Children and Potential Harm
Research Question
Children using social media are more likely to acquire mental health disorders as compared to children not engaging in social media.
Hypothesis
Hypothesis 1: Children exposed to social media at a young age of fewer than 5 years develop higher tendencies of mental disorders especially aggression.
Null Hypothesis: Social media does not play a role in the development of negative mental health in children aged below the age of 5 years.
Background
Social media has been linked to detrimental effects on the mental health of children and young adults. The safety of children is particularly not guaranteed on social media. In England, a 14-year-old girl committed suicide after viewing some self-harming images on Instagram (Glazzard & Stones, 2018). The use of the internet has on the increase in the past decade with internet use beginning at a young age. This is changing the way that children engage and interact with each other. Children are often able to gain access to lots of information and advice at a rapid rate. A study in the UK highlighted that most young people are aware of the dangers and have ways by which to keep safe from the dangers posed. However, children under the age of 5 years do not have that capacity.
Various issues arise with children beginning to use social media at a young age. To begin with, there is a high risk of coming into contact with cyberbullying and sex predators over the internet. This can lead to the development of conditions such as anxiety, stress, and even the onset of depression from an early point in life. One of the most immediate impacts of using social media for children at a young age is the substitution of family time for social media use (Campbell, 2019). One of the factors that are leading to the early use of social media is early access to electronic devices that can connect to the internet.
Moreover, children below the age of 5 require lots of physical, emotional, and mental support to develop healthily. The age of 3 to 5 years is particularly important as the child begins interacting with other students at school, and these experiences are important in the formation of personality. According to Lumen (n.d.), the ages between 2 and 5 years are crucial for physical, social or personal, language, and cognitive. Children at this stage should be exposed to the outside environment for an all-rounded development, especially in the social aspects. Negative experiences can affect their outlook on the social aspects of life, leading to an altered personality. Moreover, the attachment that the child develops at this stage helps them to securely navigate the world with a feeling of trust. With the increased use of social media, there is less of this attachment leading to a child that has less trust, especially towards the family.
Start Date, Researchers, and N
The research start date is 1st February 2020. The research will be conducted by myself and assisted by various professionals. As such, this is inter-professional study research, which will incorporate pediatric psychologists and nurse practitioners. Parents are also a crucial part of the study as they will provide some relevant information that is necessary for the research. As a result, the research will be able to cover larger groups, enable growth through understanding and knowledge acquisition at different levels, and possible development of synergy to enable a better quality of work and achievement of greater collaborative goals.
The study aims at studying a minimum of 40 participants of children in the early childhood phase of fewer than 5 years old who fulfill the desired criteria for the counterbalance. The estimated power analysis of the study is about 99%. The data collection process will end at the point where data from 40 participants. The participants will be balanced to meet the two groups necessary for the study. The groups include the participants exposed to social media and the participants that are not exposed to social media. The balance will be aimed at a 50-50 distribution, and as such, the collection of data will continue until there are twenty participants in each group. Only the first twenty for each group will be chosen.
General Methods
The study uses human subjects as participants. As such, there is a need to have the necessary approval. The approval is from the Committee on the Use of Human Subjects at the institutional level. Moreover, the research meets the requirements of the institutional review board on two levels. There is the use of human subjects and also the interaction with human subjects with the need to collect information that has a chance of being identifiable to the subjects. This approval was sought before the commencement of the research.
Various strategies were used for the collection of data from the research groups. The first strategy is the use of advertising. This strategy incorporated the use of flyers, notices, postings on the internet, and information sheets. These texts were approved by the IRB. The other strategy was the use of direct recruitment of identified potential participants. Some identified members of the public were directly contacted over phone and email with considerable care being taken to ensure that the parents of the participants did not feel pressured. Referrals were used from the network of inter-professional collaborators used for the study. The referrals described the study and also used the information sheets.
To study the level of aggression, the children will be subjected to anonymous and known people in the experiment. The children will be provided with a shock button that will run on a timer as long as it is pressed. The shock button indicates the period time that the children would shock a person. With the flip of a coin, the children are assigned to an anonymous or an identifiable condition. The anonymous condition will see the children placed in a dark environment, and the tape of two people arguing will be played. The children are then to decide on how long they want to shock the people arguing. In the second aspect, the children will be placed in an open space and will be able to see the interview of the people arguing. The interview will be varied to represent age-mates, figures of authority, and objects. They will then press the shock button, and the aim is to see how their aggression levels vary when placed in a familiar and unfamiliar condition with the unfamiliar condition being a representation of social media and the familiar being the normal home or family conditions. There was no limitation on the time necessary to finish the experiment. However, within 20 minutes, the majority of participants were able to finish.
There are five main levels of aggression that the study was seeking to achieve. The aggression expressed in hostility, verbal, physical, internal aggression, and aggression towards a figure of authority. The main assumption is that anger is the base of building aggression in human psychology. As such, people will often be aggressive when they are angry. In this respect, the results expected were high rates of anger or hostility among children who are frequent users of social media. There is a need to note that there was a need to classify the participants into gender, although as an afterthought. This was a realization that was made, which aimed to determine whether the development of aggression could be linked to the gender of an individual or child.
There is a need to note that in identifying aggression, there was some behavior that was being observed. Towards age mates, the aggression that was being looked at was the use of blackmail and attacking or tendencies of robbing. Towards figures of authority, the aggressive behavior being observed is the use of threatening language or attack. Aggression towards objects was observed through the breaking of furniture or damaging nearby objects. On self, there was the use of pulling of hair and throwing self around violently.
Data Analysis
Since this is quantitative research, the main analysis tools used for the paper are statistically-based. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to find the differences that exist among the different groups’ mean results. The groups compared were the participants exposed to social media and those not exposed and the male versus female characteristics of both groups, respectively. To determine the level of variance in the data, there is the use of eigenvalue. The eigenvalue is particularly important as it determines the distribution of data across a line.
Predicted Results
The expected results are a significantly higher level of aggression in the children exposed to social media at an early stage. The aggression that is expected to be the most among the participants is anger and hostility. This should be followed by verbal aggression, physical, internal or self, and aggression towards a figure of authority being the lowest. Anger is expected to be highest since it is a natural process. Verbal aggression and physical have to be learned and may not be fully developed in the children and, as such, are expected to be much less than anger and hostility. Due to a young age, these children are expected to have not yet developed extensive aggression towards a figure of authority, especially parents and teachers.
In terms of gender, there is expected to be a gender difference in the level of aggression. This is expected to be uniform across both groups of children under five years exposed to social media and those who are not. However, the male children exposed to social media are expected to have a higher level of aggression as compared to the other subset of participants. For the girls, there is an expectation of showing less direct methods of aggression as compared to male children. As such, girls are expected to make up the largest proportion of expressing aggression by the internal aggression method.
There is also a need to look at the age correlation of the level of aggression over both groups. As such, the aggression levels are expected to be higher among the older children aged five years as compared to the children aged three years old. The aggression levels of the older children who are exposed to social media from a young age are expected to be higher than the aggression of the children who are not exposed to social media. This is due to the longer exposure periods to social media.
Math Equation
The following mathematical formulas will be used to calculate variance and ANOVA values.
The variance will use the formula
Where,
S= the sample variance
N= is the data values
X (bar) = the average values
Xi = is the value of X at a chosen point
The variance is an important mathematical equation for the research as it identifies the spread of the data around the mean. The less the variance, the less the variability means that all the numbers or data are the same, while a high value of variance indicates that there is a difference in the numbers.
To analyze the variance, the Anova technique is used. The difference between the means of the various groups can be identified accurately by using the ANOVA technique. The variation between the samples and variation within the samples can also be found by using this technique. The formula for using Anova is
F = MST/MSE
MST = SST/ p-1
MSE = SSE/N-p
SSE = ∑ (n−1)
SST = ∑n (x−x̄)2
Where SST is all the squares summed up. F is the coefficient of ANOVA.
Interpretation of the Results
This study presents evidence that their social media affects young children below the age of 5 years. Despite the many positive aspects that social media has been associated with, there is a high risk of children below the age of 5 years developing mental health issues. This study focused on the level of aggression that is exhibited by this age group. Aggression is a sign of discomfort or frustration that has no healthy way of being dealt with by an individual. Aggression has its basis on the anger or hostility of an individual.
From the study, we find that the aggression of the children exposed to social media higher than their counterparts. This is probably a result of the development of antisocial behavior due to high exposure to social media. As such, the children lack the appropriate social skills to interact with individuals on a face-to-face basis. Another possible explanation is the development of aggression as a learned behavior. Children who experience aggressive behavior tend to repeat or copy the behavior when faced with similar circumstances. As such, there is the possibility that the children are being influenced or learning aggressive behavior from the content that they are exposed to on social media.
Additionally, there is little control that parents have over their children while they are using social media. This may give the children a false sense of freedom when dealing with social media. As such, the children may develop some aggressive behavior when they feel that their freedom is threatened. This may be exhibited in children against their parents or, in this case, towards a figure of authority such as a teacher or the researcher. The use of social media has revolutionized communication and interaction, especially among young children. As such, there is a need to have a caution to the extent that they use this form of media communication. Moreover, the effects are still being learned with the advancement in time, and as such, the effects are still relatively new.
References
Campbell, D. (2019). Children aged five and under at risk of internet addiction – Barnardo’s. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jun/11/children-aged-five-and-under-at-risk-of-internet-addiction-barnardos
Glazzard, J., Stones, S. (2019). Social Media and Young People’s Mental Health. In book: Technology and Child Mental Health. DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.88569
Lumen (n.d.). Stages of Development. Retrieved from https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wsu-sandbox/chapter/stages-of-development/