Social media contributes to facilitating information exchange and promoting interaction. The usage of Social media is an epidemic in recent years. Given the existing social media platform, an increasing number of social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, is developed in recent decades. Lenhart (2015) reports that a majority of adolescents report access to social media daily. This is no doubt that social media provide them with a great deal of information. However, this paper argues for the proposition that social media should be banned from adolescents for two reasons, which include having an adverse impact on physical and psychological health and affecting their personal growth.
Regarding personal health, the use of social media could have negative impacts on adolescents, both physically and psychologically. According to Boers, Afzali, Newton, and Conrod (2019), high levels of social media use were associated with increased depression, and each one-hour increase in the average time spent on it was associated with an increase in the severity of depression symptoms within that same year while interacting with media outlets that were more conducive to promoting upward social comparisons was highly related with a drop in self-esteem. Adolescents are experiencing the transitional development stage of transforming from childhood into adulthood. External environmental factors are influencing them easily, including social values and norms and the changing roles, responsibilities, relationships, and expectations of this period of life (World Health Organisation, 2017). Today, People are more likely to bring their perfect side to others. Meanwhile, luxurious lifestyle trending is very likely to be observed when browsing those platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Often, susceptible adolescents may even imitate the lifestyle of their friends posted on those platforms to search for social belonging. Feinstein et al. (2013) reported that the unfavorable self-comparisons resulted in a greater risk of developing depressive symptoms, posing negative influences on psychological health. Additionally, addiction to social media, in turn, could affect physical health. Adolescents considered the active use of social media as an obligation for fear of missing out (Fox and Moreland, 2015) and tend to increase their usage of social media, resulting in social media addiction. Subsequently, they would perhaps devote all their time and energy to social media, neglecting all their basic essentials of life. This would harm their physical health gradually as a majority of them do not maintain a regular and stable biological clock. Therefore, for the above reason, both the physical and psychological health of adolescents would be very likely to be affected by social media.
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In relation to moral and ethical aspects, social media might have negative impacts on the personal growth of adolescents. Currently, adolescents can have ultimate access to almost all social media. At present, people tend to over-share all aspects of their life and their thought via social media, which may include some unhealthy habits and ideas, violence, and even pornography. Even though various social media platforms have established policies to filter the content and limit access to certain age groups, they could sign up and access filtered information by intentionally claiming themselves as authorized (Garber, 2014). As they do not need to provide any evidence to prove the accuracy of personal information, including their age, when signing up for most social media accounts, it is nearly impossible to prevent them from approaching inappropriate information if they are intended to do so. According to Pew Research Centre (2011), 88 percent of adolescents have witnessed mean or cruel behavior on social media while among those who use social media while 21 percent admitted that they have personally joined in on the harassment of others on a social network site. In the end, inappropriate information may ruin their minds as they are easily influenced by others. Most importantly, those undesirable beliefs may then embed in their mind when they approach them in early adolescents, posing a disruptive impact. In short, the use of social media might have severe adverse impacts on adolescents’ personal development.
Social media provide platforms for interpersonal communication, enlarging the social circle. According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, people need social belonging. Emotion regulation, which pertains to how people control, experience, and express emotions as they unfold over a very brief period of time, can be examined via social media (Quoidbach, Mikolajczak, and Gross, 2015). Leung (2007) found that adolescents regulate feelings of loneliness and stress using social media. It seems that social media could serve as a platform for them to express themselves, gather opinions, and seek advice. Valkenburg, Schouten, and Peter (2011) suggest that online interaction via social media may promote a positive sense of self. Hence, perceived social support or the perception that social relationships could provide needed emotional and instrumental resources can be a powerful moderating factor to lessen psychological stress and intensify physical and psychological well-being (Nabi, Prestin and So, 2013). However, it may also be used as a venue for negative emotions and result in emotional dysregulation. Excessive use of Facebook has been linked to rumination (Blumberg, Rice, and Dickens, 2016). Those exposed to negative content would perhaps cultivate a relatively pessimistic mind, which is unfavorable for their personal growth. Even though emotion regulation through social media could sometime contribute to a certain extent of social support, most of them are usually short-term as in-depth and comprehensive are usually impractical through social media. In addition, friendships developed via social media would be relatively superficial when compared with face-to-face friendships (Bloomfield, 2015). Fundamentally, people require long-term social support, including emotional support, instrumental support, informational support, and appraisal support. Ultimately, digitalized friendship is unlikely to provide long-term social support as it is usually not as deep and profound as face-to-face friendship. Digitalized friends, to some extent, are unable to provide practical advice and may even intentionally or unintentionally disclose personal information and secret. Social media can be a means for adolescents to communicate with their face-to-face friends but technologically mediated friendships, to a large extent, are inferior to face-to-face friendships. Therefore, social media are unlikely to provide long-term social support.
To conclude, social media undoubtedly provide a convenient means of constant connection with the world (Lin and Lu, 2011; Takahashi, 2014). It, nevertheless, may lead to possible harm to adolescents’ health and personal growth. Despite the social support obtained through social media, they are unable to be maintained in the long run, while adolescents may even suffer from a great deal of depression and mental illness when they are exposed to social media where people perpetually express their negative thought, not to mention the possibility of unethical believes being implanted into adolescents’ mind. As a result of potential threats, adolescents should be unable to access social media by all means.
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