Social media causing depressive and anxiety disorders in adolescents

According to Dr Sagar, children and young adults nowadays rarely involve themselves in physical activities.
For representational purposes (Express Illustrations)
For representational purposes (Express Illustrations)

NEW DELHI: Spending too much time on social media and a lack of coping mechanism from peer pressure are leading adolescents into depression and anxiety disorders in the national capital, according to doctors.

In Delhi, life year lost to death or lived with disability due to depressive disorders and anxiety disorders was calculated to be 459 years and 321 years, respectively, in an average of 1,00,000 years, according to a new study published in The Lancet Psychiatry conducted by ICMR and AIIMS Delhi.

“It has been observed that among the factors leading to rise in depressive and mental disorders, excessive use of social media is a new factor which was not there some 10 years ago,” said Dr Rajesh Sagar, Professor, Psychiatry from AIIMS and lead author of the paper.

According to Dr Sagar, children and young adults nowadays rarely involve themselves in physical activities. They mostly spend time on social media which has started impacting their mental health.

“More the stress more the problem; the youth are lacking ways of coping mechanism. Adolescents are coming to us for suggestions because they have to face a lot of competition, exam pressure, expectations…all these act as stress factors,” Dr Sagar noted.

He also pointed at another factor — changes in the socio-cultural atmosphere. Dr Sagar added that parental factor also plays an important role in affecting a child’s mental health.

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