Mom's Mental Health: The Impact of Social Media Usage on Stress, Anxiety, and Depressive Traits in Mothers

Abstract

Background: Motherhood is a time of intense physical, psychological, and emotional demands. Comparison of parenting or just a need to escape the unrelenting demands may find a mother engaging in social media usage at high enough levels to be considered an addiction that may impact her psychological status in terms of depressive, anxious, or stress symptoms. Presented is a novel quantitative study of the effects of social media usage, engagement with comparison, and psychological status defined as depression, anxiety, stress traits. Methods: The study was delivered using the cloud-based platform Qualtrics and was accessible via QR code or hyperlink. Quantitative evaluation of the participants scores was conducted by gathering anonymous data as presented in the individual answers for the survey (n = 110). Results: Participant's anonymous answers to the survey questions indicated that they were engaging in high levels of social media usage and social comparison. Resulting in an increase in reported symptoms surrounding depression, anxiety, and stress. Conclusions: The social media environment may have a negative impact on mother's psychological status especially when engaging in higher levels of comparison by nature. Future research is necessary to determine the intricacies of these findings, including how the content of the social media plays a role in these results.