Impact of Social Media on Mental Health of Adolescents 1 1 4 Impact of Social Media on Mental Health of Adolescents Dr. Ramandeep Kaur* & Hilal Bashir** Adolescents throughout the country regularly use internet, cellphones and videogames to gather information and communicate with each other. This ability to interact with each other’s is the unique features of social media which provides powerful new ways for adolescent to create and navigate their social environments. Social media use has been climbing sharply in recent years, especially in younger populations such as adolescents. Any website that allows social interactions considered a social media site, including social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Line, MySpace, Skype, Wechat, Instragam, gaming sites and video sites such as YouTube and blogs. These sites offer adolescents for communication and entertainment and have grown exponentially in recently years. The current body of literature on social media presents conflicting views about social media’s effects on one’s mental health and well-being. While most research indicates that social media has some effect on one’s mental health, contradictory reports indicate both positive and negative effects. Such as positive effects are socialization and communication, enhanced learning opportunities, accessing health information while negative are Facebook depression, cyberbullying, online harassment, sexting/texting, lack of concentration, decline in intellectual abilities, stress, fatigue and emotion suppression. Introduction The World Health Organization (WHO, 1948) defined mental health as a complete state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. This definition clearly affirms that health is a positive state and not just the absence of pathogens, i.e. a disease-causing organism. According to the bio- psycho-social view, health is much more than the absence of disease. A person who has no diseased condition is not sick, but this person may not be healthy, either. Since health is multi-dimensional all aspects of living, i.e. biological, psychological and social factors must be taken into account while examining the status of health. ‘Feeling good’ is more than ‘not feeling bad’ and research in neuroscience (Zautra, 2003) found that the human brain responds in distinctly different patterns to positive feelings and negative feelings. Ryff and Keyes (1995), Keyes and Lopez (2002), Keyes and Magyar (2003) defined mental health as the combination of emotional wellbeing (presence of positive effect, satisfaction with life and absence of negative affect), social wellbeing (incorporating acceptance, actualization, contribution, coherence and integration), and psychological wellbeing (self-acceptance, personal * Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, Lovely Professional University, Phagwara. ** Research Scholar, Department of Education, Lovely Professional University, Phagwara.