Hashtags In Social Media

Teens, in today’s society, are constantly on social media. Many social media sites such as twitter and instagram use hashtags; they are used to put emphasis on the main point of the post. A vast majority of these are ineffective; however, many young adults these days are using them in callous ways. These hastags send the teen over the edge and they take drastic measures. While some just simply self-harm, some take it to the next level and end their lives. They take a body part that people are insecure about and turn it into a mockery of that insecurity. Some of these hashtags have even bigger targets, for instance, there was a recent hashtag over the summer called the #dontjudgechallenge. This hashtag was essentially tweeted or posted to instagram

After a couple seconds of making these faces with the make up used to look ugly, they then would stick their hand over the camera and once removed they would have full on make up to make them look beautiful. The original purpose of this was intended to help promote a better self-image, yet it only made people with low self-worth feel worse about themselves and has caused many teens to become anorexic, commit suicide, or develop other mental health issues.

There are many hashtags out there today that help promote anorexia. These hashtags are called “thinspiration”. This is something that teens have created to make them feel as though they have to look a certain way. They see these pictures of other people looking extremely skinny and they like they way it looks. This makes them want to look like the person in the photo. Instead of working out and eating healthy, young adults are then starving themselves to look like other skinnier people. This puts a lot of emphasis on looking a certain way or to others perfect. Another popular hashtag used in body shaming is the

Teens today do not realize how mean they are to each other and many start being depressed from what start out as meaningless jokes. Just like that anorexia culture the suicide culture associated with hashtags has also come up with alternative hashtags. “sue” and “secretsociety123” are hashtags that they have come up with to get around the banned hashtags. These are called secret societies as used in one of them specifically. Instagram has; however, caught on to this alternative way to promote these unhealthy ways and upon searching them a message pops up asking if you would like to learn more, show the content, or to cancel the search (Yandoli). This stigma comes from cyber bullying. Cyber bulling is where someone on social media will make a negative post about another and it upsets the person. The attacker does so repeatedly until the teen becomes depressed and believes the attacker is right and so they make the decision to end their life because they see no other way out. There have been many teen suicides from social media cyber bullying in recent years. One unforgettable case is Megan Meier. Megan was 13 years old when she hanged herself from a bar in her closet. Five weeks prior to death a 16-year-old boy named Josh Evans added her on MySpace. The two started talking. According to Megan’s mother she had always struggled with weight and self-esteem issues