Social Media and its Affect on the Youth

There are about 3.5 billion active social media accounts and on average every 6 seconds a new one is being created. Social media has an expanding audience, particularly among the world’s youth. I do agree that there can be many benefits to having social media like educating yourself and others, entertainment, and staying connected with family and friends, which is very important especially with everything going on in the world right now. However, there is a dark side to social media that affects the youth excessively. Social media can be extremely harmful to yourself and others around you. Social media also strips us from having any form of human interaction. More than likely, if you walk into a room full of teenagers on their phones they will be oblivious to their surroundings. Social media can be very harmful and negative to an individual’s mind and soul.

My first point about social media being harmful is about cyber-bullying. About 37% of adolescents have experienced cyber-bullying. This can have a lot of long term effects on people. It can happen on any social network at any time. A comment on a post or a tweet can really affect someone’s life. Cyber-bullying can lead to mental and physical issues like depression, social anxiety, and self esteem issues. It could also lead to more serious issues like self harm or even suicide. Cyber-bullying is real and it happens everyday. People will sit behind a screen and say awful things to another person, knowing they would never say that to their face.

Another harmful thing about social media is that it deteriorates one’s self esteem. The media create this “beauty standard” and individuals who feel they don’t “fit in” with the standard, they may feel as if they are less beautiful. They might want or try to alter their looks or personality to fit in. This can be extremely self harming as it could cause eating disorders and you could permanently damage your body. The youth is easily influenced and social media shouldn’t create these standards or norms that make it feel like people should follow in order to fit in.

Lastly, false information is a huge disadvantage to social media. Anyone could say anything and someone could believe it. Fake news can spread quicker than real news. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if something is real or not. Many inaccurate and misleading news stories arise about medical information and diseases. It’s possible that believing these lies can drive you to make decisions that are hazardous to your health.

Even though there are all these awful things that come with and from social media. People will still say that there is good from it. You can meet new people and make new friendships and relationships. You can easily connect and communicate with people. You can also learn and inform people about different types of things. In summary, I do believe that the bad overcomes the good in this situation though. People can be cyber-bullied and there are cases where it ends in extreme measures so if you see it, speak up. It can also easily destroy any kind of self esteem a person has and social media should rethink the “beauty standard” and lastly, if you see misinformation or fake news, report it.

“Automotive Social Media Marketing” by socialautomotive is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0