The pervasive use of social media among adolescents has caused numerous mental health problems. Social media has been linked to many issues, such as decreasing self-esteem, body image issues, depression, anxiety, sleeping problems, and reduced face to face interaction skills. Although social media has been linked to so many negatives, there are positives of these apps, such as connecting people and allowing people to make friends all over the world. Surveys suggest that 90% of teens use social media in some capacity. The use of these apps have been detrimental for young people growing up in the modern age.
“I think there should be regulations to the degree that it negatively affects the public good,” said Elon Musk. Social media has caused many people many problems. For example, when young people see others their age posting and doing fun things, it triggers a feeling of being left out, which in turn will make the young person feel like they were left out for a reason. Due to this, many young people develop low self-esteem because they feel left out and feel as if no one wants to hangout with them.
For example, author of The Happiness Effect: How Social Media is Driving a Generation to Appear Perfect at Any Cost, Donna Freitas proclaims that, “most of what everyone sees on social media from their peers are happy things; as a result, they often feel inferior because they aren’t actually happy all the time.”
Low self-esteem due to social media can in turn lead to other problems, such as the person affected will begin to speak less because they feel as if their opinion doesn’t matter. “I think I use Instagram a little too much,” says OPHS student Carson Hayek. Although there are many problems associated with social media, there are some positives of these apps. When used in moderation these apps allow people to connect with others, learn about many new ideas, express themselves in a healthy manner, and discuss many different ideas.
There have been many studies which have shown that extensive social media use among young people have directly contributed to the onset of depression and anxiety. For example, there was a study done on 467 Scottish adolescents, concluding that there was a direct link between high social media use and depression and anxiety. Social media has been detrimental for young people because it’s so addicting and hard to use in moderation.
Social media apps have many different tactics, such as an endless feed of posts and videos. This tactic makes users lose track of time and just keeps them scrolling for hours. Another tactic used by Youtube is to hide the time on the users phone when watching videos, and they also have an autoplay function, which allows users to watch numerous videos back to back without seeing how much time they’re spending on the app. These tactics go unnoticed by many users but have detrimental effects on them without them even knowing what’s happening.
High social media use among young people has caused numerous problems in many of their lives. The use of these apps has been known to cause many mental health problems among people who use them very frequently. These apps can be good when used in moderation, but due to sneaky tactics that social media companies use, it makes it very hard to not overuse these apps. Everyone should check their screen time daily and take account of how much time they spend using these apps. This is necessary because they need to see how much time they are wasting in order for them to make a change.
