Natalie Garland

Christopher Calhoun

5/2/2021

Eng 1201

As technology advances, how is the rise of social media affecting young

teens today and in future generations to come? Social media has been a huge

part of our lives for some years now. Young kids, teens and adults almost all own

some type of phone or texting device, where you can download apps, games,

and just about anything else. With Covid-19 hitting about a year ago, everyone

has been cooped up at home with almost nothing to do, but go onto your phone

or computer. Sometimes hours on end, seeing beautiful Instagram and Snapchat

models with unreachable beauty standards having plastic surgery, face lifts, etc

and this can have tons of effects on teens especially young girls.

Rachel Ehmke says in her article, “How Using Social Media Affects

Teenagers.” that young people report there may be a good reason to worry. A

survey conducted by Royal Society For Public Health asked 12-14 year olds how

social media has impacted their health and wellbeing. The survey results found

that Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all led to increased feeling of

depression, anxiety, poor body image and loneliness.

Depression plays a big role with social media now. Sherri Gordon talks

about this in her article, “5 Ways Social Media Affects Teens Health.” saying that
researchers are just beginning to establish the true link between social media

and depression. Not actually finding a legitimate cause and effect relationship

between social media and depression, they have discovered that social media

use can be associated with an intensification of symptoms of depression,

decrease in social action and increase in loneliness. In the same article, Sherri

says, “Teens often feel emotionally invested in their social media accounts. Not

only do they feel pressured to respond quickly online, but they also have

pressure to have perfect photos and well written posts, all of which can cause a

great deal of anxiety. In fact, some studies have found that the larger a teens

social circle online is, the more anxiety they feel about keeping up with

everything and everyone, while also trying to look perfect and happy 24/7.”

Sleep deprivation, in my view, is the number one problem here. Sometimes

teens spend so many hours on social media that they begin to lose vulnerable

sleep. Steven Gans writes in “5 Ways Social Media Affects Young Teens” that

“Consequently, this sleep loss leads to moodiness, a drop in grades, overeating,

as well as exacerbate existing problems like depression, anxiety and ADD.” In

fact, one British study published in the Journal Of Youth Studies surveyed 900

teens ages 12 to 15 about their social media use and its impact on sleep. What

they found was about ⅕ of the teens said they “almost always” wake up during

the night and log onto social media. The study also revealed that girls were

significantly more likely to wake up and check their phones than girls.
 Sherri Gorndon, writes in her article, “5 Ways Social Media Affects Teens.”

about the communication issue social media has brought on us as well. As social

media was put there to help communicate better, it has only kept kids and adults

with their nose in their phones and not interacting with the real outside world.

This can include your family and friends and causes relationship issues. “For

instance, a teen cannot see a person’s facial expressions or hear their tone of

voice online. As a result, it is very easy for misunderstandings to occur.” she

writes. Again, many teens spend so much time on their phones that they forget to

interact with the people right in front of them. For this reason, relationships with

friends and dating can suffer when social media takes over a person’s life.

“Jealousy and Envy-while normal emotions- can wreak havoc on teen

brains if they dwell on what someone else has possessed or has experienced,

that they themselves, have not.” Sherri writes in again the article, “5 Ways Social

Media Affects Teens Mental Health.” Since people only tend to post positive

things that they experience and make as much light of their lives on social media,

it can appear to whoever is seeing or reading that other people live more exciting

lives than you do. Unfortunately, what teens do not realize is that people tend to

only post the “highlight reel” on social media and often keep the difficult and not

pretty parts of life off the internet. Teens need to realize someone's life may look

perfect online but they have all the life struggles that you do, they just don't show

it. “Still, it is easy for teens to play the comparison game and start thinking that
everyone is happy and better off than they are. This can feed into depression,

loneliness, anger, and a variety of other issues and a young teens brain.

Even if you know the images you’re viewing on social media are

manipulated, they can still make you feel insecure about your looks or what’s

going on in your life. Similarly, we're all aware that other people tend to share just

the highlights of their lives, rarely the low points that everyone else experiences.

This doesn’t lessen those feelings of envy and dissatisfaction when you’re

scrolling through a friends airbrushed photos and their tropical beach holiday or

reading about their exciting new promotion at work.” Jeanna Segal writes in the

article, “Social Media and Mental Health.” While FOMO has been around for way

longer than social media has, sites like Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter seem to

exaggerate that others are living a better life than you.

The other danger that comes from kids communicating indirectly is that it

has gotten easier to be cruel. “Kids text all sorts of things they would never in a

million years say to someone’s face” says Dr.Donna Wick, a clinical and

developmental psychologist, it states in the article, “Social Media Effects on

Teens.” Dr. Steiner-Adair agrees that girls are particularly at risk. “Girls are

socialized more to compare themselves to other people, girls in particular, to

develop their identities, so it makes them more vulnerable to the downside of all

of this.” She warns that an often lack of self esteem is to blame. “We forget that

relational aggression comes from insecurity and feeling awful about yourself, and

wanting to put other people down so you feel better.” This is never the alternative
and especially young girls need to realize this. Half the people commenting on

negative things on your tiktok are 10 year old little boys that don’t even know

what they are talking about, and we need to remember that. If you are one of the

people being the problem, what’s the point? Bringing people together makes you

way happier than bringing someone down.

Moving onto another article, Katie Hurley writes in “Social Media and

Teens: How Does Social Media Affect Teens Mental Health?” that one study out

of the University of Pittsburgh found a connection between time spent scrolling

through social media apps and negative body image feedback. “Those who had

spent more time on social media had 2.2 times the risk of reporting eating and

body image concerns, compared to their peers who spent much less time on

social media. The participants who spent most time on social media had 2.6

times the risk.” Results from a separate study from the University of Pittsburgh

School of Medicine showed that the more time young adults spent on social

media, the most likely they were to have problems sleeping and report symptoms

of depression. Lastly, another small study of teens ages 13-18 from UCLA Brain

Mapping Center found that receiving a high number of likes on a photo showed

increased activity in the reward center of the brain. Furthermore, teens are

influenced to like photos, regardless of the content going on, based on the high

number of likes. “Bottom line: it feels good to be “liked” and herd mentality is big

on social media.”
 Although all the rough sides of social media, there are some positives to

social media. In the same article, “Social Media and Teens” Katie writes, “It’s

important to remember teens are hardwired for socialization, and social media

makes socializing easy and immediate. Teens who struggle with social skills,

social anxiety, or who don’t have access to easy face-to-face socializing with

other teens might benefit from connecting with other teens through social media.”

She goes more into saying “Teens in marginalized groups-including LGBTQ

teens and teens struggling with mental health issues-can find support and

friendships through use of social media, those connections can be the difference

between living in isolation and finding support.” Read enough of the current

research and you’ll come to realize that the negatives tend to feel bigger than the

positives. “While teens can use social media to connect and create friendships

with others, they also confront cyberbullying, trolls, toxic comparisons, sleep

deprivation, less face-to-face interactions, to name a few.”

In conclusion, social media is very damaging to the minds of preteens,

young teens, even adults. Everyone should be limiting their time on cell phones

to let their minds be at peace. So the question is, how is the rise of social media

affecting generations to come? The answer is negatively. We can all come

together as a generation with love and help everyone be the best person they

can possibly be and feel.

Rachel Ehmke, 2019, pp 4-5.

https://childmind.org/article/how-using-social-media-affects-teenagers/

Gordon, Sherri. “5 Ways Social Media Affects Teens Mental Health.” Reviewed

Steven Gans, MD, July 13, 2020, p 2.

https://www.verywellfamily.com/ways-social-media-affects-teen-mental-health-4144769

“The Social Media Dilemma.” Directed by Jeff Orlowski, Netflix, uploaded by

Saumya Rastogi, September 28, 2020.

https://bunewsservice.com/netflix-documentary-explores-the-dark-side-of-social-media/

Segal, Jeanne. Ph.D. “Social Media and Mental Health: HelpGuide.” September

2020.

https://www.helpguide.org/articles/mental-health/social-media-and-mental-health.htm

“Hate Social Media? You’ll Love this Documentary.” Directed by Jeff Orlowski,

Netflix, Uploaded by Wired, 2012.

https://www.wired.com/story/social-dilemma-netflix-documentary/
 Hurley, Katie. “Social Media and Teens: How does Social Media Affect Teens

Mental Health?” November 16, 2020.

https://www.psycom.net/social-media-teen-mental-health