The impact of social media technologies on youth in Cape Town

Abstract

There is an increasing and overwhelming concern that problematic use of social and digital media technologies negatively impact youth’s mental and psychological health (Buglass, Binder, Betts and Underwood, 2017: 248; Blackwell, Leaman, Tramposch, Osborne and Liss, 2017: 69; Oberst, Wegmann, Stodt, Brand and Chamarro, 2017: 51; Alt, 2015: 111). This study serves to explore the impact of mental health, attitude towards, and overall behaviour of youth in Cape Town toward social media technologies. The study also seeks to examine the way youth relate to social networking sites. By identifying and understanding the youth’s perceptions of the medical side effects and privacy implications, this study seeks to examine any prospective relationship between social media use, sleep disturbance, and depression. This study defines social media technologies as interactive web-based platforms that allows users to communicate with specific people, share content quickly across multiple digital platforms, such as smartphones, post or edit content, and to view, comment on, or like, or share content that has been posted by others. This includes social media platforms, also known as social networking sites, such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. With that in mind, the use of social media technologies continues to rise at a rapid rate as technological progress continues to drive increased usage of social media platforms as it becomes more fully integrated into everyday life (Odom-Forren, 2012; Hannay, 2018: 34; Chaffey, 2019; Kellogg, 2020).