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

年轻人（16-24岁）的抑郁和焦虑在过去25年中增加了70%。导致这种增长的一个因素可能是社交媒体的出现，尤其是考虑到大多数社交媒体用户都是年轻人。目前，关于社交媒体使用与心理健康问题之间的联系存在广泛的争论，但目前的文献尚无定论。这种模糊性部分是由于该领域的方法问题。例如，许多文献依赖于自我报告数据，这往往是不准确的，并使用相关性分析，不能确定社交媒体和心理健康之间的任何关系的方向。该项目将通过应用先进的方法技术来建立对社交媒体与心理健康关系的细致理解，从而克服这些方法问题。此外，这个项目将加深我们对社交媒体使用的影响的理解，借鉴现有的心理学理论。精神病理学的认知模型认为，个体的认知模式会影响其对社会信息的处理。这个模型是我们理解抑郁和焦虑的基础，在这个项目中，我将寻求将这一理论应用于社交媒体，看看认知风格是否会影响对社交媒体上信息的解释。我的项目目标包括：1。随着时间的推移，探索使用社交媒体的数量和类型与心理健康结果的关系。评估认知的个体差异是否会调节社交媒体使用与情绪之间的关系。为了探索这些目标，我将进行2项研究。第一个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，以确定可能具有保护作用或有害的使用模式。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，使用客观测量，可以应用于识别未来的“风险”个体。第二项研究将是一个实验室研究，参与者将与一个模拟的社交媒体网站进行互动。这将使我能够操纵参与者接触到的内容，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。本研究将为社交媒体反应中个体差异背后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易受社交媒体使用影响的潜在重要风险因素。重要的是，博士学位还将为个性化干预措施的发展提供证据，以减轻社交媒体的任何有害影响。

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.