Negative Impacts of Social Media on Mental Health, Free Essay for You

Young people are spending more of their free time using social media and other different technology, and it is greatly affecting their lives. The technology industry is fast growing with numerous social sites popping up every day. Numerous research has been carried out to understand the impact this has on the mental health of humans and more specifically the youth. Millennial are the highest users of technology and hence are the most impacted by their effects. Young people use social media to build businesses, to connect with the online community and also learn. The constant use of social media has been linked to depression, self-esteem issues and sleeping and eating disorders. The suicide rate has increased among young people, and social media has been linked to it. This raises the question of whether the positive nature of social media outweighs the negative impacts.

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Social media has been used by young people as a plat to communicate to their friends and other youngsters regardless of their distance and location. Many social units have also been formed online with many individuals having friends they have never met but share the same interest on social sites. This has made technology and social sites as an important social tool for the young people. Through social media, they get to be exposed to numerous cultures and other people's ways of lives. They get to experience the life of other individuals in different countries. Through this, they can learn from them and gain skills and knowledge on other cultures.

Many young people have used social media as their learning platform. The use of technology has been greatly incorporated in learning by many schools. Students, through technology, have been able to access information from wherever they are and be able to use it to do the assignment and even ask for help from online tutors. Sites lie YouTube has numerous educational videos that have been used by young people to learn new skills, gain new knowledge and learn new languages.

Social sites have been used, since their beginning, as the voice of the voiceless. There is numerous campaign that is being run on social media to help other understand some human conditions. One such campaign is the 'disability is not inability' that is being run on Facebook. This site acts as a voice of reason for the society, teaching those who use it on the indicate detail about disabilities. With such knowledge, people have been able to develop different skills to help themselves be better versions of themselves.

It has been hard for researchers to decide on whether increased use of social media leads to depression and anxiety, or anxiety leads to increased use of social media. They all agree though that social media has a major impact on the mental health of an individual who uses social media a lot. The effects of social media are not uniform in every individual, with some, mainly young people being more susceptible to its effects. This is because they are more prone to suggestions and become greatly affected by the small issues that are ingrained in their minds as they use the different social sites.

A recent blog post by Facebook admitted that the website poses a major risk to the development of mental issues for constant users. Numerous studies have also stated that prolonged use of social media can be linked to anxiety, depression, increased suicide rate and low self-esteem. Young people using social media sites like Instagram are daily bombarded by images of what is perfect in the eyes of others. This has led to many young people having body confidence and body image issues. This further leads to low self-esteem. Social media has been used by many young people to learn about the latest fashion status, what is beautiful and what is not. This has greatly grazed the self-esteem of many individuals. They view themselves as not beautiful enough. Low self-esteem then develops into depression and can have a major impact on the mental health of the individual. Seeing the progress of their friends, either physically or financially, can trigger envy among the users, which might end up as depression.

Constant use of social media has also been linked to social isolation. There are over 11 social media sites that can be used by young people to communicate to their friends, and other individuals online. This has led to more young people spending their time on social sites. Social isolation has major impacts on the mental and physical wellbeing of an individual. These individuals lose critical communication skills that they would otherwise need to communicate with others. They also lose social skills that will affect their ability to form a relationship with other people in the real world. Without the availability of peer support, young people might find the issues of adolescents too overwhelming and hard to handle.

Cyberbullying has been one major effect of the use of social media. Cyberbullying describes any form of harassment that is done using technology. With the constant use of social media, cyberbullying has greatly increased, mostly among teenagers. Teenagers have used sexual remarks, spreading of gossips, threats, sharing of personal information and hate speech on their fellow friends as a means of gaining the upper hand and demeaning others (Kim, et al., 29). The effects of cyberbullying have dire consequences as compared to those of traditional bullying. There are numerous cases of suicide among those who have been bullied. Internet trolling is also mostly accomplished with the aim of disruption, personal amusement and to elicit a reaction. Through internet trolling and cyber stocking, many victims have become unsafe with every social activity they do leading to social annulation.

Such activities have led to increased depression, anger, and frustration. Others are scared for their lives because of the threats that they have received through the internet. These emotional responses in some cases can lead to suicidal ideation. In the United States, there have been numerous cases where a suicide case has been linked to social media activities. The internet also provides lots of information on suicide (DeMer, 30). Research done on the same proved that most websites were pro-suicide and provided all the information needed for suicide. They also have a chat room where individuals can chat. This is quite unfortunate as, without control, these greatly affects those who get the information.

Conclusion

It is hard to ignore the impact social media has on the lives of young people. These impacts are both negative and positive depending on how they use social sites. Due to this, it is important to manage social media usage so that only the positive impacts can be felt.

Work Cited

DeMers, Jason. "The Top 10 Benefits Of Social Media Marketing - Forbes." Forbed, 2014, www.bing.com/cr?IG=268B0C681CD24039BEFC81B5F03F0594&CID=3C1840747EF3618724934BEB7F5C60D8&rd=1&h=_7kGYRii1fAFie7MWwm999pogyaGPSwWx42U2qEwluU&v=1&r=https%3a%2f%2fwww.forbes.com%2fsites%2fjaysondemers%2f2014%2f08%2f11%2fthe-top-10-benefits-of-social-media-marketing%2f&p=DevEx,5415.1.

Kim, Kyung-Sun, et al. "Information seeking through social media: Impact of user characteristics on social media use." Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, vol. 50, no. 1, 2013, pp. 1-4., doi:10.1002/meet.14505001155.