Lydia Underwood presenting at Honors Symposium
Author: Lydia Underwood | Major: Nursing | Semester: Spring 2024
My name is Lydia Underwood and I am a senior in the College of Education and Health Professions majoring in Nursing at the Eleanor Mann School of Nursing. I am currently in my third and final semester of research. Once I graduate in May 2024, I intend to work in Kansas City as a registered nurse at The University of Kansas Healthcare System on a Renal and Organ Transplant Progressive Care Unit. My faculty mentor is Emily Richardson who is a professor in the Eleanor Mann School of Nursing.
This semester I worked on completing my thesis draft and presenting at two conferences: Nursing Science Day and Honors Symposium. My thesis is an extended literature review with the PICOT question “In adolescents, does active social media use or passive social media use have a greater impact on mental health?” I chose this topic because on a personal level I have seen that social media can negatively impact mental health. To find my mentor, I worked with another professor who connected me with Instructor Richardson because she shares a similar interest of mental health. While I was finishing my thesis this semester, it came out in the news that there is a lawsuit against TikTok and Meta CEOs regarding the mental health impact of social media on adolescents. It seems that policymakers are starting to realize that social media can be harmful to adolescents and that something needs to be done.
The main takeaway from my research is that more studies need to be conducted to determine the long-term effects of social media throughout adolescence and the factors that can affect the impact such as social media platform, time spent on social media, and if the user is engaging in active use or passive use. The main challenge I faced in my research was pulling all the data together to figure out my main conclusions of the literature review, a lot of the data was contradictory, so this process was hard to work through. In addition, when I was making posters to present my thesis it was hard for me to figure out what to include or exclude on the poster. I felt like a lot of my data was important to my project, so it was hard to decide what to leave out. My faculty mentor helped me by providing guidance and giving feedback throughout the process of revising and completing my thesis. She also helped increase my confidence in my thesis, after I wrote my rough draft, I experienced a lot of self-doubt but she ensured me that I had completed a strong and thorough literature review. My committee member, Terria Hawley, also helped me by reading over my final draft and ensuring that there were no questions that were left unanswered or important information not included. I did not travel to a conference, but I did present at Nurse Science Day and Honors Symposium in Fayetteville. My next steps include taking my NCLEX after graduation and preparing to start my job at The University of Kansas Healthcare System. I also hope to go back to school at some point to become possibly a nurse practitioner or certified registered nurse anesthetist.