Contrary to popular belief, a six-year study reveals that increased use of social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok does not lead to higher rates of anxiety and depression among young people. Following 800 children from age 10 to 16, the study found that symptoms of mental health issues remained stable irrespective of social media habits.
Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, Volume 19, Issue 1, Page 79-105, May 2023.
Publication date: June 2023Source: Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, Volume 149Author(s): Rosalind D. Butterfield, Melanie Grad-Freilich, Jennifer S. Silk
Click here for the article published by Psychology Today. Our understanding of OCD is enhanced by focusing on its distinctive characteristics, while also considering larger worldly influences. Continue reading … Disclaimer: The content of this article has not been checked or verified. Proceed at your own risk.
BackgroundSeveral large-scale studies and reviews have reported both negative and positive associations of social media use with well-being, suggesting that the findings are more complex and need more nuanced study. Moreover, there is little or no exploration of how social media use in adolescence influences flourishing, a more all-encompassing construct beyond well-being, including six sub-domains (i.e., happiness, meaning and purpose, physical and mental health, character, close social relationships, and financial stability). This paper aims to fill this gap by understanding how adolescents might flourish through social media activities by fulfilling the basic needs pointed out by the Self-Determination Theory, i.e., relatedness, autonomy, and competence.MethodsThe study is drawn on cross-sectional data collected from 1,429 Swiss adolescents (58.8% females, Mage = 15.84, SDage = 0.83) as part of the HappyB project in Spring 2022. Self-reported measures included the Harvard Adolescent Flourishing scale, positive and negative online social experiences, self-disclosure on social media, and social media inspiration. Control variables included, among others, self-esteem, ill-being, and personality.ResultsAfter applying Bonferroni’s correction, results of the hierarchical regression analyses showed that positive social media experiences (β = 0.112, p 
Research has shown that mindfulness can reduce students’ negative emotions associated with high-stakes tests and thereby improve test performance. This study explored the association between mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) and high-risk math test scores of middle school students, which is noticeably slim in the domain of mathematics education, through a mediating process involving math-specific test anxiety and math self-efficacy. Using data from a sample of 45 students, age 12–13, we found empirical support for a significant positive correlation between mindfulness and middle school students’ math achievement. Participants listened to a mindfulness audio every other week before a mathematics test. Weekly mathematics test scores, student group discussion data, and in-depth interview data were analyzed to explore how mindfulness affected students’ mathematics test performance, which showed a statistically significant improvement after mindfulness compared to mathematics achievement without the intervention. Our results indicate that mindfulness can relieve mathematics anxiety symptoms, including physiological manifestations, test-unrelated thinking and worries, and problem-solving obstacles caused by mathematics anxiety. Also, mindfulness, especially its non-judgmental attitude, positively affects students’ mathematical self-efficacy. The current research provides evidence of the mindfulness intervention’s efficacy for improving middle school mathematics test performance but also identifies the complexities of implementing it with large numbers of students.
Conditions:  Anxiety;  DepressionInterventions:  Behavioral: Chatbot;  Behavioral: Control (book)Sponsors:  University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw;  Ministry of Science and Higher Education, PolandCompleted
Click here for the article published by Frontiers in Psychiatry. Youth with anxiety and obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) rarely access exposure therapy, an evidence-based treatment. Known barriers include transportation, waitlists, and provider availability. Efforts to improve access to exposure require an understanding of the process that families take to find therapists, yet no prior studies have …
Click here for the article published by Frontiers in Psychiatry. Increased symptoms of depression and anxiety were sustained at the later stage of the pandemic in healthy adolescents. Replication of these findings with a larger sample size would be required to draw firm conclusions. Continue reading … Disclaimer: The content of this article has not …
An NIMH-supported study suggests that adolescents living through the COVID-19 pandemic may be experiencing more anxiety and depression symptoms and accelerated brain aging.
