Essay on Dangers of Social Media

Social media: the acceptable drug

Social media is a drug. This generation is so reliant on it and it’s worrying. They spend hours scrolling through their feed whilst engorged in other people’s lives. They check their own posts, likes, and so on for a hit of dopamine that keeps them going.

It's concerning how rapidly it’s becoming an issue when hardly anyone is aware of it being a problem. Hell, I wasn’t aware of it being an issue until I searched about it. The scariest part is that it’s affecting our children, they’re becoming too reliant on it.

And where has this generation’s overreliance on social media led us? According to studies, an alarming rise in mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety. So why is this happening?

Are we the ones to blame for leaving our children vulnerable to this drug?

Yet another Instagram controversy

I’m sure you’ve all heard and talked about it. Instagram removed the ability for others to see how many likes a post has. My kids were whining about it. Everyone was whining about it. It was supposedly the worst thing ever… but it got me thinking, was it that bad of a change?

Everyone was making it out to be such a drastic change. Personally, it didn’t affect me too much but it seems like it did change a lot for others. When I was discussing the changes with a friend, they brought up Mikaela Testa, an Australian social media influencer.

Mikaela Testa essentially ranted on Facebook, furiously proclaiming that it was a “sad day for those who have Instagram as a job” as the new changes were causing “real damage” to influencers due to it hindering their revenue.

Following this rant, she then posted a teary video in which she vowed to take a break from social media due to the hateful comments she received.

Seeing that video really put the dangers of social media into perspective. If social media was capable of bringing a woman to tears, what else could it do in the long run?

I began my search for more information on Instagram changes. Why exactly did they make this change?

A statement from the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, really piqued my interest:

“We want people to worry a bit less about how many likes they’re getting on Instagram…”

Was Instagram really pressuring people to get more likes? Wouldn’t our children be vulnerable to other problems as a result of this?

I had too many questions but no answers… so I did more research and I instantly knew that what I found would concern the other moms reading this. Here’s a list condensing some of the information I found:

The detrimental impacts of social media

In the UK the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) conducted a survey, consisting of around 1,500 people aged 14-24, about the mental health impacts some social media platforms had on them.

A scoring system was used in the survey and among the five most popular platforms Instagram was ranked the most negative. Among the other platforms, Facebook was ranked third and Snapchat was ranked as the second most negative platform.

Another study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania involved 140 undergraduates being asked to either limit their usage of Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram to 30 minutes each day or continue their regular usage.

Before the study began the participants completed questionnaires so that the researchers were aware of their psychological status.

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After the study ended the results conveyed that the participants who limited their social media usage experienced reduced levels of depression and loneliness.

A study from the Pew Research Center involved surveying 743 US teens in 2018 about social media.

Some positive findings include 81% of teenagers feeling more connected with their friends and 68% of teenagers believing that social media helped them interact with a larger, more diverse group of people.

On the other hand, negative findings conveyed that 45% of teenagers stated that they felt overwhelmed with the drama on social media, and 13% even said that they felt it was frequently overwhelming.

Interestingly, 43% of the participants felt that they were pressured to post things on social media that made them look better. 37% of the teenagers also felt pressured to share content that would get them more comments and likes.

All the research against social media actually shocked me, I literally had no idea that it was considered an issue! Seeing that social media is such a big influence today it seemed like society as a whole had accepted it as something positive. I was blind to the dangers of social media, and in doing so I unintentionally put my children in danger.

My children spent at least one or two hours a day on social media and I had never once batted an eye towards it. Just the other week my older daughter Sarah asked for Instagram advice and I helped her without thinking twice. With the lingering thought that I had let down my children, I continued my search for information on Instagram.

Cyberbullying

My search eventually led me to the prevalence of cyberbullying on social media.

Now personally, I haven’t actively monitored my children’s social media for any traces of cyberbullying, but I have always encouraged them openly communicate our problems to each other so that I can help them through their issues. I just don’t want them to feel like I am overbearing or controlling.

But enough of that, let’s talk about cyberbullying and its relation to social media. Embarrassingly, I have never connected cyberbullying to social media until now, despite understanding that cyberbullying is a major issue that affects society on daily basis.

The name Amanda Todd might ring a bell for some of you. She was sexually exploited online when she was twelve, resulting in topless images of her spreading and verbal abuse from her peers. Those were several issues among many others leading to her eventual suicide in 2012.

Prior to her suicide, she uploaded a video describing what she had to suffer through (https://youtu.be/vOHXGNx-E7E). Her suicide was a catalyst for increased cyberbullying awareness as it occurred at a time when cyberbullying was relatively unheard of.

The grim truth is that her situation is one of many cyberbullying-related suicides.

A study from Ditch the Label involving 10,020 people, from the ages 12-20, conveyed that:

• 42% of the young people who experienced cyberbullying experienced it on Instagram at one point. Around 30% of them also experienced cyberbullying on Facebook and Snapchat too.

Cyberbullying is an enormous issue and social media only makes it worse. As parents, we need to do something about it. We need to protect our children and other children from experiencing what tens of thousands of others endure every day.

Our role in combating this issue

So, what can we as mothers do about this? What can we do to protect our children from the mental turmoils that social media invokes? Talk to them, just as you do already, but this time make sure they understand its dangers. Make sure they understand when they need to ask for help.

We have to start somewhere to educate this generation and what better place to start than with our children?

What do you think about the dangers of social media? Can we really accredit the rising rate of mental illnesses to something as seemingly harmless as social media? Leave a comment down below to share your thoughts!