Social media impacts teen girls more than boys: Study

New Delhi : A study has observed that social media impacts teen girls more than it does to boys of the same age.

For long, experts have been issuing warning over too much usage of social media applications like Snapchat and Instagram among teenagers.

According to a study conducted at the University College London and published in the journal EClinicalMedicine, it looks like there is a major connection between social media usage and depressive symptoms in 14-year-olds, and that connection may be much stronger for girls than boys.

During the research it was learned that teenagers who used social media for more than five hours in a day showed 50% more depressive systems in girls vs 35% in boys when their symptoms were compared to the teenagers who used social media for less than 2 hours in a day.

"There's an alarming difference. We were quite surprised when we saw the figures and we saw those raw percentages: the fact that the magnitude of association was so much larger for girls than for boys," said Yvonne Kelly, first author of the study.

However, the study only showed an association between social media use and symptoms of depression, which can include feelings of unhappiness, restlessness or loneliness.

The study also described other factors, such as lack of sleep and cyberbullying, that could help substantiate this association at a higher level greater.