Department of Administrative and Financial Sciences, Applied College, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah 24382, Saudi Arabia.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2023 Jan 29;20(3):2383. doi: 10.3390/ijerph20032383.
Social media has become an indispensable aspect of young people's digital interactions, as they use it mostly for entertainment and communication purposes. Consequently, it has the potential to have both positive and negative effects on them. Deterioration in mental health is one of the side effects stemming from social media overuse. This study investigates the relationship between social media and the increase in mental health problems in Saudi Arabia. The population considered for analysis includes young people from Saudi Arabia, with a sample size of 385. A closed-ended survey questionnaire was used to collect data on different social media features and criteria. Using the Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP), the researcher analyzed data to compare the effect of different social media features on mental health. The social media features included in this paper are private chats and calls, group chats and calls, browsing posts, games, media sharing, adverts, likes/comments/followers, and pages. The researcher adopted entertainment, information, social interaction, privacy, esteem, and communication as the criteria in the AHP process. Among these criteria, the study found that entertainment was the most significant, while privacy was the least significant. Findings suggested that likes, comments, and followers were the biggest contributors to poor mental health (total utility = 56.24). The least effective feature was 'games' (total utility = 2.56). The researcher recommends that social media users be cautious when interacting with social media features, especially likes, comments, followers, media, and posts, because of their significant effect on mental health.
社交媒体已经成为年轻人数字互动不可或缺的一部分，他们主要将其用于娱乐和沟通目的。因此，它有可能对他们产生积极和消极的影响。心理健康恶化是社交媒体过度使用带来的副作用之一。本研究调查了社交媒体与沙特阿拉伯年轻人心理健康问题增加之间的关系。考虑进行分析的人群包括来自沙特阿拉伯的年轻人，样本量为 385 人。使用封闭式问卷调查收集了有关不同社交媒体功能和标准的数据。研究人员使用层次分析法（AHP）分析数据，以比较不同社交媒体功能对心理健康的影响。本文中包含的社交媒体功能包括私人聊天和通话、群聊和通话、浏览帖子、游戏、媒体共享、广告、点赞/评论/关注者和页面。研究人员在 AHP 过程中采用了娱乐、信息、社交互动、隐私、尊重和沟通作为标准。在这些标准中，研究发现娱乐是最重要的，而隐私是最不重要的。研究结果表明，点赞、评论和关注者是导致心理健康不佳的最大因素（总效用=56.24）。最无效的功能是“游戏”（总效用=2.56）。研究人员建议社交媒体用户在与社交媒体功能互动时要小心，特别是点赞、评论、关注者、媒体和帖子，因为它们对心理健康有重大影响。
