Social media on the negative side

Around 71% of the people around the world use social media today. I will be telling you all about the negative side of social media. Although there are pros from it, such as communicating with different people on different platforms, and being more informed about other places, and things, and people, there are a lot more cons to it. People have been more addicted to social media as the years go by. According to Statista (a statistics website), the average social media users have been increasing by 1,000,000 users each year. I believe that social media severely harms you and your health, since a lot of people have been dedicating their free time to being on social media, rather than going outside and taking a walk, or doing something that benefits your health. It’s also a major form of procrastination, with many students, and even adults staying up on social media and ending up doing it late, ruining their health even more.

Social Media is websites, networking systems, applications, and other stuff that helps you create and distribute content and let’s you engage in social networking sites (Rouse). Social media is used by more than half of the world’s population and has many people communicate with others around the world, but it also damages your health, work ethic, environment, and many other important things. The first recognizable social media platform was created in 1997, it was called Six Degrees and it enabled users to upload a profile and make friends with other users (Hendricks). The average age of social media users vary from 15 year olds to about 26 year olds, which are mostly teens and young adults. There are about 3.4 billion active social media users and on average people have 5.6 social media accounts. To add to that, the average daily time spent on social media is 116 minutes per day (Statista).

Social media has been a major cause of teenage suicide. The rate’s of an average social media user’s death due to suicide increases as the years go by (Carrier Clinic). I believe it’s due to all the standards society has set for you that they feel like they didn’t accomplish. Other people should not be setting standards for you, but that’s exactly how most social media platforms are being used. Social media also has a lot of bullying surfacing around it and most things aren’t censored, things can be unwillingly harming someone to the point where they think they have no purpose to live anymore. In conclusion to this topic, social media can severely damage your mental health.

After more users started getting connected to social media, most spend all their time on it, including when they should be asleep (Hansen). It is believed that social media should not be used before you sleep, or during the nighttime. Doctors have said that the blue light coming from your phone disturbs your circadian rhythm, which has an impact on when you fall asleep and wake up, your eating habits, body temperature, and other important things for your body (Wikipedia). The more you stay on your social media, the less time you have to exercise and stay active, which is a big part of your health. It can also majorly affect your mental health. You can find other people, including social media influencers setting a certain standard for yourself. Which can have you thinking you’re not good enough for society that usually has you falling into a deep spiral of anxiety and depression.

Lack of communication has also been a problem. Whether you realize it or not, you will start becoming more distant with your family and maybe even friends. Social media can be very time consuming. It will have you too focused on online to spend quality time with your family and talk to them. You may think that it’s nothing and you’re always going to have your family by you, but it won’t be the same. You may even start forming an unhealthy relationship between yourself and your family. You will start creating a distance between your own family members, and you may only realize until it’s too late.

Solutions to fix these problems would be to not be on social media and your phone for long periods of time. You should take time to relax or to exercise and maybe even read a book. You could also spend time with friends in real life, rather than chatting with them through social media. Another solution that I think would help is you should put your phone away before you sleep and don’t use it for at least an hour after you wake up. Just by doing these little things could greatly help you.

Social networking sites are bad for you in more ways than good. This has affected millions of people in ways that can help you and bring you down at the same time. Social media has helped me to discover different things and people, including musicians, friends, and it also is a great way to communicate with other. On the other hand, social media can be a really dark place if you spend too much time on it. I have seen many people struggle because of social media, and I would like to contribute and do something so I can see less people struggling with things that have such simple solutions. I feel as it social media will have a greater affect to our future than we think it will.

Pennington Traditional School, Virginia

Grade 8th