Over the past couple of years, social media has grown a tremendous amount. It holds an influence on teenagers more than ever before, controlling almost all aspects of their lives. For instance, many teenagers are more concerned with how to become famous on apps like TikTok, or how many likes they got on their most recent Instagram post, as opposed to living a normal teenage life.
According to places like Common Sense Media and the American Academy of Pediatrics, the average amount of time that teenagers spend on social media daily often exceeds eight hours. This means that social media consumes not only the physical aspects of their lives, but the mental aspects of their lives as well. Now more than ever, social media is heavily linked to several different mental health concerns, such as anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, body image issues, and sleep disruption.
The constant scrolling can cause teenagers to question things about themselves, like if they are pretty enough, good enough, kind enough, why they weren’t invited, and so on. Social media works off an algorithm, and if a teen interacts with accounts that promote topics like dieting, they may make some teens feel anxious about how they look.
Along with this, a teenager may fall into states of depression or anxiety when they see that their supposed friends are posting and they are not there. This may cause them to feel like their friends don’t like them and affect several aspects of their mental health.
Social media also contributes to an increased amount of cyberbullying, unrealistic beauty standards, and exposure to misleading or harmful information. This causes mental health to decrease as well.
But mental health issues can be a combination of several different things, such as school life, sports, family, and friends. All of these can cause issues like anxiety and depression. There should be a shared responsibility between both social media companies and outside factors.
Parents should try to monitor the use of their children’s social media and discuss how to behave on social media. By discussing how to treat others and how to act on social media, teenagers may be able to avoid becoming upset by what they see on social media. Schools should also take the time to spread mental health awareness. This would be something that could be really beneficial for students to know that they aren’t alone and that it is okay to ask for help. Schools fail to take mental health seriously, causing their students to break down and feel like they can’t get the help they need.
Social media apps should also take responsibility as well. They should work on strengthening content moderation. This means that they can try to limit the amount of harmful posts or sponsored ads that can damage a teenagers self confidence or cause them to feel anxious. Along with this, apps can work on improving their age verification systems, because now more than ever, teenagers are joining social media apps way before they hit the age of 13.
This exposes them to more harmful content at an earlier age. I think that if companies had a better age verification system and a strict way to verify age, it would deter teenagers from getting social media apps. Finally, by providing mental health resources to use, teenagers might feel that they can reach out to those around them for help. Overall there should be a shared responsibility between outside factors and social media apps.
