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Instagram has been rated the most damaging social media platform for young peoples mental health in a new study out of the U.K.

After Instagram, the next low-scoring platform was Snapchat, followed by Facebook, Twitter and then YouTube, which was ranked the healthiest network for youth mental health and wellbeing.

The research, conducted by the Royal Society for Public Health and the Young Health Movement and published on Friday, surveyed 1,479 people in the U.K. between the ages of 14 and 24 in early 2017.

The participants were asked to rate the impacts of the five social media platforms on different aspects of their wellbeing such as, sleep, depression, self-identity, body image, loneliness, bullying, anxiety and fear of missing out (or FOMO as its often called).

According to the findings, Instagram was given low scores in seven categories for its effect on young peoples body image, sleep, bullying, anxiety, depression, loneliness and FOMO.

The photo-sharing networking site was rated highly for its promotion of self-expression, self-identity and emotional support, however.

The most positively-viewed service, YouTube, scored poorly for its impact on the respondents sleep, but did well in nine other categories including emotional support, depression, loneliness, self-expression and awareness of other peoples health experience.

The papers authors point to past studies that have raised concerns about the detrimental effects of social media on developing minds to justify the importance for this kind of research.

The way young people communicate and share with each other has changed, the study states. With social media being such a new phenomenon, the exact effect it is having on the mental health, emotional wellbeing and physiology of young people is currently unclear.

According to the study, 91 per cent of the surveys participants use the internet for social networking and that social media has been called more addictive than cigarettes.

The researchers also point to increasing rates of anxiety and depression in youth (up by 70 per cent in the past 25 years) and how networking sites have been linked to it.

Call for action:

The two health organizations involved in the study also called for a number measures to protect young users from the potentially harmful effects of social media.

Some of the demands include:

- Pop-up warning messages to alert users of their heavy usage

- Including a watermark to identify photos that have been digitally manipulated

- More education in schools on the effects of social media

- Creation of social media platforms to identify users who may be suffering from mental health problems and directing them to support resources

- More research into the impact of social media on young peoples mental health

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Instagram ranked worst for youth mental health: study - CTV News

The president of Ukraine banned four of the nations most popular websites Monday with a new round of sanctions targeting Russia over its 2014 annexation of Crimea and subsequent aggression.

President Petro Poroshenko issued a decree Monday evening broadening anti-Russian sanctions and expanding Kievs blacklist to 468 companies and 1,228 people, including Mail.ru, the Moscow-based firm in control of Ukraines two most popular social networks, VK and Odnoklassniki, as well as Yandex, a Russian-owned search engine, in addition to several major Russian television channels and banks.

The challenges of hybrid war demand adequate responses, Mr. Poroshenko said in a statement Monday. Massive Russian cyber attacks across the world particularly the interference in the French election campaign show it is time to act differently and more decisively.

Russia used cyber warfare trying to influence the results of elections across Europe and in the U.S., Mr. Poroshenko added during a Monday night television address, IB Times reported. We expect that they will try to do the same thing to Ukraine.

The sanctions took effect immediately and quickly earned condemnation and cries of censorship from affected entities and open internet advocates as well as ridicule from Russian President Vladimir Putins administration in Moscow.

We have always steered clear of politics, said VK, which claims about 16 million social network users in Ukraine alone. We believe that in its very essence, the internet has no borders.

Supposedly this is because Russia is making money from our users and we are at war. But, excuse me, these are sanctions against the citizens themselves, opined Oksana Romaniouk, Reporters Without Borderss Ukrainian representative.

Dmitry Peskov, Mr. Putins spokesperson, called the sanctions short-sighted and warned Russia had not forgotten about the principle of reciprocity. Russias Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, called the sanctions a manifestation of politically motivated censorship, not withstanding its own repressive internet restrictions.

Other targets of Ukraines latest sanctions include Russias leading cybersecurity firm, Kaspersky Labs, in addition to several banks and television stations, including Rossiya Segodnya, RBC, VGTRK and TNT, among others.

Moscow annexed Crimea from Kiev in 2014 after Ukraines pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, was overthrown from office and replaced by Mr. Poroshenko. Pro-Russian separatists purportedly backed by Moscow instigated a civil war in eastern Ukraine later that year, the likes of which has claimed at least 10,000 lives in the last three years.

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Ukraine blocks social networking sites with new sanctions against Russia - Washington Times

Instagram has been ranked as the worst social networking app when it comes to its impact on young people's mental health, according to a new survey published by the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) in the UK.

The #StatusofMind survey asked 1479 young people, aged 14 to 24, to score popular social media platforms on issues such as anxiety, depression, loneliness, bullying and body image.

The photo-sharing app, which has over 700 million users worldwide, appeared to be more detrimental to young people's mental health when compared to Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Chief executive of the RSPH, Shirley Cramer, said social media sites pose a real and immediate threat to the health of young people.

"Social media has been described as more addictive than cigarettes and alcohol, and is now so entrenched in the lives of young people that it is no longer possible to ignore it when talking about young people's mental health issues", Ms Cramer told The Telegraph.

"It's interesting to see Instagram and Snapchat ranking as the worst for mental health and wellbeing - both platforms are very image-focused and it appears they may be driving feelings of inadequacy and anxiety in young people.

"The platforms that are supposed to help young people connect with each other may actually be fuelling a mental health crisis", Ms Cramer said.

The report offers an insight into the possible link between mental illness and heavy social media use.

"Instagram easily makes girls and women feel as if their bodies aren't good enough as people add filters and edit their pictures in order for them to look 'perfect'", an anonymous female respondent said in the report.

"This [social media] resulted in me not eating properly and losing a lot of weight and becoming very depressed, I finally recovered which was hard for myself to be bullied online again in year 8. Overall I would say social media has caused me many issues and has caused me to be depressed many times", another respondent said.

The report also identified the length of time that people are engaging with social media platforms as the greatest cause for concern.

"Seeing friends constantly on holiday or enjoying nights out can make young people feel like they are missing out while others enjoy life", it notes.

"These feelings can promote a 'compare and despair' attitude in young people.

"Individuals may view heavily photo-shopped, edited or staged photographs and videos and compare them to their seemingly mundane lives".

Young people who spend more than two hours per day connecting on social networking sites are more likely to suffer from increased levels of psychological distress, depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation, according to the report.

However, it isn't all bad news; social media platforms can also promote a sense of community and provide emotional support for at-risk youth.

"I have anxiety and on many occasions I have found videos that put how I feel into words and explain it, and this benefits me a lot making me feel more confident", an anonymous respondent said.

Despite the criticisms levelled at Instagram by a host of respondents in the survey, the app was found to have a positive effect on self-expression and self-identity.

However YouTube was the only social media platform found to have an overall positive impact on young people's mental health.

In an effort to counter the negative impacts of heavy social media, experts listed a series of checks and measures designed to bolster mental health, including:

The impact of five social media sites were evaluated in the following order:

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'Fuelling a mental health crisis': Instagram worst social network for young people's mental health - The Sydney Morning Herald

Modern conflicts are fought both in the dirt and on the communications battlefield. The proliferation of propaganda and 'fake news' - uploaded online or broadcast over the airways - makes it extraordinarily difficult for those involved in conflict to strategise, maintain morale or even know exactly what is going on within their borders. For this reason, governments have a marked tendency to overreact when dealing with the free flow of information in fraught times: security issues nearly always trump free expression concerns.

This was recently illustrated in Ukraine, where, the Ukrainian Institute of Mass Information (IMI) reported, sanctions were imposed on several Russian media outlets considered to be working against Ukraine's national interests. The sanctions were decided upon by the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine in April 2017 and put into force by presidential decree this week.

The move has provoked broad condemnation from IFEX members who argue that it will have a disproportionately negative effect on Ukrainians' free expression and access to information.

The decree is actually part of an expansion of Ukrainian sanctions imposed as a response to Russia's illegal annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the decree will apply to 468 companies and 1,228 individuals, including Russia's most popular news and social media services, such as the RIA Novosti news agency and the broadcasters Channel One, VGTRK, Zvezda, TNT, Ren TV, TV-Center, NTV-Plus, RT and RBC. The Russian social networking sites Odnoklassniki and VK (formerly known as VKontakte) will also be hit. These sites are immensely popular in Ukraine where (as Isaac Webb on the Global Voices website reports) Odnoklassniki and VK had 11 million and 27 million users respectively in 2014.

IMI provides a list of the kinds of restrictions the media outlets will face. Briefly, they involve the "blocking of assets, suspension of economic and financial obligations, limitation or termination of the provision of telecommunication services and use of public telecommunication networks."

The sanctions will stay in place for up to three years.

In their statements on the decree, both CPJ and ARTICLE 19 highlight the broader, worsening environment for free expression in Ukraine, pointing specifically to the barring of certain Russian journalists from the country and to an intensification of the crackdown on social media users who express "separatist views."

But there is some question as to how effective the new sanctions will be. IMI's executive director, Oksana Romaniuk, told Human Rights Watch of her doubts regarding the decree's enforceability without specific changes to the law. And on the Global Voices website, Kevin Rothrock reports that Russia is already interfering in the affair: news channel Rossiya-24 has been providing on-air instructions to its viewers on how to circumvent the media ban.

Those IFEX members who issued statements were unanimous in calling for the ban to be lifted immediately.

Nina Ognianova, Central Asia Programme Coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists, said: "Attempts to ban Russian media in Ukraine are antidemocratic, are likely to be ineffective, and could easily backfire by making the government appear afraid of allowing citizens to make up their own minds. We call on Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to reverse this misguided order and to cease interfering with Ukrainian citizens' right to receive information and opinion from a range of sources."

Katie Morris, Head of Europe and Central Asia for ARTICLE 19, said: "The decision to block access to social networking sites is a serious violation of the right to freedom of expression. Website blocking is a severe form of censorship: it catches legitimate content at the same time as content that may be legitimately prohibited. In this case, blanket blocking of some of the most popular sites within Ukraine will inevitably result in unnecessary and unjustifiable restriction on freedom of expression, affecting millions of people within Ukraine."

Tanya Cooper, Ukraine researcher at Human Rights Watch, called for an international response. She said: "This is yet another example of the ease with which President Poroshenko unjustifiably tries to control public discourse in Ukraine. Poroshenko may try to justify this latest step, but it is a cynical, politically expedient attack on the right to information affecting millions of Ukrainians, and their personal and professional lives. In a single move Poroshenko dealt a terrible blow to freedom of expression in Ukraine. It's an inexcusable violation of Ukrainians' right to information of their choice, and the European Union and Ukraine's other international partners should immediately call on Ukraine to reverse it."

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Eastern block: Ukraine bans Russian media and social networking sites - IFEX

Their study, #StatusofMind, surveyed almost 1,500 young people aged 14 to 24 on how certain social media platforms impact health and well-being issues such as anxiety, depression, self-identity and body image.

YouTube was found to have the most positive impact, while Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter all demonstrated negative affects overall on young people's mental health.

Instagram -- the image-saturated app with over 700 million users worldwide -- topped the list in terms of negative impact, most notably among young women, stated the report, published Friday.

Instagram draws young women to "compare themselves against unrealistic, largely curated, filtered and Photoshopped versions of reality," said Matt Keracher, author of the report.

"Instagram easily makes girls and women feel as if their bodies aren't good enough as people add filters and edit their pictures in order for them to look 'perfect,' " an anonymous female respondent said in the report.

To tackle the problem, the Royal Society for Public Health has called for social media platforms to take action in order to help combat young users' feelings of inadequacy and anxiety by placing a warning on images that have been digitally manipulated.

"We're not asking these platforms to ban Photoshop or filters but rather to let people know when images have been altered so that users don't take the images on face value as real," Keracher said.

"We really want to equip young people with the tools and the knowledge to be able to navigate social media platforms not only in a positive way but in a way that promotes good mental health," he added.

The survey concluded that while Instagram negatively affected body image, sleep patterns and added to a sense of "FOMO" -- the fear of missing out -- the image app was also a positive outlet for self-expression and self-identity for many of its young users.

"Because platforms like Instagram and Facebook present highly curated versions of the people we know and the world around us. It is easy for our perspective of reality to become distorted," she said. "Socializing from behind a screen can also be uniquely isolating, obscuring mental health challenges even more than usual."

Green added that it is important we lay the groundwork now to minimize potential harm as the first generation of social media users become adults.

YouTube was the only social media platform that demonstrated an overall positive impact on young people's mental health in the study.

The report also found that it's not just what young people are engaging with on social media but also how long they are engaging with it.

Young people who spend more than two hours per day connecting on social networking sites are more likely to report poor mental health, including psychological distress, according to the report.

"Platforms that are supposed to help young people connect with each other may actually be fueling a mental health crisis," Shirley Cramer, chief executive of the royal society, noted in the report.

To address this, the society has also recommended the introduction of a pop-up warning to alert users that they have been online for too long.

Seven in 10 young people surveyed supported the recommendation, but with experts describing social media use as more addictive than cigarettes and alcohol, it's not clear whether a "heavy usage" pop-up would be enough to break through that barrier.

Sir Simon Wessely, president of the UK's Royal College of Psychiatrists, supports an education-based approach and warns that demonizing social media is not the answer.

"I am sure that social media plays a role in unhappiness, but it has as many benefits as it does negatives," he said. "We need to teach children how to cope with all aspects of social media -- good and bad -- to prepare them for an increasingly digitized world. There is real danger in blaming the medium for the message."

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Instagram worst social media app for young people's mental health - CNN