Mental Health in an Over-Connected World: Examining the Relationship between Social Media Design and Anxiety

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Mental Health in an Over-Connected World:

Examining the Relationship between Social

Media Design and Anxiety

Master’s Thesis

Sohini Goswami

12122793

MA New Media and Digital Culture

Faculty of Humanities

Supervisor: dr. Davide Beraldo

Second reader: Melise Bas

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Abstract

Social media platforms are increasingly said to be related to mental health problems and decreased mental well-being, especially in teenagers and the youth, and yet most studies have yielded mixed results regarding the same. This thesis examines the relationship between two specific design elements or features of social media platforms, i.e. the Read Receipt and Last Seen, and the impact that interface design can have on the mental health of users. Through the use of online

questionnaires, this thesis interprets users’ personal experiences with these features, and how they can cause stress, pressure and varying degrees of anxiety among several people. In addition to the questionnaires, this paper also uses the concepts of affordances and nudges as theoretical lenses to understand the importance of specific features and tools on social media platforms and the effect these can have on users’ experience of these platforms. Through the results of the online

questionnaire, this paper then takes a deeper look at the relationship between social media addiction, interface design and resulting mental well-being of users.

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Introduction

Social Media and Mental Health

In today’s world, modern technology has reached the point where it has become increasingly hard to imagine a life without the internet, and even more specifically, social networking sites - or social media, as they are commonly known. Be it posting pictures on Instagram, sending text messages through WhatsApp, or connecting with large networks of friends and family on Facebook, a vast majority of people in modern society are almost constantly connected to some form of social media through these platforms. Because of the increased pervasiveness of the Internet, statistics from the Global Digital Report 2019 show that the total number of internet users worldwide is up to

4.388 billion, with the number of active social media users among these at 3.484 billion (Chaffey 2019). So what exactly is a social networking site? Broadly, they can be said to be platforms that enable users to have web-based communications and interactions with other people, through consumption and sharing of information (Nations 2019). They can be of many different kinds - photo and video sharing platforms, chat applications, and forums and blogs, among many others. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Youtube etc are all considered social media platforms, and can be seen as being created for the same broad general use and different specific uses. Research on the advantages and disadvantages of social media use have been very mixed, as well as the research regarding the impact that social media can have on users’ mental well being. There are multiple reasons to believe that social media platforms help with confidence, self esteem, community building etc, and there are in fact studies that believe it is healthy for some individuals; However, at the same time, many studies have shown that among frequent users, there is also a rising amount of mental health issues associated - prominent among these are depression, anxiety, loneliness and sleep-related disorders.

In 2016, 15.5% of the world’s population were estimated to have some form of mental or substance user disorder, which is more than 1 billion people globally, and depression and anxiety make up the maximum percentage of this (Ritchie and Roser 2018). According to the World Health

Organization, more than 300 million people globally suffer from depression, while more than 260 million are living with anxiety disorders. It has been argued that social media benefits these people through the creation of online platforms and communities, providing support and resources and

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helping to spread awareness regarding mental health and mental illnesses. On the other hand, increased communication only leads to increased risk of miscommunication or mismanaged

expectations of online relationships (Seabrook et al. 2016); this contributes to poor mental health in a significant manner, leading to anxiety, depression and feelings of isolation and loneliness, among other things (Walton 2018). In addition to different rules and expectation of online conversations, there is also the problem of people always showing the best versions of their lives on these platforms, causing users to compare their lives with others and leading to feelings of jealousy and envy, and a sense of inadequacy or even dissatisfaction with their own lives.

With the steady increase in the growth of social media over the years, statistics show that it is most popular among teenagers and young adults between the ages of 18-29 years, but is also getting increasingly popular among older adults in recent years. Among young adults, Facebook and Instagram are the most popular, with 81% using Facebook and 64% using Instagram. (Pew

Research Centre 2018) Seeing as how anxiety disorders are one of the most common mental health issues in the world, and many people believe internet and social media usage is linked to anxious behaviour among young adults, the research on the connection between these two factors is nonetheless limited. In one study among adolescents ranging from 11-17 years of age, Woods and Scott discovered that social media use was related to increased anxiety, depression, poor sleeping patterns and low self-esteem, and those who were more invested in these platforms were likely to get impacted by feelings of isolation or depression (Hughes). Keeping these numbers in mind only makes one realise the pervasive nature of social media, and it thus becomes important to understand the detrimental impacts it could have on individuals, and especially young adults, this age group being the core user demographic.

Anxiety is a broad category of mental health disorders, and can have many different specific types and manifestations; leading to feelings of apprehension, worry or increased nervousness (Felman 2018). These disorders can influence the way a person thinks, and subsequently, impact their behaviour in their daily lives. Anxiety is defined by the American Psychological Association (APA) as “an emotion characterised by feelings of tension, worried thoughts and physical changes like increased blood pressure.” At the same time, it is important to note that occasional feelings of anxiety are not the same as being diagnosed with anxiety as a mental disorder - when faced with potentially harmful or negative triggers from the environment, it is healthy and even necessary to feel a sense of anxiety (Felman 2018). However, it is when these feelings greatly impact an

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individuals behaviour and mental well-being that anxiety becomes a bigger problem. This paper will focus on a specific kind of anxiety disorder - social anxiety, which stems from excessive

discomfort in social situations, fear of social interactions, feelings of embarrassment or the worry of being scrutinised by other people (Nordqvist 2018). According to a report by the Royal Society for Public Health in the UK, out of the popular social media websites, Youtube is the only platform which seems to have a positive impact on mental health, while Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter all showed greater negative impacts on users than positive ones. These results came out of a study which surveyed 1500 teenagers and young adults between the ages of 14-24, with the aim of determining the impact of social media use on issues like anxiety, depression, self-esteem and body image (Hurley 2018). With the advent of social media, everyones’ lives are more on display for others to see, and while many believe online communications make interaction easier for people struggling with social anxiety, there is also no denying how it makes one more susceptible to the worry of constantly being evaluated by their peers.

Over the past few years, social media platforms have also introduced new features into their design to further show the development in technology and the general world around us. One such feature that is of interest is the Read Receipt or the ‘seen’ icon that comes up once somebody has opened a message that was sent to them. This feature was first introduced in 2011 by Apple in its iMessage platform, but it was possible for users to turn the feature off. (Palfrey 2017) Now this feature can be found in almost all the popular social media platforms, be it WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat. Out of all of these, WhatsApp is the only one which also allows users to turn the function off. Another interesting feature that is afforded by such platforms is the ability to see the last time a person was active on the platform, or the ‘last seen’ that appears next to their names. While

WhatsApp and Facebook has already had this function for a while now, Instagram is the latest to join the club with its new update. While it is (currently) also possible to turn this off in the

application’s settings page, it is by default switched on for all users until they manually turn it off themselves (Welch 2018). Viewed through the lens of mental health and well-being, it is not entirely surprising that this feature could have a detrimental impact on communication between individuals. With increased expectations regarding instant responses and constant communication, many users find themselves either feeling pressured into supplying immediate reactions and responses to online interactions, or expecting them from others. Regardless of whether somebody has a perfectly valid response for taking their time to respond to a message, many users on the receiving end feel

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makes this worse; suddenly users are able to know the exact moment that they felt that they had been ignored, or the precise number of minutes somebody last used the platform but chose to not give any attention to their message. Naturally, this could lead to anxiety among many users.

This thesis thus starts from the premise that young adults, being the largest group of social media users, are most likely to feel the possible negative impacts that these platforms can have on mental health and well-being. By taking a qualitative approach, this research does not wish to make all-encompassing statements or provide facts about the impact of social media on users, but to gain a better understanding of how users’ describe their own personal relationships with social media, how certain features of these platforms can have a greater impact on users than others, how different users have different relationships to these platforms, and how digitally mediated conversations provide stress and anxiety to so many users. To do this, this thesis will try to answer the proposed research questions:

1) To what extent does addiction dictate the impact that social media can have on users’ mental health?

2) What role do smartphone notifications play in triggering anxiety for users, specifically in relation to the Last Seen and Read Receipts?

3) How important is the role of context in digitally mediated communication, and does this change how individual users are impacted differently?

Looking at Existing Literature

Social Media and Addiction

To understand how rapidly and vastly internet use has grown over the past decade, one need only look at the growth and popularity of smartphones; almost all adults own one, and the number of smartphone users worldwide is said to be a whopping 2.71 billion. ("Number Of Smartphone Users Worldwide 2014-2020 | Statista”) Even among smartphone and internet users, teenagers make up a dominant group, with 95% of teenagers in the US saying they have access to a smartphone, and 45% even saying that they can be found online almost constantly, according to a survey by the Pew Research Centre. (Anderson and Jiang 2018) Once we take a look at all these numbers and

understand the sheer ubiquitousness of the Internet and smartphones, it becomes clearer to see exactly how much of a digitised world we live in. By constantly being connected to our phones, social media and the Internet, our everyday lives are intertwined with the digital world to such an

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extent that often the lines between the two become quite blurry; many people no longer distinguish between having a conversation through a digital medium and having a conversation with somebody face-to-face. Similarly, another everyday life example of the digitisation of modern society is how more and more people have switched over to online shopping and do not see this activity as any different than going to an actual supermarket or department store to do their shopping. Thus, through the increased and almost constant access to smartphones that so many individuals nowadays have, they also have the entire Internet at their fingertips at all times, and with the growing popularity of social media platforms, this automatically increases the amount of time one spends on these digital platforms as well.

Ever since the arrival of social media more than two decades ago, the phenomenon has gradually grown and become an integral part of Internet culture as well as our daily lives. The first

recognisable social media platform, Six Degrees, was launched in 1997, and allowed users to create a profile and make friends with other users. (Hendricks 2013) Soon after, blogging became popular, and then before we knew it, popular social networking sites that almost everyone is familiar with today, like Youtube, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook were launched. Users all around the world started using these platforms, and social media gradually became a massive worldwide phenomenon of the 21st century, eventually leading modern society to the point that we are at today; a world without social media can barely be envisioned, let alone comprehended.

In today’s day and age, there is no denying that social media has changed the very way people communicate and interact with one another. Distances mean nothing anymore because social media connects people from all corners of the world; businesses use social media to reach out to potential customers and advertise their products, organisations use the platforms to spread awareness about various causes, and people create professional and personal networks and connections at the click of a button. Seeing all of the good things and the benefits that have come out of social media, many people forget that it also comes with its own drawbacks and problems. For instance, social media popularity has reached such new heights that many users, especially teenagers and young adults, are addicted to these platforms. Studies have shown that the average person spends at least 2 hours everyday on social media, while for teens this number is said to possibly increase to up to 9 hours. (Anderson 2018) Furthermore, as dependency on the Internet and on social media increases, the likelihood of addiction also increases; one report states that around 210 million people worldwide suffer from internet addiction, of which social media addiction is a big part (Longstreet and Brooks 2017).

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According to the American Psychological Association (APA), addiction is a disease manifested through compulsive use of a substance while disregarding the harmful consequences. People who are addicted to alcohol or a drug usually over-use it to such a point that it takes control over their lives (Addiction and Substance Use Disorders). Similarly, Internet addiction is when a user spends too much time on the Internet, to the extent that it starts having harmful consequences on the user’s well-being and life as a whole. To get even more specific, we can apply this definition to social media addiction to understand how spending too much time on social media can have harmful consequences and side-effects for users, thereby impacting other parts of their lives. (Walker 2019) While many people have asked the APA to classify Internet Addiction Disorder as an official mental illness, as of now it has still not been made one, possibly due to the fact that although there are multiple studies regarding it, there is very little concrete evidence till now. (Walker 2019) The problem of social media addiction also raises some other questions: for instance, at what point can your social media use be called an addiction? How do you distinguish between habitual social media use and borderline-dangerous use that could potentially harm your lifestyle? While there are several everyday-life examples of social media dependency and excessive use, it becomes difficult to pinpoint if the behaviour can be called addictive, going by the technical definition. According to psychologist Mark Griffiths, few people are genuinely addicted to social media, while a large number of people only use social media habitually, with the potential risk of becoming addicted if their online behaviour is not monitored and controlled. (2018)

By understanding the excessive use of social media through the context of Internet addiction, this research aims to determine the extent to which addiction to these platforms impact individual well-being; for instance, are users more likely to get emotionally invested in content that they see on online platforms if they spend a larger amount of time on them? Does addiction or general overuse directly dictate the amount of control users allow social media to have on their mental health? Or does content on social media platforms have the potential to have a psychological impact on any of its users, regardless of the amount of dependency on these platforms? Several studies have shown direct correlations among users who spend too much time on social media and decreased

psychological well-being (Kim et al. 2009; Twenge et al. 2018). This is an even bigger problem among adolescents and teenagers, and one study by the Pew Research Centre has shown that teenagers themselves are self-aware regarding their excessive use of social media, but still find it difficult to restrict and curb their online activities. (Anderson 2018) A recent study also showed that excessive social media use can manifest in symptoms typically present in people with a substance

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use or behavioural addictive disorder, and social media can negatively impact users even beyond inciting feelings of depression, loneliness or anxiety: similar to the characteristics exhibited typically by substance addicts, people who excessively use social media platforms also show risky and impaired decision-making, according to this report. (Meshi et al. 2019)

While it can be established that a large proportion of people today use social media beyond what can be considered a ‘healthy’ amount, the question arises about what these platforms themselves are doing to ensure that their users continue using them. People typically use social media for a myriad of reasons: to make new connections and keep in touch with friends, to stay up to date with current events and news, to be able to have a platform to share their voice, to discover new and entertaining content, promote their businesses and even just to pass away spare time. (Desreumaux 2018) And yet, one of the most common phenomenons of our time is that users might go online for a specific reason, and then find themselves spending much more time on the platform than originally

intended. As social media platforms need users to spend more time on their platforms so as to raise profits, the engineers behind the scenes who design the interfaces of these platforms typically do so to ensure maximum use (Andersson 2018). One prominent feature of almost all social media platforms today is the Infinite Scroll, which can cause habit-forming behaviour in many users, keeping them locked onto these sites for increasingly large amounts of time. “Infinite scrolling is a web-design technique that loads content continuously as the user scrolls down the page” (Loranger 2014) and social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have embraced this

technique completely, owing to its success. Several people have even compared habitual social media use to slot machines or quitting cigarettes; an extremely addictive behaviour that keeps you coming back for more, making the prospect of quitting feel almost impossible. Keeping this analogy of slot machines in mind, we can look to the work of anthropologist Natasha Dow Schull. In her book Addiction by Design, Schull talks about slot machines and gambling in Las Vegas, and how she discovered that most people there are not playing for the money or to win anymore; eventually it becomes about being in the zone with the machines, being in the same place, just engulfed within it all. She referred to this as the “machine zone” (Schull 2) and talks about it as a rhythm of sorts; it is a response to a fine-tuned feedback loop, and it makes the individual want to keep pressing a button, to keep repeating it over and over again. (Madrigal 2013) In such a state, playing to win is irrelevant; and the aim then becomes “to keep playing – to stay in that machine zone where nothing else matters” (Schull 2) This can be likened to the infinite, seemingly endless scroll that users encounter today on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, among others. Users constantly have a

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plethora of similar-looking content literally at their fingertips, and after a point, that interface itself becomes the machine zone. Users might not be posting any pictures or updates themselves, but there is a desire to be in that zone where everybody else is. There is an irrational fear of leaving the platform because you do not want to miss out on any content. It becomes a compulsion, an

addiction - a design that has specifically been engineered to make users feel that way.

Looking at all the ways that social media platforms and the engineers who design the interfaces of these platforms consciously make an effort to keep people ‘hooked’ on to these platforms, it is no surprise that the modern world has been engulfed by the epidemic that is social media addiction, or to put it in a more technically correct manner, an excessive use of social media platforms.

Technological dependency has greatly increased, and many people even carry out entire businesses purely through social media - their source of income and livelihood is social media, so naturally they are going to be dependent on these sites to a great degree, and spend the maximum amount of their time there. However, while many studies have been carried out about the negative impacts of excessive social media use among various different age groups, what this research attempts to do is establish whether certain tools, or features, that are embedded in these platforms, play a particularly important or prominent role in decreasing well-being and mental health among users.

Smartphone Notifications as Anxiety Triggers

There is no denying the fact that the growth and popularity of social media over the past decade has much to owe to this rising trend of smartphones; by always having access to a mobile device, everything on the Internet is always just a few clicks away, which means all of our digital communications are also just a click or two away. In today’s modern society, many people have become so used to always having access to their smartphone, that it becomes difficult for them to imagine a life without it. An important feature of smartphones is that they also constantly remind users about online activities, conversations and interactions through the use of notifications; these notifications inform people when they have a new text message or e-mail, a new comment on a Facebook picture, a new Instagram Direct Message, if a friend has posted a new Tweet, or even just serve as general reminders telling you that you have not used a particular application in a long time. It can be argued that the Notification Centre of a phone is the most important part of it, with it being the first thing many people check when they wake up in the morning and look at their smartphones. For so many apps like WhatsApp or Snapchat that depend on the “real-time” factor, notifications are crucial to how users experience the platform. (Honan 2014)

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However, like everything else, these notifications also come with some drawbacks of their own. The very fact that notifications are real-time and keep users updated constantly means that they can serve as constant interruptions, which many people consider problematic to their daily lives. In fact, research has shown that receiving constant notifications on smartphones can cause unwarranted stress and anxiety for many users. (Houck 2018) A recent report by the Daily Mail found that over time, these notifications might actually be changing users’ brain chemistry; scientists have said that every time somebody is interrupted by a notification, their body is triggered to release a high amount of cortisol - which is the ‘stress hormone’ - due to which one might experience symptoms like increased heart rate, anxiety and sweaty palms. (Brown 2018) Furthermore, previous research carried out by some neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley, also showed that high levels of cortisol can leave long-lasting changes in the brain, and when smartphone notifications cause the release of cortisol, the tense state as well as the symptoms can last until the individual is able to check the notification. (Brown 2018) Because of this almost constant stress-and-release situation our bodies find themselves in, feeling a sense of relief once an alert has been checked, one can see how it might become even easier for certain users to become addicted to their smartphones in the process. According to psychologists, the relief and satisfaction an individual feels while checking and responding to a notification then acts as a “reward” or gratification of sorts for the brain, thereby leaving the person wanting more, or anxiously waiting for the next such notification. (Houck 2018) In this way, a pattern of sorts is established and smartphone users thus find

themselves relying more and more on notifications, regardless of the associated anxiety or stress they may cause. In another study called the Do Not Disturb Challenge, 30 participants were asked to disable app notifications on their phone for 24 hours to see how they felt at the end of that time frame; the results were interesting because while most participants said that they experienced less stress and distractions, there was the added complexity of feelings of anxiety even when the notifications were ironically missing, because users felt more disconnected from their social networks without the ability to know when somebody has contacted them, or if they have missed social activities. (Pielot and Rello 2017) Additionally, scientists have also found that constant notifications have the capability of distracting individuals and hence reducing productivity levels by up to 40 percent without the individual even realising it. (Brown 2018)

To realise how smartphone notifications are linked to the specific focus of this paper, which is the Last Seen and Read Receipt features, it becomes necessary to understand that it is through these alerts that users are kept informed about their online conversations and interactions, thus making

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them more likely to check and respond to the message immediately. Another reason for almost-immediate checking of notifications can be attributed to the social pressure and management of expectations that comes along with personal communications that many users feel. (Pielot et al. 2014) On the other hand, the constant presence of notifications makes users more likely to notice the absence of one, in which case the brain does not get the gratification or reward it requires, and waits anxiously for it. When people tend to feel more nervous or anxious while waiting for a

response, it thus becomes more likely that they might open the message a few more times to try and find out why the other person has not responded - if their Last Seen has not changed, or there is no Read Receipt, users’ minds are put at ease for the time being as they realise that they are not being ignored, as it is just that the person has not seen the message yet. In this way, the cycle continues, until the time that another notification pops up on the smartphone, providing yet another distraction and subsequently, leading the user towards some other online activity. Additionally, in this context, I believe it is important to remember that smartphone notifications do not always pertain to ongoing digital conversations, but can just be related to some other activity on the same platform; the purpose behind these notifications, from the perspective of the platforms themselves, is to drive users to spend as much time as possible on their apps, as this increases user engagement and is thus profitable for them. (Pierce 2017) Thus, the constant push notifications can lead individuals to open up that app more and more, and once they are already on the platform, there is a greater likelihood that they might remember that last unanswered text message and anxiously check to make sure it has not been ignored. In this sense, it becomes easier to understand the potential role of smartphone notifications in further contributing to the anxiety and stress faced by some users through the Last Seen and Read Receipt features. While it is important to note that push notifications on a

smartphone can indeed be turned off, they are typically turned on by default by a majority of apps, which brings up how default choices embedded onto platforms’ interfaces serve as indicators for particular ways to experience a platform. These indicators of a certain type of behaviour are called nudges, a concept that will be further discussed in the next section of this paper. As most users are less likely to make the manual effort to turn off notifications for all the different applications that they use on their smartphones, the manufacturers of all these platforms use that to their advantage by usually keeping all notifications turned on, by default. Users thus would have to go in to the Settings page to turn all of these off, which many people just do not put the effort into doing, thereby driving revenue for the platforms, while causing stress and anxiety to the unaware users.

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According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, the word context is defined as “the situationwithin which something exists or happens, and that can help explain it.” (‘Context’; Cambridge

Dictionary) For alot of issues and problems that we encounter, it is very important to situate them within a particular context so as to get a better understanding of it. For the purpose of this research, context will be used as a means of understanding the relationship that users have with digitally mediated interactions and social media as a whole. Because this research is interested in examining the relationship that users share with the Last Seen and Read Receipt features on these platforms, the term context will be used to grasp the extent to which the relationship between users would have an impact on their personal use of these features, and, subsequently, how this use may impact their mental health and well-being in general.

To understand how context is important in communications, first it becomes necessary to

understand what communication is; typically, the act of communicating refers to a process whereby two or more people take part in a physical or verbal exchange with the goal being mutual

understanding or to generate meaning. (Fakude 2016) Communication can take place through any medium and can take the form of speaking, reading and writing, among others. Context plays a major role in the communication process because it impacts the interpretation of information by the receiver, thereby having an effect on the probability of effective communication between the sender and the receiver, and can thus influence what is being said and interpreted. (The Basics of Human Communication) Context can generally be of 4 kinds, and these can influence the interpretation of messages during the process of communication; these 4 kinds of context are physical context, social-psychological context, cultural context and temporal context. ("Elements Of

Communication”) Physical context refers to the setting or location in which communication takes place, social-psychological context involves the social relationships we have with people and how these can influence our psychological reception of their communicative messages, cultural context refers to the beliefs, values, ideas and norms that people hold as part of a certain community, and temporal (or time) context refers to the point in time and the age in which the communication takes place. ("Elements Of Communication”) While all these kinds of context do influence how people communicate with one other, this paper will choose to focus on the social-psychological context because it is most relevant in understanding how social media behaviour can affect users in different ways, depending on individual usage patterns as well as the relationship shared between users.

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Simply put, the relationship that two users share would make up the social-psychological context in any interactions and communications they may have; thus, in digitally mediated conversations as well, this relationship or context would determine how the communication takes place. When two people are in a close, personal relationship or have an intimate bond with one another, all of their communications would then take place within the context of this relationship and thus influence their personal communication process. Hence, when looked at through the lens of context, it could be suggested that all users experience the very use of the Last Seen and Read Receipt features in different ways because the use of these features are determined to a large extent by external factors. Keeping this in mind, it becomes more likely that the reason different people have different

perspectives on the advantages and disadvantages of these features is because all of their

experiences of these platforms are shaped by the nature of the relationship that the users share with other users they communicate with on such digital platforms. In such a way, the importance of context in communication can be grasped, and it thus becomes imperative to consider such external factors of communication when analysing the impact of social media on mental health and well-being.

Methodology

Affordances and Nudges of Social Media Platforms

The particular activities that a user can carry out on an application or website is determined to a large extent by the way the interface is designed; According to Stanfill (1060), a platform’s interface controls and structures the possible actions by making some more possible than others, by

determining which actions are possible and which are not. This can be done through the positioning of icons, the overall layout, or the presence and absence of features as it sees fit.

To understand how the application works, it becomes imperative to first look at how it is designed; what it’s interface actually allows users to do. This brings us to the concept of affordances, which is one of the core ideas in the field of media theory. The term was coined by the psychologist James A. Gibson in the 1970s, who based his theories on the environment and what it affords to individuals. He defined affordances as what an environment “offers the animal, what it provides or

furnishes” (Gibson 127), wherein the animal can be understood as the individual, and what the environment affords can be both good and bad. He theorised that affordances can always be

considered as relative to an animal, and that it depends on the niche of the animal - for instance, the animal would often consider the earth as flat when it is really round. (Gibson 128, 133) This shows that the animal often perceives the affordances that he needs, and could use (Gibson 128). However,

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according to Gibson, these affordances can be created or changed by the animal (130) and objects can have different affordances at different points in time, and for different animals (133). Here, this can be understood through the context of a social media platform, say Instagram, and how it can be used for different purposes. It functions as a space to showcase photographs, a messaging and networking platform and for many, even a marketing tool. While all of these are different functions and features that the platform affords, they are all integrated into the same interface - and

individuals decide how to make use of them.

When Gibson proposed his theory of affordances, he was interested in exploring the way we perceive our environments and especially in terms of how we see “its surfaces, their layouts, and their colour and textures” (..) - he proposed that we do not see the environment as it is, but on the basis of what it affords to us, what it allows us to do. From the context of social media platforms, this can be read as the use of certain platforms being dictated by its features. For instance, Snapchat was initially branded and promoted as a private photo-sharing platform, intended for person-to-person exchange of images (Tillman and Betters 2019), and was designed so as to facilitate just that. Similarly, Instagram also was founded primarily as a photo-sharing platform (Blystone 2015) and only gradually developed into the all-encompassing social networking platform that it is today. Initially, other than posting pictures and looking at pictures that your friends posted, the only way to interact with users on the platform was through comments and likes. This set Instagram apart from Facebook which offered a separate messaging feature to communicate and have lengthy

conversations with friends and family. Similarly, Snapchat also originated as a means for users to share time-bound pictures with friends; however, over the years both these platforms changed to accommodate messaging features, and in the process ended up changing the features afforded by the platforms’ interfaces. Thus, it can be said that the affordances of a social media platform are embedded in its features and design and determines how a user is allowed to experience the platform itself.

Furthermore, one can look to the work of Mel Stanfill in The Interface as Discourse to view the concept of affordances in a more contemporary new-media setting. Stanfill introduces the concept of Discursive Interface Analysis (DIA) which is a theoretical framework for analysing the

affordances of websites and how they establish normative patterns of behaviour for what users do, and should do, on these websites (1061). To do so, she uses HR Hartson’s categorisation of

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Design: functional (what a site can do), cognitive (users knowledge of what a site can do), and

sensory (facilitates users senses of hearing, seeing, feeling something) (323). There is also a fourth kind mentioned by Hartson, which is the physical affordance, but Stanfill does not consider this as it is inapplicable to virtual interfaces (1063) and this paper will choose to exclude that as well because social media platforms are also virtual interfaces.

Affordances determine what people are actually able to do with a medium through the use of particular tools and features that are embedded in its architecture. (Davis and Chouinard 241) Thus, as more aspects and areas of our lives are transitioning to online platforms, the technical engineers that design the platforms are in turn becoming social engineers by introducing certain affordances and in turn influencing the way people are able to interact with media. In this paper, affordances are used as an analytical tool to understand the relationship between the interface design and the Last Seen and Read Receipt features on these platforms. Thus, there is an attempt to analyse the functional affordances that these platforms allow and how users perceive and make use of them, thereby determining their overall user experience of a certain platform. For the purpose of this particular paper, we focus specifically on Facebook and Instagram as case studies, as these are the two most popular social media platforms among users (Statista: Top U.S. Mobile Social Apps By Users 2018) and the results from our questionnaires showed that a majority of respondents used those two applications the most frequently.

The Read Receipt and Last Seen features

Read Receipts are a feature found in almost all popular social media platforms and messaging apps today. The concept behind it is simple: when a user opens a message he has received from another user, the sender receives a subtle signal in the form of a ‘seen’ or ‘read’ icon next to the outgoing message. Although the feature takes different shapes - blue ticks on WhatsApp, a small grey ‘seen’ on Instagram, a circular profile picture icon on Facebook Messenger - the function remains the same throughout these platforms.

As already mentioned earlier, the first Read Receipt was introduced by Apple in its iMessage platform in 2011, although Apple still gives users the choice to turn these receipts off. WhatsApp also gives users the choice to turn their ‘blue ticks’ off (one grey tick signifies message sent, two grey ticks signify message delivered, and when these two ticks turn blue, it implies to users that the message has been read by the recipient), and the only catch is that if you do not want to send out

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Read Receipts, you are automatically unable to see other peoples’ receipts as well (Palfrey, 2017). While this gives users more freedom of choice in how they want to make use of the interface of these platforms, several social media sites, including Instagram and Facebook, do not offer a workaround - at least not within their platform, the straightforward way. In other words, these platforms do not afford users the option to turn off these features, thus encouraging their usage of the platform in a certain way, utilising the features that the platforms designed into their interface. Additionally, these read receipts are turned on by default even within those platforms where users have the chance to toggle it off.

So if users are given the choice to decide how they want to utilise the features of a platform and can structure their own experiences, can one really say that these platforms are controlling our

behaviour? This brings me to the concept of ‘nudging’ that was briefly mentioned in an earlier section of this paper. This concept was introduced by Thaler and Sunstein in 2008 in their book

Nudge; They define a nudge as any aspect of the choices that individuals are presented with that

“alter people’s behaviour in a predictable way without forbidding any opinions or significantly changing their economic incentives”. (6) The concept of nudging is based off of the idea that attention can be guided or directed in a specific direction through the different elements of an interface design, and Thaler and Sunstein say that any of these elements, no matter how small, can influence decisions that further dictate use of the platform (3). However, for an intervention to even count as a nudge, it must be easily avoidable - people should have the choice to refuse or go against it. (Thaler and Sunstein 6) So what about the people who decide the choices we should be making? They are referred to as choice architects, and they have “the responsibility for organising the context in which people make decisions”. (Thaler and Sunstein 3) The technical engineers who design the actual interfaces of the popular social media platforms can thus be seen as choice architects - they introduce the affordances available to users through certain features, in this instance the inability to turn read receipts off, or how they are by default always turned on. These default choices can serve as very strong nudges, because research has shown that a lot of people tend to stick to whatever the default choice is, and thus setting default options and other seemingly trivial strategies can actually dictate how users experience the platform. (Thaler and Sunstein 9)

This brings to the forefront another question: why would these social media platforms care if your read receipts are on in the first place? Social Media platforms benefit from the amount of time users spend on them; because sites like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat etc are free, their source of

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revenue comes from people using their platforms - hence, it is only natural that they want to keep users on their platforms for a longer period of time, because this means a greater amount of profit for them. Only the creation of such platforms is never enough, because success means gaining more users and more importantly, being able to retain those users. Read receipts can thus be seen as a strategy of psychological manipulation that these companies have embraced (Patnaik 2017). In 2016, over 1.1 billion people were estimated to have a mental or substance use disorder, and the highest among these were anxiety disorders - almost 4% of the population globally. (Ritchie and Roser 2018). Social media is changing the way people communicate in today’s world, and as Taina Bucher rightly said, interfaces have the capacity to “affect and be affected” (31), thus the interface design of these social media platforms, and specifically features like the read receipt, can to a large extent impact the mental state of any of its users. Social media platforms can thus be said to operate by taking advantage of users who have certain forms of anxiety, although the degree to which this is effective can vary from one user to other; nonetheless, it pushes users to continue communicating on these platforms, and this in turn benefits the providers behind the scenes.

From this perspective, it becomes possible for one to think of how the various affordances and nudges used for the creation of social media interfaces can have an impact on a persons’ mental health. Once you conceptualise the term affordance, it becomes clear that all the individual features, choices and tools that a platform presents to a user are arranged in such a way so as to gain their attention and get them to keep using the said platforms, thereby providing revenue. At the same time, subtle nudges by these platforms through specific design and presentation of these features can trigger users to get “addicted” to these platforms; or at the very least, by guiding their

experience and online behaviour in a certain direction, they can stimulate users to spend more time and attention on these platforms, thereby allowing them to have a greater impact on them.

Qualitative Data Collection - Use of Questionnaires

Data collection can generally be of two kinds, or falls into two broad categories: quantitative and qualitative methods of collection. While quantitative methods aim to ‘quantify’ data or define it in numerical terms (McLeod 2017), qualitative data collection methods try to understand the ‘how’ or the ‘why’ behind certain behaviour or phenomena. The aim is to take an interpretive approach and the researcher attempts to understand behaviour from the point of view of the respondents. This kind of data provides a richer understanding, and a more well-grounded explanation of phenomena “identifiable in local contexts” (Huberman and Miles 3). While many researchers choose either one

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or the other out of qualitative and quantitative methods, it cannot be said that one method is better than the other, and what a researcher chooses as their research strategy depends on the research question they are trying to answer (Silverman 15).

Thus, in addition to using affordances and nudges as an analytical tool to understand the context of social media interfaces, this paper makes use of questionnaires, administered to individuals within the age group of 18-25 years, and then evaluated to assess the relationship between amount of time spent on these platforms and mental health of the respondents. The particular age group has been chosen because statistically, users from that age group are more likely to use these platforms. (Smith 2018) Furthermore, this paper attempts to answer the research question through a qualitative lens, while using a method of collection more frequently used for collecting quantitative data i.e. a questionnaire. The purpose of doing so is because the researcher aims to explain users’ subjective experiences with using the features of social media platforms, specifically the Read Receipts and Last Seen features. At the same time, the questionnaire was chosen over an interview due to how it is easier to reach a wider range of respondents (Denscombe 156) - because of this, it became possible to distribute the questionnaire not just in one area or region, but even to users who live overseas, with the help of social media. Internet questionnaires are also more cost and time effective, which was a major factor due to this thesis being a very time-bound project.

Questionnaire use in this case is also effective because keeping in mind the factors of intellect, education level and ability to understand all the questions (Denscombe 156), only English-speaking University students and young working professionals between the age of 18-25 were targeted. The focus is on understanding the various subjective views about the impact that the use of social media can have on an individual, through collecting the opinions and personal experiences of the

respondents. Seeing as how the questions were framed so as to understand mental well-being of users, and psychological and mental health are sensitive topics that many users may not be

comfortable discussing, the factor of anonymity that questionnaires provide over other methods like face-to-face interviews also encourages respondents to be more comfortable while answering questions (Ong and Weiss 1691).

The questions for the questionnaire were first listed out separately onto a Microsoft Word document and then compiled into an interactive survey through Google Forms. This software was chosen to create the questionnaire due to its ease of use and as it provides a more friendly and familiar user interface for the respondents. The questions were written entirely in English, as they were, as

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mentioned above, administered to international students and young working professionals, with a fairly good command over the English language. The questionnaire was targeted towards the youth and frequent users of social media platforms, and was spread mostly through personal Facebook and Instagram accounts, and digital sharing via personal as well as professional networks, not just nationally but internationally. As this thesis aims to take a more qualitative approach to the research question, a smaller number of respondents were targeted and their responses were then evaluated by the researcher. The questionnaire consisted of a mix of close-ended and open-ended questions, distributed evenly throughout. The results of the questionnaire were automatically processed and converted into graphs by Google Forms, which were then individually analysed by the researcher so as to gain a more in-depth perspective on the responses.

However, as the questionnaire was spread through personal websites and connections, there would naturally be a type of bias in the respondents, and this was taken into account and discarded as it does not hinder the kind of results required for answering the proposed research question. Another common drawback from using questionnaires as a method is that there can be miscommunication between the researcher and respondent, or difference in interpretation of a question asked (Debois 2019). Attempts were made to reduce this by providing examples in certain questions, but

understanding differs from person to person and hence cannot be guaranteed. Furthermore, due to an inability to read interpersonal cues and body language as with written, internet questionnaires, it is difficult to convey respondents’ feelings or emotions regarding a particular question (Debois 2019), thus making it more challenging for the researcher when dealing with opinion-based

questions in the analysis stage. All these limitations were kept in mind and taken into account by the researcher for the duration of this research project.

The questionnaire received a total of 55 responses, out of which 2 were completely discarded due to the respondents being outside the targeted age group, as mentioned previously in the methodology. Furthermore, out of the remaining 53, 1 respondent did not agree to the stated terms regarding voluntary participation, yet continued to fill out the remaining questions in the standard manner. However, the researcher feels it would be unethical to use that respondent’s answers as written consent was denied, even if as a result of misunderstanding or an oversight on the part of the respondent. Thus, 52 responses were taken into account and analysed for the purpose of answering the proposed research questions.

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In this section, I will attempt to analyse the questions on the questionnaire separately so as to gain a deeper understanding of the answers given by the various respondents. The findings from the survey will be presented simultaneously alongside the interpretation of the answers. First, the more quantifiable questions such as demographics will be discussed, followed by the various open-ended questions that provide a more thorough qualitative outlook on the topic at hand. The interpretation of the findings will take on a format where each question is addressed and analysed on its own, often using quotes from the respondents’ answers to gain a more personal insight; some of these answers have been slightly edited for the purpose of clarity. Through the presentation and discussion of the findings, I will thus attempt to answer my proposed research questions.

Quantitative Data: Facts and Figures

While responses were received from respondents of every age within the targeted age group (18-25 years), a majority of the respondents were 22 years old (17 respondents), followed by 21 year olds (12 respondents). The third largest group of respondents by age was 24 years old, but the number was significantly lower - at 5 respondents. However, the age composition offers a pretty balanced view as the maximum respondents fall into a middle ground between the lowest limit of the age group (18) and the highest (25). Out of the respondents, women held the clear majority, with 78.2% identifying their gender as female while only 21.8% identified as male. However, this is not too surprising as studies have shown that females are more likely to respond to online questionnaires when compared to men (Smith 2008). Another possible factor for the higher response rate from females could be directly linked to the topic of the research, which is related to two distinguishable topics: social media and mental health. Statistics have shown that for many social media platforms - including Facebook and Instagram, which are focused on in this study - there are a higher number of female users when compared to males (2018 Social Audience Guide) due to which females might find this particular survey more interesting and relatable from a personal point of view. Moreover, traditional gender stereotyping and the socialisation of men to not express emotions and discuss mental health due to the need to be “strong”, “brave” or “macho” could be a possible factor in their lower response rate for this particular survey; men do not typically openly speak about or admit to having mental health problems for fear of appearing weak. (Greene 2018)

While there were actually a number of male respondents (12 out of the initial 55), when compared to the 43 women who responded, it is certainly not a very larger number. However, it is necessary to keep the gender demographic in mind while assessing the answers, as a majority of them would be

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from a female point of view, or females’ opinions, which could potentially be very different from how males might have answered the specific questions. Now, keeping the gender and age

demographic in mind, it is not surprising that a majority of respondents said that the social media platform they had used most frequently in the past week was Instagram (72.7%), followed by Facebook at 21.8%. Studies have already shown that among the chosen age group, Instagram and Facebook are the two most popular platforms, and both are dominated by female users, especially Instagram; thus, as women made up the larger group of respondents, Instagram could be seen to be the preferred social media platform for a majority of the respondents. However, what was surprising was that only one respondent chose Snapchat as their most frequently-used platform, because Snapchat is generally considered to be very popular among the youth, which includes the targeted age group. In fact, reports have stated that Snapchat is ahead of Instagram in terms of being the more popular social media platform for young adults between the ages of 18-24 (Wagner 2017), yet the findings from this particular study suggest that while Snapchat might be popular among a younger audience, several university students prefer to use Instagram instead. The next question asked was regarding the number of hours respondents chose to spend on these social media

platforms on a daily basis, and options were provided, where 61.8% said they spend between one to three hours, followed by 20% who responded with ‘less than one hour’ and 14.5% who said they spent more than four hours daily on these platforms. One respondent even answered that they spend twelve hours a day on a mix of social media platforms throughout the course of the day. Now, when viewed relatively, spending up to three hours a day on social media as compared to a terrifying twelve hours seems like quite a wise, rational decision; however, when taken in and of itself, that makes up three hours out of every single day spent scrolling through newsfeeds, commenting on pictures, messaging friends and generally envying all these peoples’ seemingly glorious lives. But what impact could this have on users’ mental health? A previous study by researchers at the

University of Pennsylvania monitored the social media activity of 143 undergraduate students, and established that higher levels of anxiety, depression or FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) were recorded among the students who spent upwards of 30 minutes a day on these platforms. Conversely,

students who limited their daily social media use to 30 minutes or less generally reported better mental well-being (Hunt et al. 2018). This is most likely because constantly living in the digital world of social media also makes users more invested in the content that they see on these platforms, and as a result, they tend to compare their own lives to the lives that are broadcast on social media. Similarly, one could logically come to the conclusion that being more invested in online activities and lives can thus cause users to become more invested in the sharing of messages

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on these platforms, and how another user responds to the interaction on these platforms could possibly have a big impact on their mental well-being; this will be discussed in more detail in further sections of the analysis.

Nowadays, there are a variety of different social media platforms, all performing different specific functions, and yet many of their features or tools remain the same. For instance, the presence of a dedicated messaging channel integrated within these platforms such as Facebook Messenger or Instagram Direct Message. Add to this the fact that most users tend to have the same people on their social networks in all these different platforms, and it comes as no surprise that many users end up communicating with their friends and family on multiple channels instead of just one that is created specifically for instant messaging. As this research aims to find out if there is a relationship between this state of over-connectedness and mental health among the users, respondents were asked what their thoughts were about this feature, with different options provided. While 40% of users said that they find this feature useful, possibly because it makes communication and staying in touch that much easier, a majority of respondents (45.5%) actually said that this feature of social media sites can get overwhelming sometimes for users, which when viewed from the perspective of added pressure to respond in a timely fashion and added possibility of conflict via social media, actually makes a lot of sense. However, as a related question, respondents were also asked how often they use all these separate messaging channels within social media platforms that do not have messaging as a main feature (Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat etc) and 32.7% of them said they frequently use them as an alternative to regular message-only platforms like WhatsApp, while only 20% answered with ‘very rarely’. This appears to show that although so many users find this practice

overwhelming, there are a larger number of people who continue to make use of all these different social media platforms regardless of the purpose it serves or the toll it takes on their mental well-being. On the other hand, the majority of respondents (47.3%) said that they do use these different channels to message friends and family, but only as a response to content that was posted on that specific platform, or when prompted by others.

As this research uses the Read Receipts and Last Seen features of social media platforms as the analytical tool to understand how mental health of users can be impacted, respondents were asked whether they find themselves repeatedly checking if a message has been read by the recipient or if they are somehow being ignored, and a majority of them answered yes to this question. This is not surprising as these features were probably built into these platforms with this very impact in mind;

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when users get the option to know if a friend, partner or family member is ignoring their messages, they are more likely to become anxious and keep using the feature simply because it is so easily available, and in the process end up spending more time on these platforms, or at least opening them several more times than they normally would (Cowan 2019); in the process providing profits to these platforms through their increased presence and attention. A study conducted among

Japanese university students, however, suggests that this can actually differ from person to person, and even from one culture to another. The study showed that users who actually are more dependent on internet use and use text messaging more excessively are the ones more likely to feel rejected or ignored if another user does not respond to their messages. (Lu Xi et al. 2014) Conversely, when users were asked about their own behaviour with regards to responding to messages on online platforms, 50.9% of respondents admitted that they occasionally find themselves replying only because they felt that it was expected of them, or they felt a sense of pressure regarding the right kind of online behaviour. A further 25.5% answered this particular question saying that they almost

always responded immediately to messages on social media due to the attached expectations about

doing so, which brings us to the norms regarding social media use and behaviour, and how these can cause stress or anxiety to users. For instance, many people do not differentiate between

conversation etiquette in face-to-face conversations vs digitally mediated conversations, and expect their friends and family to operate on the same level, thereby causing stress for the user on the receiving side of these expectations (Cowan 2019). The responses received regarding users’ obligatory behaviour on social media suggest that users frequently adhere to the unwritten expectation that technology should afford instant communication, and thus so many people find themselves showing the behaviour that they believe is expected of them because of social

behavioural norms; the need to follow social norms are then prioritised ahead of these users’ own mental well-being.

When users were asked about the impact of social interactions and relationships on online

platforms, there was a question regarding changes in mood depending on whether another user has responded to a text even after the sender has received a read receipt for the message, and an

overwhelming majority of the respondents (85.5%) said that the amount of impact this can have on their mental health or mood usually depends on the context, i.e. the relationship the user shares with the other person. However, there was a small number of people, 10.9% of the respondents, who said non-response even when there has been a read receipt does not bother them, while on the other hand, 3.6%, which is albeit a small minority of respondents, even went so far as to say that is it

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outright rude to not immediately respond to a message after you see it. This is not surprising when you look at the amount of impact as different for every person, depending on their specific usage patterns as well expectations. However, as mentioned, a lot of platforms also offer the possibility of turning both the last seen and read receipt features off, which one would think would offer users the workaround that they need so as not to feel anxious or pressured by them, yet when they were asked about it, a majority of respondents said they actually prefer to keep either one or both of these features turned on. When asked for reasoning, the most popular one - answered by 39.4% of respondents - appeared to be that users cannot see others’ last seen status or read receipts if they turned their own one off, while a further 18.2% said that they only keep them turned on because it requires unnecessary effort to manually turn them off. This speaks to the nudges that the platforms give us through these features - by keeping them turned on by default, they are encouraging, and influencing, users to use them. (Thaler and Sunstein 9) Additionally, while it requires an actual amount of effort to possibly go to the platform’s settings page and turn them off, it is effortless to do nothing and continue using the platform with the default settings. Thus, users’ behaviour is guided specifically by the design of the interface of these platforms in this instance. There were also a various multitude of other reasons given for choosing to keep these features turned on - from not being aware of the possibility to turn them off to simple indifference. One user stated that they liked knowing that others could see when their message had been read, as this adds a layer of

accountability to the receiver, while another said that they feel a sense of satisfaction in knowing when a receiver has seen their message - even if there is no response from their end.

Response Analysis through a Qualitative Lens

Now that the (relatively) quantitative aspects that can be derived from the responses to the

questionnaire have been looked at and analysed, in this next section this paper will go slightly more in-depth into some of the open-ended questions that were asked, and there will be an attempt to understand the impact of these features on more individual user experiences and behaviour.

For respondents who said that they prefer to keep their Last Seen feature turned off, reasoning or justification was asked about why they choose to do so. As a response, most respondents said that if they do keep their last seen hidden, it is either due to them not wanting to compromise their privacy on these social media platforms, or because it allows them to feel more calm; there are less

expectations, leading to less disappointments, and it removes the pressure of both giving and expecting immediate responses. One respondent said,

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“I hide my last seen and active status on all platforms. I do so because it makes me uncomfortable to know that someone may so easily monitor my online presence”.

Many of the responses were along very similar lines, with respondents feeling more at ease to know that they have some form of control over their online presence and activity, and privacy appears to be an important factor for a lot of people surveyed. Similarly, when viewed from the context of peer pressure, or the expectation of immediate responses, many users choose to avoid this simply by turning off their last active statuses. One user said,

“I hide my last seen/active on these platforms. I feel it takes the pressure off, like you aren't

constantly watched or that I should feel obligated to respond to someone when I'm not feeling like”.

This concern is mirrored by several other respondents, who prefer to avoid the pressures that come along with keeping the feature turned on. However, not all users keep their last active status turned off, and while many users think it depends on the context, as well as individual choice, several respondents said that the last seen feature when used in the correct manner adds a layer of

accountability and helps let others know whether you are available to respond to messages or not. As one respondent put it,

“I like the last seen status because I think it adds accountability, however only on platforms where you can still read the message (through a notification, for example) without creating the 'read' receipt or going on the platform, giving you a choice as to whether or not you want to be 'seen'. Otherwise, it forces you to be 'seen' in order to access the content, which strikes me as a classic tradeoff between privacy and content.”

For this particular user, the very availability of a choice seems to be very important. They want to be able to be held accountable for their online behaviour, and most likely would make an effort to conform to the expectations regarding responses that is asked from them, but is not willing to trade their privacy for this. The possibility to read a message from a notification and not have the other user know as soon as you do this would naturally give users a sense of more control regarding their own behaviour; in this way, no expectations are broken, and nobody has to go out of their way for somebody else.

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When respondents were asked about their online behaviour with regards to checking if someone has “Seen” their message, a majority of them said yes, and then were asked for the reason they believe that they indulge in that behaviour. For the ones who said it did not affect them as well, we asked for reasoning. The answers ere categorised into these two main categories: does affect and does not affect. Furthermore, for answers that explained the why behind the impact, the specific contexts were analysed to get a better perspective on when users are more likely to feel anxious regarding their online behaviour. Among the respondents who said that they have on occasion found

themselves constantly checking if another user has read their message, the reasons ranged from the need for an urgent response, nervousness while waiting for a reply, fear of humiliation and being ignored to the need to be heard, insecurity or a constant need for validation. According to one respondent, this stems from the basic human need to feel acknowledged. However, the other category of responses from users who say that they are not affected by whether another user reads their message or not provides an alternative view. While a number of users attributed the lack of impact to their own delayed or infrequent online behaviour, others saw it as irrelevant to their mental state, or wrote it off to respecting other peoples’ preferences and personal choices; many users also gave the very seemingly practical response that because they themselves live busy lives and cannot always offer immediate responses, they do not expect it from others either. While one user said,

“I usually take a long time to respond to messages if they're not explicitly urgent, so I respect long silences from others and don't expect them to hurry either”, another responded that“I think that I am not affected by it because I myself have various reasons to be away from my phone, or to simply not respond to messages. I suppose that I am thus aware that if something requires a reply, it will come in its own due time, as per the sender's convenience.”

What is interesting to note from these two answers is that both the users seemed to be people who do not use their phone too often, or do not take part in excessive online messaging. Because they themselves do not spend a majority of their time on digital media platforms, it is then not surprising that these features, and the platforms as a whole, have less of an impact on them. Obviously, there is also the much reiterated point regarding individual differences. In addition to this, many users said that when they do indulge in the specific behaviour of repeatedly checking if another person has

Mental Health in an Over-Connected World: Examining the Relationship between Social Media Design and Anxiety