“Sink or Swim? A study to understand the relationship between personality traits, mental health and the effects of social media use in university students”

Abstract

Over the past two decades, adolescents’ engagement with Social Media has substantially increased. While a relationship between social media and mental health has been established, research must investigate why some adolescents are affected by social media more than others. The present study is designed to examine the relationship between social media and the well-being of adolescents at university. Specifically, this study attempted to examine to what extent certain personality traits, when using social media, can leave one more predisposed to effects on wellbeing. Statistical analysis for the proposed study will use a point-biserial correlation, that is assessed on the relationship between the five personality traits and daily stress on the one hand, with use of social media on the other. Using 3 different questionnaires to obtain information on daily stress, social media use and personality traits. This study is based on previous work by (Brailovskaia et al. 2020). Participants for this cohort will be recruited at Queen Margret University with advertisement being placed around the university campus. The hypothesis of this study is that certain levels of social media use can have a detrimental effect on individuals daily stress when specific personality traits are also displayed.