Individual differences underlying the relationship between mental health and social media amongst adolescents

在过去的25年里，年轻人（16-24奥尔兹）的抑郁和焦虑增加了70%。可能导致这一增长的一个因素是社交媒体的出现，特别是考虑到社交媒体的大多数用户是年轻人。关于社交媒体使用与心理健康问题之间的联系，目前存在广泛的争论，但目前的文献尚无定论。这种模糊不清的部分原因是该领域的方法问题。例如，许多文献依赖于自我报告数据，这些数据往往不准确，并且使用相关分析，无法确定社交媒体与心理健康之间的任何关系。该项目将通过应用先进的方法学技术来克服这些方法学问题，以建立对社交媒体与心理健康关系的微妙理解。此外，该项目将加深我们对社交媒体使用的影响的理解，以借鉴现有的心理学理论。精神病理学的认知模型指出，个体具有偏向其社会信息处理的认知模型。这个模型是我们理解抑郁和焦虑的基础，在这个项目中，我将试图将这个理论应用到社交媒体上，看看认知风格是否会影响社交媒体上信息的解释。我的项目目标包括：1.探索参与社交媒体的数量和类型如何与心理健康结果联系起来。评估认知的个体差异是否调节社交媒体使用和情绪之间的关系。为了探索这些目标，我将进行两项研究。第一项将是对年轻人的纵向研究，在此期间，我将使用下载到参与者移动的手机上的应用程序收集日常生活中社交媒体使用和情绪的详细数据。将对这些数据进行分析，以确定可能是保护性的还是有害的使用模式。我还将测量社会认知风格，以探索认知风格的个体差异是否会影响社交媒体使用与心理健康之间的关系。这将提供社会认知风格作为有害社交媒体使用的假定风险因素的第一个证据，使用客观措施，可用于识别未来的“风险”个体。 第二项研究将是一项实验室研究，参与者将与模拟的社交媒体网站互动。这将使我能够操纵参与者接触的内容，并检查他们的情绪是如何受到影响的。在这项研究中，参与者还将使用脑电图（EEG）测量他们的大脑活动，以了解与情绪相关的神经生物标志物如何受到社交媒体信息内容的影响。这项研究将为社交媒体反应的个体差异的认知和神经机制提供新的实验证据。这个新颖而雄心勃勃的项目将提供高质量的数据，以探索可能解释个人对社交媒体使用影响的脆弱性的潜在重要风险因素。重要的是，博士学位还将提供证据，为制定个性化干预措施提供信息，以减轻社交媒体的任何不利影响。

Depression and anxiety in young people (16-24 year olds) have increased by 70% in the past 25 years. One factor that may contribute to this rise is the emergence of social media, especially given that most users of social media are young people. There is currently a widespread debate as to the connection between social media use and mental health problems, but the current literature is inconclusive. This ambiguity is partly due to methodological issues in the field. For example, much of the literature relies on self-report data which is often inaccurate and uses correlational analyses which can not establish the direction of any relationship between social media and mental health. This project will overcome these methodological issues by applying advanced methodological techniques to establish a nuanced understanding of social media-mental health relationships. Additionally, this project will deepen our understanding of the impact of social media use is to draw upon existing psychological theories. The cognitive model of psychopathology states that individuals have cognitive models which bias their processing of social information. This model is foundational to our understanding of depression and anxiety, and in this project I will seek to apply this theory to social media and see whether cognitive style impacts the interpretation of information on social media.The objectives of my project include: 1. Exploring how the quantity and type of engagement with social media is linked to mental health outcomes over time.2. Assessing whether individual differences in cognition modulate the relationship between social media use and mood. In order to explore these objectives, I will conduct 2 studies. The first will be a longitudinal study In young people during which I will collect detailed data on social media use and mood in everyday life using an app downloaded to participants' mobile phones. These data will be analysed to identify patterns of use that may be protective or harmful. I will also measure social cognitive style to explore whether individual differences in cognitive style impact the relationshipbetween social media use and mental health. This will provide the first evidence of social cognitive style as a putative risk factor for harmful social media use using an objective measure, which could be applied to identify "at-risk" individuals in the future. The second study will be a laboratory study in which participants will interact with a simulated social media site. This will enable me to manipulate the content that participants are exposed to and examine how their mood is impacted. During this study, participants will also have their brain activity measured using electroencephalogram (EEG) to see how emotion-related neural biomarkers are affected by the content of social media information. This study will provide novel experimental evidence of the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying individual differences in responses to social media. This novel and ambitious project will provide high quality data to explore potentially important risk factors that may explain individual's vulnerability to effects of social media use. Importantly, the PhD would also provide evidence to inform the development of individualised interventions to mitigate any detrimental effects of social media.