Individual Interest Study

·      Research Question:

Why are current young adults (16-30) in the United States experiencing higher rates of anxiety, depression, & mental disorders in comparison to previous generations?

·      Hypothesis:

A majority of young adults’ stress, anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses are largely related to social media platforms engraining “grass is greener” syndrome involving: dating, economic status, peer groups, pop culture, and politics. 

·      Research Design: 

Randomly selected schools will obtain 18 male and 18 female student volunteers. Half of each gender will then be placed in two groups with altered news feeds. One control group will continuously receive mundane news feed information for a month; the other group’s news feeds will present inequality, war, famine, a randomly selected political echo-chamber, and other people obtaining their goals/dreams. Overall mood of each participant will be watched day-to-day with the first recording being prior to news feed algorithm changes.  

·      Sample:

Randomly select three high schools, and three college universities; both education facilities from the West Coast, East Coast, and Midwest to better validate information obtained.    

·      Research Method:

Experiment-Control Groups & Structured Interviews  

·      Explain why chosen research method is best suited method:

Clinical Interviews with young adults would gather mostly “I don’t know” responses wasting research resources, structured interviews will give more definitive data through yes/no responces. Distinct differences in viewed content on social media being manipulated into control groups should also show differences in the data collected over the month of the study. 

Although social media isn't the only factor contibuting to rise in diagnoses it plays a big role. Other notable factors are parenting styles changed with the previous generation focused on "achieving your dreams", but less emphasis on life lessons such as inequality or unfairness across all societies. Mental heath also is still stigmatized though less each day, there may have been similar rates of depression but there would have been more likelihood in past generations to "suck it up".