The Impact of Social Media on Mental Health of Adolescents: A Research Proposal

As social media use becomes more prevalent for teenagers and late adolescents alike, researchers continue to analyze its associations with mental health and social connectedness. Most studies in this area take a correlational, self-report approach. However, correlational, self-report research neglects to assess cause-and-effect relationships, thus rendering it difficult to ascertain whether social media use causes changes in users’ well-being or if social media users already differ on certain variables prior to their use. After analyzing previous studies, this paper discusses their limitations and proposes future research to assess the potential causal relationship of social media use with mental health. The proposal addresses gaps in the literature by calling for experimental research on adolescents’ social media use