Social Media Bad For You: The Evidence And The Unknown

“Three billion people, around 40% of the world’s population, use online social media. That also breaks down to around half a million tweets and Snapchat photos shared every minute.” This quote was said by Jessica Brown in her article, Is Social Media Bad for you: the Evidence and the Unknown. As you can see, social media is used by a big portion of the world's population, and the effects of social media has negatively impacted teens, and population in general in a bad way. Yet many people still continue to use social media, even though it has negatively impacted many of those in today's society. Social media has caused a great deal of problems today. As the rise of social media usage occurs, so does the rise in other problems/situations as

Teens, especially teen girls feel the constant pressure to fit in and to be better than those other girls. They are constantly comparing themselves to other girls posts while being on social media. Those girls feel the need to have better clothes, be skinner, be prettier, be richer, just as Cayla Kumar had pointed out. Another example of how teens are being pressured is found in an article , on netsanity.com, they had stated that teens are, “pressured to share nude or otherwise sexual images with her partner, which of course can easily be used against her as blackmail or public humiliation if the relationship turns sour” (Teens and the Constant Pressure of Social Media). The point of this statement in the article is mean to show how social media can lead to many problems in the teens life. The teen can be easily pressured into sending or saying things to their partner, or whomever they are talking to. Once that goes wrong, they can then can be easily blackmailed and embarrassed throughout

On the contrary, social media can help teens express their feelings and help find out who they really are. Although this may be true, many teens do not use social media for this purpose and instead they try to fit in and to put out a fake image of themselves. So, the second reason that social media has had a negative effect on teens is that social media is linked to many disorders and can majorly affect a teens self-esteem for the wrong reasons. As we begin, Social Networking Sites, Depression, and Anxiety: A Systematic Review has claimed, “SNS use may increase an individual’s exposure to negative social interactions (eg, cyberbullying), which may negatively impact mood and mental health” (Seabrook, Kern, Rickard). SNS, also known as social networking sites, allows teens to have exposure to negative things on the internet. Social Media also can be used to torment, make fun of, and all in all cyber bully students as well. Without social media, teens would not have access to this part of social media or would not be able to see or interact with such negative things, which also make a student feel more down and negative about themselves. To add onto, in yet another interview hosted by abc had interviewed a college graduate, Larissa May and she had claimed she has struggled with negative thoughts and social media. From the interview it was said, “My