Data Post: social media, mood, and self-esteem

Research has shown that the average person touches their phone an average of 2,617 times a day and for a heavy user the number can be 5,000 times. If you think about it that means that the average person has more interaction with their phone than they do with people around them. Phones seem to fill the void that humans have for connection to others. The whole premise behind social media is due to the human desire to connect to other humans. However, we have developed a habit of indulging in the convenience of being able to connect through the little device in our pocket. What we don't understand is what all that time we spend connecting on the internet can do to our minds. Since it is yet to be fully understood, here we will try to get a better understanding. The data that I have collected has been done through a survey made via google forms. Here I will be analyzing the data collected in both qualitative forms, that was collected via short answers, and quantitative forms, that was collected based off responses to specific questions. In this post we will be going through piece by piece to have an overall idea about the types of questions that were asked and review what the data collected possibly means. The 1st question asked was to determine the number of followers each person had. By doing this we could determine if the people who participated could be classified as influencers or your everyday user. 5 out of ten people have 1,000 followers or more while the rest had 600 or less.

Next each person was asked how often they posted online. It was determined that half of the people post 1-2 times per week.

Now it is important to note that the majority of people who took this survey are people between the ages of 20 and 25. They are not influencers but normal young adults. With this data we are able analyze how social media usage affects them. The question above was followed by the following:

To break this data down key ideas on posts will be brokendown into categories based on the topics mentioned in the responses. These key topics mentioned are as follows: life, beliefs, things they like, and fun. Analyzing the text, you can see that a majority of people who responded can have their answers be put into these categories so, below I have made a chart that will help break down the explanations into subjects about why they post on their social media accounts.

Any time someone responded in a way that related to the categories above I added a point to that category. As you can see the majority of people posted things they liked, which I think can relate to things they find fun as well. The second category that got the most points was posts that were done in relationship to their life. I think this shows that people post online to keep others updated on how their life is going as well as connect with people who like the same things they do. This makes sense because that is how connection happens, when you have something in common with someone.

Above is another chart that reviews the amount of time a person spends on social media a day. Most people that responded found that they spent an average of 3-4 hours a day. This is higher than what studies have found, which says that an average person spends about 2 hours a day. We had 20% of people spend the time that studies have suggested, while another 20% spent 5-6 hours on social media. Only 1 response suggested that they spent 7-8 hours on social media. Now we will look over the average mood that our users are in. This is important to analyze because assessing if social media has a relationship to an increase or decrease in mood I had to look at what the average moods was to begin with. So, I had to gauge if the average mood of users was in a positive or negative state. Here I listed a variety of emotions that can be associated as good or bad to determine the thought above.

Looking at the data we can see that more than half of the people in this survey are in a negative mood. Half of the people in this survey are anxious and one other responded that they feel lonely. I then had two people respond that they are happy while the others responded that their mood was relaxed and grateful, which are going to be considered for the purposes of this analysis as positive moods.

I then asked if users thought that they spent a healthy amount of time on social media a day. We got a half and half answer with half feeling that they did and the other half feeling they didn’t.

Most of the people in this survey also said that they check social media in the morning and at night. Showing that social media is something that they check regularly, making it a regualr part of their lives.

The next question reviews if people felt an increase or decrease in their mood after posting on social media. This chart shows that while their mood didn’t shift to bad after posting on social media, it wasn’t necessarily a positive shift either. We can assume that since 70% of people said that they beileve it did both, increase and decrease, that they also felt negative when posting on social media.

The survey also asked questions to determine the self-esteem of people before and after posting on social media. The 1st chart you can see that a majority of people felt confident before posting on social media but then after posting almost half of the users shifted to having lower self-esteem.

We can also see that social media does its job in helping others connect to each other. Most people didn’t feel lonely on social media but 40% answered that they did. Then when asked if they felt connected to others on social media 80% responded that they did.

40% of people that felt lonely responded that they felt this way because it made them feel like they were missing out, not living life like others, or felt bad about the time they were spending on social media. Lastly in this process of collecting data I asked people to elaborate on how social media made them feel connected to others. Here are the responses: