WBT Flipbooks

Hopelab & Well Being Trust 6 2 Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2017. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. https://www.childstats.gov/ameri- caschildren/health4.asp 3 See for example Twenge, J.M. (2017). iGen: Why today's super-connected kids are growing up less rebellious, more tolerant, less happy – and completely unprepared for adulthood. New York: Atria Books. 4 Rice, S.M. et al, 2014. "Online and Social Networking Interventions for the Treat- ment of Depression in Young People: A Systematic Review." Journal of Medical Internet Research 16(9). Social Media Use and Mental Well-being Recent reports of an increase in adolescent depression are deeply concerning. 2 Clearly there are a multitude of factors that may be contri- buting to this disturbing trend. One issue that many observers worry about is the possibility that young people's use of social media may be contributing to the rise in adolescent depression. 3 In addition, there are questions about whether social media is leading teens and young adults to feel "less than" their peers, whether they feel lonely and left out by seeing other friends together online, whether they are being victimized by negative comments that exacerbate negative emotions. These con- cerns are prompting much-needed research in this area, and highlighting the need to better understand both the wide variety of activities young people are engaging in on social media, and how those media are per- ceived by young people themselves. All the while, the "pull" of these social technologies for young people seems undeniable. This is leading some researchers, tech companies, and health advocates to explore social media's potential for spreading positive messages, as a key component of interventions to help young people coping with depression and other challenges. 4 Therefore this survey also sought to collect young people's descriptions of a wide variety of social media behaviors to begin to explore the associ- ation between types of social media experiences and mental well-being among teens and young adults. We have collected detailed information about how respondents describe using social media: how often they report checking it, how often they report posting, how frequently they say they take specific actions, whether they say they get positive or negative feedback from their followers, and how it makes them feel. • What proportion of youth say they have tried health-related mobile apps, and on what topics? How useful did they feel those apps were? • And how does use of digital health tools vary among young people, such as by age, gender, race/ethnicity, or sexual orientation? Introduction

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