The Correlation of Virtual Conduct on Social Networks With Anxiety and School Achievement of Adolescents

Abstract

Today’s generation of young people is immersed in the virtual world, which increasingly leads to a negative trend - socially isolated individuals. Recently, there has been an accelerated development of social networks that have changed the way of communication and interaction between people, which has had a special impact on young people. There are multiple attempts to reduce the time spent on social networks because of the countless consequences that arise: anxiety, depression, irritability, restlessness, frequent mood swings. Therefore, the main problem was to examine the relationship between virtual behavior on social networks with adolescent anxiety while the goal was to assess the virtual behavior of young people in relation to gender and school success as well as the relationship of virtual behavior on social networks with anxiety in raising awareness of the importance of prevention and adolescent mental health care. The research was conducted among 215 high school students, ages 15 to 19 years from the Tuzla Canton, Bosnia and Herzegovina. There were 117 male (54.42%) and 98 (45.58%) female participants. The questionnaire used to analyze virtual behavior on social networks (VPDM) is divided into six subscales (DM addiction, alienation, socializing, negative attitude, self-presentation, and virtual self). The Anxiety Rating Scale (AT 29) was used to assess anxiety. The findings show that all facets of virtual conduct on social networks are associated with anxiety. When it comes to gender differences in the examined aspects of virtual behavior, the results show that girls achieve statistically significantly higher results on the dimensions of dependence on social networks and virtual alienation compared to boys, while these gender differences did not prove to be statistically significant on other aspects of virtual behavior. In addition, with the exception of virtual alienation, the study discovered a negative relationship between academic success and features of virtual behavior. The results indicate that in order to make more rational use of social networks, strategies are needed for preventive action, the preservation of the mental health of young people and improvement of their school achievement.