The Impact Of Passive Use Of Social Networks On Adolescent Anxiety

With the continuous development and application of the Internet,people begin to use social networking sites more frequently.Psychologists also pay attention to the use of social networks and researchers divide the use of social networks into the active use and passive use.Active use of social networks refers to the behavior that can generate information and communication,while passive use of social networks refers to the information browsing behavior devoid of communication.This study intends to explore the impact of teenagers' passive use of social networks on their anxious feelings from the perspective of passive use of social networking sites,upward social comparison,self-esteem and anxiety,to warn teenagers to control their behavior of passive use when they use social network,treat the information from their friends' social networking sites in a objective way,and help provide theoretical guidance and empirical evidence for teenagers to restrain their bad behavior of upward social comparison.In the study,Chinese version of Surveillance Use Scale,Upward Social Comparison subscale in the Iowa-Netherlands Comparative Direction Scale,Chinese version of Rosenberg self-esteem scale,and Self-rating Anxiety Scale are adopted to survey 792 students from the five middle schools in Chengdu and Guiyang.The conclusions are as follows:There is no significant gender difference in the passive use of social networking sites,upward social comparison,self-esteem and anxiety.There is a significant grade difference in the passive use of social networking sites.Senior high school students tend to spend more time on the passive use of social networks than junior school students.There is a significant difference in the anxiety between the only child and non-only child.Non-only children tend to be more anxious than only children.There is a significant difference in the passive use of social networking sites between class cadres and non-class cadres.Class cadres tend to spend more time on the passive use of social network than non-class cadres.The passive use of social networking sites has a significant positive correlation with the upward social comparison and anxiety,and has a negative correlation with self-esteem.The upward social comparison has a negative correlation with self-esteem,and has a negative correlation with anxiety.There is a significant negative correlation between self-esteem and anxiety.The use of passive social networking sites can affect anxiety through the mediating effect of social networking sites on upward social comparison and self-esteem,and the mediating effect includes two paths:the independent mediating effect of upward social comparison and the chain mediating effect of upward social comparison to self-esteem.However,the passive use of social networking sites has no significant impact on the extent of self-esteem,so there is no independent mediating effect of self-esteem.To sum up,the research shows that the passive use of social networks canpredict adolescent anxiety level positively and directly.Once introduce theupward social comparison and self-esteem into the analysis model,it can befound that if the adolescents' passive use of social networks is higher,thehigher level of their,which causes bad influence to self-esteem,and then itwill affect their anxiety level.which causes bad influence to self-esteem,and then it will affect their anxiety level.