The Relationship between YouTube Interaction, Depression, and Social Anxiety By Meredith Johnson Introduction The media I would like to research is YouTube with the effects of social anxiety and depression. YouTube is a site that allows anyone with an account to upload videos of anything deemed appropriate by the people that run the site. This includes anything from makeup tutorials to homemade music videos. It also allows people to leave comments on any of the videos that they view. This is where the effects of social anxiety and depression come in, which are described as the fear of being judged in a social setting, and overall just feeling bad about yourself. My interest in the relationship between YouTube and these effects doesn t come from a first hand experience, but just from reading hateful comments on videos aimed at other people. Even though I ve never experienced a hateful comment directed at me, some of the ones I read were so awful it was hard not to feel personally affected. This is an important effect to study because we often hear about people committing suicide due to hateful comments that people post I ve even read specific comments that tell the creator of the video to kill themselves. I think it s also important to understand why people think it s okay to post something like that. Some could argue the animosity has something to do with it, but when multiple people tell someone that they are awful and that they should kill themselves, that person might start to believe it. My research would be useful because it would take a crack at understanding why so
many young people today are depressed. In return it would benefit not only the people who suffer from depression due to YouTube, but their loved ones as well. With the rapid increase of technology available to the adolescent population, opinions are able to run wild. This along with the option of posting a comment anonymously causes questions about the media s effect on people's well being: What is the effect of YouTube on depression and social anxiety? Literature Review To prepare for my own research, I consulted three studies. The first study was a survey that was sent to 76 nursing students in Samar, Philippines (Labrague, 2014). This survey was conducted in the first couple months of 2014. The survey they received was a self report questionnaire that consisted of three parts: Demographic Information, Facebook Intensity Scale, and Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale. The research in this study measured the intensity of Facebook use, as in how emotionally attached the subjects were to the material on their Facebook. Then from there, they measured how much the subject s level of Facebook intensity affected their overall level of depression and anxiety. The results of the study were that the intensity of Facebook use isn t directly related to the emotional states studied, but the amount of time on Facebook increases the depression and anxiety scores. In their results the researchers talked about how Facebook intensity, which is how emotionally attached one is to the material they post on Facebook, doesn t correlate with higher scores of depression and social anxiety. The researchers measured Facebook intensity with an eight question survey that asked about their active engagement, emotional connection, and how
integrated it is in their lives. The only thing that correlated with higher scores of these health conditions was increased time spent on Facebook. I find the first half of these results quite surprising because it would make sense for someone who is very emotionally attached to everything they post on Facebook to suffer more from these health conditions. The other half of the results is still important because it shows that just by being online you are more susceptible to damaging your emotional well being. You don t even have to have emotional tie ups to the things you post online, you just have to immerse yourself in the media to run the risk of suffering from social anxiety and depression. When it comes to how they measured these results, the researchers made a couple of questionable decisions. First off they only surveyed 76 college students, which causes a problem in applying the results they found to the general public. Seventy six people isn t enough to draw conclusions about all Facebook users, which is roughly one billion and growing. Only surveying college students is a problem because these students are more educated, have the financial means to get a higher education, and are between age groups. The results you find with college students can t be applied to all Facebook users. The last questionable decision the researchers made was in their conclusion when they stated that due to these results, parents need to monitor their children's Facebook use. They can t make this claim because this research was conducted on college students, not children who need parental supervision, which wasn t measured in this study. The next study was a survey that was conducted during the summer of 2010, more specifically, August to September (Pea, Nass, Meheula, Rance, Kumar, 2012). The survey consisted of 3,461 North American girls ages 8 12. The survey was conducted through
SurveyMonkey which was linked through Discovery Girls magazine, which has an audience of 8 12 year old girls. The research in this study looked at how much technology these 8 12 year old girls had available to them, how much time they spent online compared to face to face communication, and how much time they spent media multitasking, all in hopes of seeing what affects their social well being. In this study they defined social well being as having good offline relationships with friends, good relationships with their parents, and feeling overall accepted socially among their peers. By gathering the girls responses, the results concluded that the only correlation found was how large amounts of media multitasking led to negative social well being in young girls. After reading about this survey and what they were measuring, I didn t find the results surprising. This survey looked at whether media multitasking affected the well being of 8 12 year old girls, and I think it s quite obvious that the more time you spend on multiple media sites, the more social anxiety and depression you might suffer from. One part that was interesting because it went against other research I looked at was that they stated that increased media multitasking caused more intense feeling towards things online. Other research I found said otherwise, but that was a study done on college students not 8 12 year old girls. Overall nothing from the results was striking, or anything I didn t expect to find. This research had two shortcomings when it came to the way they conducted their survey. First, they chose a cross sectional survey, which is a one time survey, instead of a longitudinal survey, which is repeated multiple times to achieve more accurate results. Second, they interviewed 3,461 8 12 year old girls across the country, which is good because they interviewed their targeted population, but not good enough because they interviewed only a
group of girls who read one type of magazine. They can make claims for 8 12 year olds because that is actually who they measured, instead of measuring college students, but it s not an accurate representation of all 8 12 year old girls because not all girls read this magazine. In the last study I looked at, 319 undergraduate students completed a wide range of online surveys in 2013 for course credit or extra credit when it came to participating in this study (Becker, Alzahabi, Hopwood, 2013). With their answers, the researchers were able to collect data. There was a health questionnaire to measure the students level of depression and anxiety, and there was a Media Multitasking Index Questionnaire to determine how much time the students spent using different types of media. Results showed media multitasking was a predictor of both depression and social anxiety. Overall, media multitasking is a risk factor for depression, social anxiety, and an overall negative well being. I found it interesting that the more time spent media multitasking led to higher levels of depression and social anxiety. Though I don t find these results surprising, it s still interesting to have actual data confirm theories you have. These results aren t surprising because people who constantly check and post things on multiple media sites in a short amount of time clearly care what others are saying or thinking about them. If these people are so emotionally attached, then they are more likely to suffer from social anxiety and depression. Overall it s not super surprising data, but it s very interesting that there has been a connection found between media multitasking and people s well being.
This research runs into a few shortcomings, first they used a cross sectional survey, and second they only interviewed a small number of college students. If they wanted more accurate results they should have used a longitudinal study, because they survey people repeatedly. Using a longitudinal survey in this case would ve been smart since they re making a dangerous claim that media multitasking, a thing that people do frequently, causes increased social anxiety and depression. Next they should ve interviewed more than 319 college students because that is not a large enough population to base results off of. Choosing college students was also not a great choice because they can t be compared with everyone. College students are more educated, have the financial means to get a higher education, and are between adult and adolescent. They also said they measured personality characteristics, social anxiety and depression, along with overall media multitasking, but all I found that was measured was their media multitasking. That overall raises some red flags about how accurate this data is. In summary, media multitasking for long periods of time is shown to correlate with higher scores of depression and social anxiety. The similarities throughout the three studies all pertain to increased time spent using media, but one difference was that one study found a connection between Facebook intensity and these health conditions, while another study measuring the same thing did not. Though none of these studies looked at the effect YouTube has on these health conditions, my research coincides with these studies findings because YouTube is all about posting videos that have some level of emotional intensity. A lot of time is put forth on this media site, all in hopes that someone will watch and like their video. With being liked and viewed as its main purpose, it would be hard for someone to not experience some level of social anxiety or depression at some point while using YouTube.
Hypothesis Given what previous studies found, I hypothesize that adolescents will score higher on depression and social anxiety tests after spending large amounts of time interacting with videos and other adolescents on YouTube. Methods To conduct my research and test my hypothesis, I constructed a cross sectional survey and sent it to my Facebook and Twitter friends. I ended up getting a total of 22 respondents, but I was only able to use 9 of the respondents results because the rest of them didn t fill out the survey completely. When I sent my survey out I made sure all possible participants knew that my survey was completely confidential. Since some of my questions ask about personal experiences that may be difficult to discuss, I made sure it was clear that my survey was voluntary, and at any point they could exit the survey if they felt uncomfortable. The questions I asked in my survey can be broken down into three questions about YouTube use, two questions regarding self esteem, and three questions pertaining to YouTube comments. More specifically, I asked for how often they post to YouTube, and what specifically they post. I asked about what they post because I was curious if posting personal videos had a greater effect on self esteem. Next I had them rate their self esteem based off two scenarios How you feel when people are watching your video, and how you feel when someone leaves a negative comment. To measure their self esteem I used Rosenberg s Self Esteem Scale, and gave them the choices of: I feel that I am a person of worth, at least on an equal plane with others, on the whole, I am satisfied with myself, I am able to do things as well as most other people, I feel I do not have much to be proud of, and all in all, I am inclined to feel that I am a failure. My goal was to gauge how often people
were posting to YouTube to see how their self esteem ranged due to positive and negative reviews to their videos, then see if the negativity lead them to stop posting overall. Results I found that there weren t any strong relationships between my participants responses. I was able to make connections between some of the questions, such as, out of the 7 participants who said they read all of their comments, only 4 of them said that negative comments discouraged them from posting. I found this connection interesting because I expected to find that almost all participants were discouraged from posting due to negative comments. It would ve helped prove my hypothesis in that the negativity on YouTube causes increased social anxiety and depression. Two other questions had results that linked back to my hypothesis both being about self esteem. When asked about how they felt after seeing people watching their videos, 4 of the participants responded to feeling like a person of worth, while 4 others responded as to feeling satisfied with themselves. This showed that 8 out of 9 participants ranked in the top two levels on Rosenberg s Self Esteem Scale after seeing people watch their videos. When asked about how they felt after reading negative comments on their videos, the participants self esteem dropped to not feeling like a person of worth. The results came out to only 2 participants feeling satisfied with themselves, 3 feeling like they can do things as well as most others, 3 feeling like they don t have much to be proud of, and 1 person feeling like they are a failure which is the lowest level on the scale. Overall, the data I gathered wasn t surprising in anyway, but it was important because it helped make connections between YouTube, social anxiety, and depression, which was my purpose from the beginning. Discussion
The data I collected from my survey helped me answer my research question and hypothesis to a fair extent because my results backed my assumptions, but didn t prove anything substantial. I found that my participants post to YouTube a very average amount, and usually it s personal videos for fun, such as videos of them singing. I also found that on average the have high self esteem when people are watching their videos, and low self esteem when people post negative things, which usually discourages them from posting. My study had both strengths and weaknesses, which may be caused by how I conducted my research. Some things I did well were that I got right to the point with my questions they directly related to my hypothesis and research question. Since my questions were very direct, it allowed me to see connections between the participants results more easily. With all that being said, there are a few things that were not so good about my research. First off I only got 9 responses that were usable, which is not nearly enough participants to draw conclusions from. Another shortcoming is the fact that I posted these to Facebook and Twitter where I can t control the demographics, therefore making it hard to make conclusions about the participants. If I were to do it again I would make sure that I got results from a lot more participants participants who I knew the age and gender of. I realized that conducting research is a lot harder than it seems. At the beginning I thought I would just create a survey, send it out, and then collect a lot of responses. After creating a survey and collecting very minimal responses, I realized that that is not the case when it comes to collecting research. I also expected very one sided results that would agree with my hypothesis, but some of my results ranged. The significance of what I learned in this research is that there is a slight connection between YouTube, social anxiety, and depression that is worth pursuing with more extensive
research. I believe that anyone with the means to conduct a more extensive survey over the course of a couple years could use the results I ve found. By taking this research one step further, researchers might be able to prevent suicides among teens, or just be able to inform the public about the negative aspects of using YouTube and other social media sites. References Becker, Mark W.; Alzahabi, Reem; Hopwood, Christopher J. (2013). Media Multitasking Is Associated with Symptoms of Depression and Social Anxiety. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 16(2), 132 135. Labrague, Leodoro J. (2014). Facebook use and adolescents' emotional states of depression, anxiety, and stress. Health Science Journal, 8(1), 80 89. Pea, Roy; Nass, Clifford; Meheula, Lyn; Rance, Marcus; Kumar, Aman; et al. (2012). Media Use, Face to Face Communication, Media Multitasking, and Social Well Being Among 8 to 12 Year Old Girls. Developmental Psychology, 48(2), 327 336.