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Displaced Behavior Theory

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Displaced behavior theory discusses the idea that those who spend more time on social media have less time to communicate with people in person, which is something that doesn’t exactly support mental health. This theory suggests, that perhaps it the absence of physical activity and face-to-face communication that has the harmful effects on mental health (Stockland, 2014) A methodological limitation may be that item four of the survey which was on frequency of social media use, was unclear and this caused missing data. Participants were not aware that they had to fill in the amount of time spent on social media if they had selected 1 (never) for example. It should have been specified that even if they had chosen 1 (never), that they needed to …show more content…

This discrepancy also meant that the sample was unrepresentative of the population. Convenience sampling also allows the opportunity for bias to affect the results. Future research could look at a larger more representative sample to overcome this. No screening procedure was undertaken prior to commencement of the research. This means that it was unknown whether or not the sample was purely non-clinical or clinical. This limits the research as there can be no generalisation to a specific population and the results have the potential to be skewed by participants in a clinical population. Future research should focus on a purely non-clinical population to assess the effects of social media on mental health. This study relied on survey data and was cross-sectional research. Future research could include a qualitative approach in order to better understand the levels of addiction to social media, and the severity of mental health amongst participants with depression and anxiety. Additionally, the majority of the sample was Caucasian, and consequently, it is difficult to understand how these results would be generalized to other ethnic groups. If the study was to be continued, researchers could ensure that the sample would include a wider variety of

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