"Sammenhengen mellom ungdommers hyppighet i bruk av sosiale medier og deres selvopplevde psykiske helse"

Previous research on the relationship between social media and mental health shows a lot of mixed results. The purpose of this study is therefore to further explore the relationship between youth’s social media use and their self-perceived mental health. The research question is: ”To what extent does youth’s social media use and online peer communication correlate with their self-perceived mental health?”. Data is based on a quantitative questionnaire with 2315 youths in eleventh grade from four counties in Norway. The questionnaire is made by researchers at the HEMIL-center of the University of Bergen as part of the project ”Dreamschool”. It was conducted in the autumn of 2016. The results show a minimal negative correlation of little importance between the amount youths made contact with friends through social media and symptoms of depression and anxiety, while there was a weak positive correlation between the amount youths made contact with friends and life satisfaction. The amount youths made contact with friends through social media, and the motivation they had to go online to communicate and maintain their relationship with existing friends explained 3 % of the variance in life satisfaction. The ANOVA-analysis showed that the youths that made the smallest amount of contact with friends through social media had the highest level of depression- and anxiety symptoms and the lowest level of life satisfaction, compared to the youths that made contact more often. This study indicates that contacting friends through social media mainly is a positive thing for youth’s mental health