Social Media and Mental Health Essay Example

Social media is a big part of many teens' lives. On average, teens are online almost nine hours a day, not including time for homework. I believe social media is mostly bad because it has negative effects on mental health, creates a false sense of reality, and it’s addictive.

To begin with, social media has negative effects on mental health. Each day young children are exposed to all types of things like harmful interactions with complete strangers they meet online. Survey results conducted by the Royal Society for Public Health found that Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all led to increased feelings of depression, anxiety, poor body image and loneliness. Many people including myself would agree that social media had some sort of impact on their mental health, good or bad. For me, temporarily deactivating my social media accounts helped improve my mental health drastically. I felt like a completely new person and my anxiety and depressive symptoms have decreased immeasurably. Not only that but social media creates a false sense of reality. 

Being a user myself, I find it disturbing how petty and superficial our reliance on social media has become. Instead of developing our personalities through real life experiences, we have developed digital walls. Walls filled with ideas of professionalism and unrealistic standards of life. We once lived in a world where social media was just another piece of entertainment. Now, it seems to be a necessity to function in life. You are not cool unless you have social media. If you don’t, you are deemed a social outcast. Social media convinces people that our world is filled with perfection. Filters, angles, captions, and moments on these sites/apps are a lie. Life is not a picture, nor can it be summarized in a bunch of captions. We wake up first thing in the morning checking our notifications to see how many likes and comments we’ve garnered. This was me and I know this is a lot of you out there too. But at the end of the day, does any of this matter? If we as a community rely on digital acceptance to function as human beings, then I am disappointed. Our happiness should not be defined by social media, let alone a heart or a like.