Today’s Social Media

Today, social media has become a very important part of living. We use it to share our lives, keep in touch with family and friends, apply for jobs, receive our news, check the weather, and spend lots of our free time. This is a good thing most of the time, but a lot has changed over the years. Social media is just starting to be around long enough to see how it’s affecting us through our generations.

A big issue I have with social media today is giving it to kids. Young kids today have access to their own phone or their parents. This creates lots of different issues with learning development and character/ behavior development. When a child is crying or throwing a fit at home or in public some parents today will throw a tablet or phone for them to distract them. This creates a habit for the child. They learn to get what they want by throwing that outburst. These habits can be hard to break and can also follow them while growing up, not letting them learn how to really deal with issues in life. Younger kids having social media can also create bad mental health habits or expectations.

Mental health has been looked at a lot more recently. Social media has a lot to do with it. There are lots of reasons social media can affect your mental health. People share sad stuff, like war news, shelter posts, or just bad people, on their pages and you watch one of them and suddenly it becomes an over load on your feed,Over time it can lead to you being sad all the time about these videos. When people post unrealistic body images it can create expectations for teens and preteens who are at a vulnerable age.

With all of the bad sides of social media there’s also multiple good sides. Social media has provided countless people with jobs with company accounts, creator funds, PR oppertunities, or small business advertisiment. Social media has helped so many small businesses spread. Social media has inspired lots of people who maybe wouldnt have created a market for their products if they hadn’t been incouraged by others on these social media platforms.

In conclusion, I think that overall social media isn’t terrible for us. I think there needs to be more limits and restrictions of what’s being posted, who’s seeing it, and how often we spend our time sucked into it. People need to start prioritizing a healthier better lifestyle rather than fantasizing about the one they’re watching over a screen.

“iPhone – First Day” by frogsthatmoo is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.