“I Don’t Feel Like There’s Enough Awareness about the Damage That Social Media Does”: A Thematic Analysis of the Relationships between Social Media Use, Mental Wellbeing, and Care Experience

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article explores the ever-increasing influence of social media on the mental well-being of young people and delves into its particular effects on those who might be more vulnerable due to adverse childhood experiences, such as care-experienced young people. The research, which includes 22 semi-structured interviews  provides valuable insights into the multifaceted impact of social media on the psychological well-being of the youth. There are not enough  about the methods  which were used. The study used semi-structured interviews to allow for deep, personal exploration of, and discussion around, how SM influences  mental wellbeing of young people.  The introductory question and key questions should be presented in the article or in the appendix.  the method of qualitative analysis was presented correctly. The article is very interesting and well  structured.

Author Response

We appreciate the time and effort that you dedicated to providing feedback on our manuscript and are grateful for the insightful comments on and valuable improvements to our paper. We have done our utmost to incorporate your suggestions. 

Reviewers' Comments to the Authors: Reviewer 1

• Comment 1: “The article explores the ever-increasing influence of social media on the mental well-being of young people and delves into its particular effects on those who might be more vulnerable due to adverse childhood experiences, such as care-experienced young people. The research, which includes 22 semi-structured interviews provides valuable insights into the multifaceted impact of social media on the psychological well-being of the youth.”

Response: Thank you for your positive feedback; we really appreciate your recognition of the value that we aim to offer through the insights presented in our paper.

• Comment 2: “There are not enough about the methods which were used. The study used semi-structured interviews to allow for deep, personal exploration of, and discussion around, how SM influences mental wellbeing of young people. The introductory question and key questions should be presented in the article or in the appendix.”

Response: To address this comment, we have added more information regarding the methods used (semi-structured interviews) by including the discussion guide utilised in the study. This is referred to in the ‘Materials and Methods’ section (p. 4) and is shared in full detail within Appendix A. With this addition, the reader is presented with the key questions in the text, but also has the opportunity to view the discussion guide if desired. In addition to this, further details have been added to the explanation of the analysis process for improved clarity around how we approached our data analysis (p. 4) and produced the findings outlined in the ‘Results’ section (p. 5).

• Comment 3: “The method of qualitative analysis was presented correctly.The article is very interesting and well structured.”

Response: Thank you again for your positive feedback here, we are very pleased that our work is of interest and clear to follow.

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the invitation to review this article. The authors investigate an interesting topic, focusing on the relationships between social media use, mental wellbeing, and care exerience in SM context. Please, find bellow my comments and suggestions:

1. The authors are invited to present more solid arguments to justify the need for an exploratory study. There are many studies in the literature that focused on the effect on SM on different age groups, including YP. Indeed, the quantitative studies revealed mixed results, but that conclusions should be considered in that specific research design. Therefore, I suggest a better argumentation of the research gap.

2. The group comparison assumed by the authors in their study should be also extensively argued and correlated with the research gap. Why is important this comparison? What is the theoretical contribution that fulfills a gap in the literature?

3.  The research question 1 should be more specific formulated and divided into more RQ. 

4. From methodological perspective, the authors should also present the construct operationalisation and the instrument they used to collect data. Also, the 2 groups are not similar regarding their gender and ethnicity causing important limits regarding the comparison authors made.

5. I would encourage the authors the report more data regarding the frecyuency of the codes and, maybe, to develop a conceptual map, The relations between concepts could be better understand by readers using this approach.

6. I also would suggest to the authors to extend their literature review an consult more studies, including quantitative one - since, they might prove useful for the literature review and state of the art.

Author Response

We appreciate the time and effort that you dedicated to providing feedback on our manuscript and are grateful for the insightful comments on and valuable improvements to our paper. We have done our utmost to incorporate your suggestions.

Reviewers' Comments to the Authors: Reviewer 2

• Comment 1: “Thank you for the invitation to review this article. The authors investigate an interesting topic, focusing on the relationships between social media use, mental wellbeing, and care experience in SM context.”

Response: Thank you for taking the time to review our manuscript and provide such helpful comments, we really appreciate it and are, of course, glad that you found our paper of interest.

• Comment 2: “The authors are invited to present more solid arguments to justify the need for an exploratory study. There are many studies in the literature that focused on the effect on SM on different age groups, including YP. Indeed, the quantitative studies revealed mixed results, but that conclusions should be considered in that specific research design. Therefore, I suggest a better argumentation of the research gap.”

Response: We gratefully accept this comment and agree that further clarification was needed regarding the justification of the study and the research gap. To aid this, we have included further literature (p. 2) that highlights the vulnerability (in particular, susceptibility to mental health issues) of care experienced young people and the consequential need to explore how social media may be influencing their mental wellbeing in a way that gathers rich, qualitative data. When comparing the quantitative conclusions, we provide a brief overview of the current landscape regarding findings in this research area; specifically aiming to highlight the lack of research in relation to care experienced young people. This has now been expanded to further aid clarity. Similarly, two systematic reviews are referred to, in which they express the need for more qualitative, exploratory studies in this research area – a point that we hope to have addressed through the work outlined in our article. We hope that these additions regarding research gaps clarify the rationale for our exploratory work.

• Comment 3: “The group comparison assumed by the authors in their study should be also extensively argued and correlated with the research gap. Why is important this comparison? What is the theoretical contribution that fulfils a gap in the literature?”

Response: As noted above, we have now included further literature that highlights care experienced young people’s susceptibility to mental health issues and the lack of current research within this underrepresented population (p. 2), which we hope improves clarification for the justification of studying this population. Furthermore, we have expanded on the group comparison (p. 2), explaining that these two populations need to be explored to find out the differing needs of each and how this may have implications for future social media design and policy. These additions are highlighted on Pages 1 and 2.

• Comment 4: “The research question 1 should be more specific formulated and divided into more RQ.”

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. We have considered this comment carefully and have subsequently included a brief explanation as to why the research questions might be considered as being quite broad (p. 3). We are reluctant to reformulate RQ1 having already conducted the research based on its original framing and feel that to do so may inadvertently undermine the integrity of the work. Perhaps to clarify though: We combine questions of impact of SM on mental wellbeing and self-view with how it varies between young people and care experienced young people because we see the two as being intertwined in such a way that separating them out as independent RQs would fundamentally change the focus of our paper (i.e., we are not seeking to replicate the extant literature looking at impact of SM on wellbeing across YP in general, but rather explore any differences between YP and CEYP specifically). We appreciate you raising this important point and hope to have clarified the rationale for our approach here.

• Comment 5: “From methodological perspective, the authors should also present the construct operationalisation and the instrument they used to collect data. Also, the 2 groups are not similar regarding their gender and ethnicity causing important limits regarding the comparison authors made.”

Response: You raise an interesting point here about clarifying how key concepts in the study, such as wellbeing and identity, were discussed in the interviews and how data was collected. However, our understanding of ‘construct operationalisation’ and ‘instrument’ use is located within more of a quantitative context, while our approach was not to link “a construct definition to one or more specific, concrete indicators that can be measured” (Miller et al., 2009, p.6 - doi:10.1525/jer.2009.4.3.21), but rather to allow participants to interpret the concepts themselves, unless clarification was required. We have included more detail on our approach here on p. 4 and include our full interview protocol in Appendix A to provide more transparency and clarity around how data was collected and how concepts were introduced. Group differences in gender and ethnicity are now included in the discussion of study limitations, regarding their restriction of transferability to others (pp. 19-20).

• Comment 6: “I would encourage the authors the report more data regarding the frequency of the codes and, maybe, to develop a conceptual map, The relations between concepts could be better understand by readers using this approach.”
  
  Response: Thank you for this suggestion. Data has now been added regarding the proportions of codes generated for key themes and subthemes where appropriate throughout the ‘Results’ section (e.g., Lines 204, 221, and so on). While we agree that this can be a helpful indicator of thematic prevalence, we have strived to use quantitative data sparingly as we believe it is important not to diminish the value of less frequent themes or subthemes, especially as in this context they often relate to important lived experiences of participants. Therefore, we have included a caveat to this style of report (p. 5, Line 192 onwards). Finally, thank you for the suggestion of creating a conceptual map: this has now been created and added to aid readability and to offer a visual representation of the data (p. 7).
  
  
• Comment 7: “I also would suggest to the authors to extend their literature review an[d] consult more studies, including quantitative one - since, they might prove useful for the literature review and state of the art.”
  
  Response: Thank you for this suggestion. The literature review in the ‘Introduction’ section has now been extended and draws on findings from additional quantitative and mixed-methods studies, including references 15, 17, 18, 19, and 26 in the manuscript (p. 2). We acknowledge that there are many studies that could potentially be integrated into our review, though remaining conscious of the need to adhere to space limitations and to maintain focus of the article, we have identified and selected these papers specifically for enhancing our work.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for sending me the revised version of the paper. The authors made the suggested changes and improved the quality of the paper. Good luck!