being problematic. They recognised how such negative behaviour is facilitated by the ‘mask of the Internet’ and implied that this was synonymous with cowardice, as they reported that trolls say things to others that they would be too scared to say it to their face. They argued that social media
608 Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry 23(4)
provides a platform for such trolling behaviour as it allows people to be completely hidden so they can take advantage of being anonymous. Nonetheless, there was a general acceptance that this was the way of social media and that it is a cyberspace where there’s always going to be people like that and there are a lot of people who are nasty on social media – an almost ambivalent general way of viewing the world.
Theme 3: social media is addictive
Despite acknowledging that they were avid users of social media themselves, many argued that social media is addictive for some. Such excessive or compulsive use of social media was argued to be a negative consequence of the modern world by the adolescents, although again they did not self-identify in this way generally.
Some people can get addicted and feel like they have to stay on that website or social media. (P6, London, year 9, aged 13–14 years)
Particularly noteworthy here was that the adolescents often referred to the idea of addiction to social media with third-party attributions. In other words, when considering people being addicted to social media, they generally spoke about others some people rather than self-identifying as over- using these channels themselves. Furthermore, they recognised that there were social consequences to this addictive behaviour for those who did overuse social media as a replacement for quality time with friends and family.
Some people can’t survive without a phone. And they don’t like take time to talk to their families most of the time. (P1, London, year 8, aged 12–13 years)
Social media is like an online drug you can, it has good side effects and bad side effects. (P4, London, year 8, aged 12–13 years)
Of note was the extreme terms in which they described social media use by other adolescents. Phrases such as people can’t survive without their phone and social media is like an online drug demonstrated the severity of the perceived ‘addiction’. The suggestion presented was that social media was as addictive as substances and can be problematic for some people, as it takes away from time from their families which can have bad side effects. Notably, however, as these adolescents framed addiction as an attribution of others, they were arguably generalizing this perspective based on anecdotal evidence rather than using their own personal experiences as the benchmark for such claims.
On the rare occasions where they self-referenced their own social media use in terms of com- pulsive or excessive usage, limited sleep was the primary problematic consequence that they reported. They described instances whereby the constant connectivity to social media had an impact on their sleep and some did express personal insight into their dependence.
I feel like, um, cos I, I did, I had an experience of that with WhatsApp where lots of people were messaging at the time, I’d go to sleep at about 10 o’clock at night and then I felt the need, even when there was no-one messaging me just to keep checking and it did affect my sleep. (P2, Leicester year 11, aged 15–16 years)
Yeah, I think I’m pretty dependent on social media’ (P5, Leicester year 11, aged 15–16 years)
O’Reilly et al. 609
While the impact on young people and sleep was recognised, so too was the general dependence they felt. While it was usually attributed to third parties, the adolescents did report that they would keep checking to see if messages arrived during the night. Thus, the young people in the study did acknowledge that they used social media regularly, and some felt that they were pretty dependent on social media.
Discussion
Social media is now an integral part of adolescent life, with possible benefits and risks to mental wellbeing, and yet these are poorly understood. There has been a significant focus on the negative elements of the Internet, which has created a culture of fear around social media, despite some of the possible positive impact on social capital (Ahn, 2012). Nonetheless, the intrinsic adverse dis- courses embedded in the societal portrayal of social media use in adolescence are clearly re-enacted through the views of adolescents themselves. There is little work demonstrating adolescents’ perspectives on social media, particularly in terms of their views of social media and mental wellbeing, and this study has demonstrated that adolescents buy into the idea that social media is perceived as ‘dangerous’. In other words, it is evident from the views presented that young people are perpetuating the view ingrained in modern society at a political, social and individual levels that inherently social media has negative effects on mental wellbeing. Thus, they seem to reify the moral panic that has become endemic to contemporary digital discourses. Of interest particularly is that the young people spoke mostly anecdotally, generalizing about the risks to adolescents in a broad way, rather than reporting on their own personal experiences. Although there were some passing references to their own lives, mostly they preferred to talk about adolescents as a population in terms of their ideas about social media as a dangerous place. This indicates that they are reflecting the dominant discourses of social media without really questioning or challenging that rhetoric. Furthermore, it reflects that the harms being discussed are potential risks to adolescents, rather than actual experienced harms. This suggests that the young people themselves may not have necessarily experienced any negative consequences to their own mental health, although we cannot be certain, and in some cases, personal experiences were identified, but were rare.
The findings demonstrated that participants felt that social media directly causes ill-mental health such as depression and suicidal ideation, was addictive and exposed people to behaviours that impacted negatively on their emotional wellbeing, such as cyberbullying. Although some of the adolescents did draw on their own personal narratives, most of them framed their negative perspectives in anecdotal or generalized ways. This could reflect the ideological dilemma (Billig et al., 1988) faced by these young people in recognizing the extent to which they engaged with a medium, which they argued affected their sleep and created dependence, while they themselves were positioning it as ‘dangerous’ and negative. However, the view that social media is linked to sleep problems and addiction is recognised by clinical professionals and research. Studies have demonstrated that people can and do suffer from Internet addiction and sleep deprivation (Christakis & Moreno, 2009), as 90% of adolescents will use social media during the day and at night (Duggan & Smith, 2013), with 37% losing sleep because of it (Espinoza, 2011). This is exacerbated further by the likelihood of addiction to the mobile (cell) phone (Walsh, White, & Young, 2008). However, it must be acknowledged that while adolescents utilize the concept of ‘addiction’ when referring to online activity, this is not necessarily the case in a clinical sense (boyd, 2014). Although the young participants did not have a particularly accurate or detailed understanding of the meaning of positive mental health, consistent with previous research (see Dogra et al., 2012), they could articulate how social media use affected people in their age group.