ABSTRACT
Selfie-related activities have become pervasive to the point that they may affect the mental health of people who engage in them. To ascertain this mechanism, this study examined the mediating role of selfitis in the associations between self-esteem, problematic social media use, problematic smartphone use, body-self appearance, and psychological distress among young Ghanaian adults. A total of 651 participants completed a questionnaire with measures on self-esteem, body-self appearance, problematic social media use, problematic smartphone use, depression, anxiety, stress, coping skills, and selfitis. There were direct associations between all the variables except between self-esteem and selfitis. In addition, selfitis mediated the associations between problematic social media use, problematic smartphone use, body-self appearance, and psychological distress except between self-esteem and psychological distress. These findings suggest that selfitis can serve as a pathway by which people who overly engage in problematic social media use, problematic smartphone use, and have poor body-self appearance may experience psychological distress. Hence, there is a need for health communicators, school authorities, and opinion leaders to educate young adults on the consequences of the problematic use of technology, especially for selfitis behaviour. Future studies can examine the factors that predict selfitis behaviour among adults.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) are a major public health challenge globally especially among adolescents and young adults in lower-middle-income countries (LMICs) in Africa including Ghana. In light of this, mobile phone innovations are advocated to enhance public health education and prevention of STIs in developing health systems. OBJECTIVE: This study assessed mobile phone usage among adolescents and young adult populations pursuing tertiary education and their use of these technologies in the education and prevention of STIs. METHOD: This was a cross-sectional analytical study among 250 adolescents and young adults aged 18-24 at Ghana's premier and biggest public University. The study was however conducted in only one public university in the Greater Accra region which potentially poses generalizability challenges due to socio-cultural and economic differences in other regions of the country. Data was collected using structured questionnaire and data analysis done with STATA (version 12.0). Univariate probit regression (VCE, Robust) analysis was used to determine factors associated with adolescents and young adult population's usage of mobile phones in the education and prevention of STIs. RESULTS: Out of the 250 adolescents and young adults interviewed, 99% owned mobile phones. Out of this number, 58% them were smartphone users. Also, it was found that male young adults (Coef. = 1.11, p = 0.000) and young adults who owned a smartphone (Coef. = 0.46, p = 0.013) were more likely to use mobile phones for education and prevention of STIs. CONCLUSION: Mobile phone penetration among young adults is nearly 100% in line with the national trend. Additionally, these young adults largely believe in the use of mobile phone programmes for STIs education and prevention. Moreover, respondents were found to be more comfortable using mobile applications than traditional text messaging or phone calls in STIs education and prevention. Future mobile phone programmes for STIs education and prevention should consider innovating customized mobile applications to promote acceptability by the youth and enhance sustainability of such interventions on STIs in Ghana. Even though this study was conducted in only one public university in Ghana, the findings are nonetheless informative and future researchers could consider using a larger sample size across private and public universities in other regions of the country.
