Social connectedness is the experience of feeling close and connected to others. It involves feeling loved, cared for, and valued, and forms the basis of interpersonal relationships. Being socially connected to people around us can have huge benefits to our mental health and wellbeing improving self-confidence and building and maintaining healthy relationships. Social connectedness is extremely important in the area of Mental Health Promotion and wellbeing.
As a student I find that being socially connected to my peers is hugely detrimental to my academic motivation, feeling connected with my peers and others in the college is very important to me and helps me stay focused on motivated to do better. Being socially connected eliminates isolation and the feeling of not fitting in. College in my opinion is a very important environment to develop your social skills. The feeling of fitting in and being around people reduces every day stressors that your average college student experiences such as meeting deadlines and doing assignments, it gives you the opportunity to have a laugh and not get so caught up in the stress.
Social media is strongly linked with social connectedness for college students. Even though social media can be portrayed as a negative thing because of the high levels of cyberbullying and the influence of a negative self image it can also play a supportive role in a students life.Social media is very important to me and I would feel very left out and isolated if I wasn’t constantly on my phone checking up on my friends and social media accounts. A 2018 PEW survey, Teens’ Social Media Habits and Experiences, shares that the majority of teens (81 percent) feel more connected to their friends because of social media and 68 percent feel as if they have people that will support them if they are going through a difficult time. Social media can be an excellent support system for college students as it enables them to feel connected with their peers.
Allen et al, (2013). Examines current research of how social media use affects social connectedness in terms of an adolescent’s development in the sense of belonging, psychosocial wellbeing and identity development and processes. When adolescents perceive a greater sense of belonging in school, they place more value on the academic material they are learning and visa versa. Social connectedness can contribute to an individual’s sense of psychosocial wellbeing for example the level of anxiety, loneliness and depression. The study reviews the positive and negative aspects of social media use on social connectedness. The positives included, broadening relationships, seek validation from peers regarding their thoughts and experiences. The negatives included the subject of not belonging and social disconnection, cyberbullying and exclusion.
To conclude, I think social media has a big influence in my life and how it can have a positive and negative impact on my life. I mainly focus on the positive impacts of my social media use as it is how I stay connected with both family and friends. The positive aspects of social media use on my social connectedness out way the negatives.
Hammy's Health Blog 
Saoirse, this is an interesting take on the idea of social connectedness in that it focuses on social media. I think it’s important for you to establish what the benefits for you are of being on social media in order to show how it creates that connection with others (in the way you talk about forming the connection face-to-face at college). That is to say, if it’s clear how interaction with your fellow students benefits you at college, what benefits do you see for yourself when you make connections on social media?
There are some other things to bear in mind too:
1. Avoid lifting information from Wikipedia (or anywhere!) and passing it off as your own. While blog posts are less formal than academic essays, it’s still not a good idea to do it.
2. There’s a contradiction and a run-on sentence at the start of paragraph 2 which is problematic. Try to ensure that you’re proofreading in order to say exactly what you mean to say and that your sentence structure is good.
3. When talking about the survey, there are some sentences in which the words run together. Again, this should be fixed when proofreading.
4.When referencing, ensure that you’re not including any errors, e.g. “Allen et al, (2016). Examines…”. In this case, there should be no comma before the parentheses, and the reference and the next part of the sentence should be joined together. It should also be given in the past tense, i.e.. “Allen et al. (2016) examined current research…”
5. Give close attention to spelling (e.g. “visa versa”) and sentence structure throughout.
The ideas here are interesting, but you also now need to pay attention to the smaller details.
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