Examining the Impact of Online Social Networks on Student Mental Health

Name Institutional Affiliations Date Research Question: Impact of online social network on student’s mental heath Introduction The increasing online social networking is attributed to the advancing technology. Everyone wish to be up to date when it comes to the growing technological advances thus students tend to remain glued to social networking platforms for interactions, communication and research. Unfortunately, other that gaining the benefits associate with the growing technology, they also become victims of the negativities associated with addictions. Online social networking is addictive and just like any other form of addiction; student’s mental stability becomes compromised. In this literature review, the need to examine the seek answers on the how online social networking affect mental health will shed light on whether to embrace continued use of this technology or impose measures to ensure controls. To this effect, this literature review will use arguments from different credible scholar to examine how online social network impact student’s mental health and offer directives on way forward. The three concepts that will guide the flow of this study include: analysis of how and why social networking becomes addictive, the detrimental consequences of social networking on mental health and lastly need to argue social networking from the positive side of mental stability. The first concept understands how and why social networking becomes addictive. In almost all the four sources, it is open that online social networking exposes youths to its unethical use to some extent. Social networking addiction is the act of expressing unlimited controls over the media use making the user enslaved to any form of online platform. While addressing this issue, Schønning et al. (2020) argued that as much as social networking offers a certain level of pleasure and satisfaction to the users, it overreliance triggers an addictive tendency. Unfortunately, the young generation is the most vulnerable due to its inabilities to enforce control measures while engaging with online social networks. Students in this case proves the most affected as many assumes the role that the gained fr