Social media affect adolescents’ mental health
Social media creates a domino effect to teens’ mental health, studies
revealed.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook’s company, Meta, attended the
congressional hearing at US Capitol, Washington DC in January to discuss
about the negative effects of social media to adolescents’ minds. He said
that the existing scientific work did not present a causal link between social
media and youth’s mind.
This disclosure stated by Zuckerberg was disproved by studies conducted by
social scientists in the recent years. Studies directed by them show that
social media and mental health truly have a causal link. However, a co-
author of the study and a MIT economist, Alexey Makarin who is present in
the American Economic interviews says that social media doesn’t have a
causal link with it affecting mental health of children. She added that there is
much more yet to be discovered.
Although, Zuckerberg apologized to the families who held up the image of
their children who have died, caused by sexual harassment on social media,
during the congressional hearing. “I’m sorry for everything you have all been
through. No one should go through the things that your families have
suffered and this is why we invest so much and we are going to continue
doing industry-wide efforts to make sure no one has to go through the things
your families have had to suffer.”, Zuckerberg said.
The Limitless World of Social Media
Global social network penetration rate revealed the usage of social media
worldwide, which was released in April 2024. Northern and Western Europe
got the highest rate of using social media, hitting 80.2 and 78.2 percent.
Followed by Eastern Asia with a rate of 74.9 and Southern Europe with 73.5
percent, surpassing the other 16 regions.
According to World Health Organization, an estimated 700,000 people
decided to end their lives annually. In fact, adolescents aged 15-19 are
targeted by this rising issue — mostly.
These two data indicate the risks between too much usage of social media
and its outcome. A 2022 study discovered states that two-thirds of minors
are using TikTok, while some 60 Percent were revealed using Instagram and
Snapchat, followed by 30 percent utilizing Facebook. Moreover, another
study shows that girls use social media like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook
for about 3.4 hours each day, compared to boys that use them for 2.1 hours,
which means girls are tend to show more signs of mental health issues than
boys.
Mental health — how we think and act — includes our emotional,
psychological, and social health. When mental health is not well taken of, it
does not only affect our communication with our loved ones, friends, or
people that surrounds us, but can also cause serious emotional and physical
health problems.
Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly named Twitter), Messenger and many
more are examples of social media. It is called “social media” because of the
word “social” which means community and “media”, defining mass
communication. Social media is limitless since there are numerous people
worldwide who are using it. They can connect, interact, and share without
limiting their privacy access which makes social media become “limitless”.
Social media puts adolescents’ mental health at risk, where they start to
have a thought of ending life.
Jeopardizing Youth’s Well-Being
Youth’s slang word “lowkey”, which means a state of being done secretly, is
like how social media affects the mind of adolescents. Psychologists Amy
Orben and Andrew Przybylski decided to mix the data from three surveys,
enabling them to determine what’s the link between social media and mental
health. They measured the behavior of 355,000 teenagers through providing
queries, only focused on depression, suicidal thoughts, and self-esteem.
Orben and Przybylski found out that digital technology such as personal
computers and tablets that includes cameras, have lessened the adolescent
well-being, a study reported in 2019 Nature Human Behavior. The duo also
discovered an evidence for the Goldilocks Hypothesis that a slight time spent
on social media can influence mental health, through harming it.
Notice how social media jeopardize the innocent minds of children. Multiple
studies have shown that social media affects the minds of adolescents
negatively, including having depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicidal
thoughts. These unpleasant outcomes of too much using social media
increase suicide rates. Therefore, should sound the alarm from the person of
authorities.
Lost in the Space-Time Continuum
Social media influences teenagers to completely ruin their sleeping schedule,
distracting them to don’t move for the things they need to do. Moreover,
sleep deficiency is also linked to depression, anxiety, suicide, and self-harm
because it alters some parts of our brain, having difficulties in controlling
emotions and making decisions.
Some things feel lost in the concept of space and time, and social media
causes it. Adolescents experience dissociation and start being lethargic,
making them to be focused more in scrolling through social media that
makes them disconnect to the physical world. Too much usage of social
media hampers the ability of the teen to interact in face-to-face
communications.
Designed for Excessive Use
Clandestinely, social media features are designed to grab the attention of
the users, uncontrollably urging them to log in and out. An estimated
percentage of 5 to 10% in social media addiction has been recorded in
America, according to psychologists. Studies have revealed that social
medias such as Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram trigger the brain, as the
same as the chemical reaction of drugs including Cocaine.
Furthermore, based on the study conducted by Harvard University, giving
information about yourself to someone else causes the brain to take an
addictive substance.
Notifications such as like, comment, and mention persuade the user’s mind
to continue using social media, rushing the dopamine — a neurotransmitter
that gives the feelings of satisfaction, happiness and motivation. Liking
various emoticons desire users to get addicted.
Addiction can never be escaped if limitation is missing. This clandestine
feature of social media affects users in a way of being addictive.
The Cost of Connection
Social media algorithms are filtered, ranked, and selected for users to be
able to see contents. Nevertheless, some contents shown contain vulgar and
explicit language, sexual harassments, and violence. These matured
contents result adolescents to have traumatic experiences since their minds
still cannot understand these kinds of things.
As a result, they cost connections to humans, including loneliness,
depression and reduced life satisfaction caused by matured contents
popping up on their social media accounts.
Information, good or bad, parental guidance and control is still highly
advised.
Rigorous Controls
With the hands of parents and guardians, they have the rights to implement
tighter and stricter controls for adolescent’s access be limited. Their
sensitivities are not for the contents in social media, as it affects their normal
way of thinking. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)
restricts children aged 13 below. That’s why, parents can also control their
children based on their age.
Age- and gender- appropriate can also be followed by the parents or
guardian of the teen to secure more their access on social media.
Beyond What Creators Can Do
Similar to parents, the creators of social media like Zuckerberg holds a
power of changing the bad habit of adolescents in virtual world by making
the access strict so the teen won’t be able to see the negative impacts it.
Through this, mental health will decrease because social media usage is
lessened.
The innocence of the youth should not be destroyed, just because of the
mature contents such as violence, nudity, drugs, and explicit language they
see around in the world of virtual. They’re like preys, who are easily
influenced and attacked by negative contents, especially they are
susceptible and vulnerable when it comes to these things.
Once social media utilization has been activated, its excessive use devours
us to use it more continuously, leading to loss of consciousness in the actual
world and endless addiction. Therefore, as responsible users of the virtual
world, mark in our minds to use social media to our advantage and not to be
used by it.
