Week 12: Social Media Mania

    In today's world, social media has become an almost-required part of life, regardless of how the individual feels about the platforms. Many businesses now use social media to promote career opportunities, many schools use social media to make announcements to their faculty and students, and political leaders, including the U.S. President, use social media to speak to their constituents. Life has quickly evolved to center around technology, and social media has been no different. Currently about seven out of ten Americans use social media, demonstrating that growing reach of social media. While this is useful at times and allows for quick ways to make mass announcements and reach larger audiences, social media can also be a very harmful entity, especially for its most common demographic. Popular social media platforms such as Tiktok, Twitter and Youtube, are largely used by young adults and teenagers, groups that are very easily influenced. 

    Mental health has become an increasingly focused on issue in today's society as disorders such as depression and anxiety have been on the rise, with social media being a known cause for this increase. The NC Medical Journal has agreed with stance, stating that many studies have found a significant negative effect of social media use on the mental health of adolescents. From cyberbulling to the proliferation of filtered and photoshopped images, there are various ways for social media to hurt people's mental health. Young children, teenagers, young adults, and even adults are faced with these unrealistic expectations on these platforms daily with the false narrative that they are achievable. This is even seen with celebrities, as "scandals" constantly come out about papparazi pictures differing from the person's posted images. This is seen often with Khloe Kardashian as she is often accused of editing her photos to the point of being unrecognizable, and when unedited pictures are released, it creates a panic within her team as they scramble to remove the images. Despite her looking normal and beautiful in these natural images, people are so used to these social media ideas of perfection that even she feels the need to hide her true self.

    The prominence of social media in today's world makes it almost impossible to avoid these social pressures, leaving people vulnerable to these negative influences. But not nearly enough has been done or put into place to stop these negative aspects of social media from affecting people, especially the highly vulnerable youth. Schools have launched anti-cyberbulling campaigns, modelling companies have claimed that they will label all of their photoshopped pictures as edited, but little has come out of this. In my own experience as a young adult who dealt with cyberbullying in my high school, these claims of fighting these negative aspects are ultimately just that- claims. My friends and I had all experienced painful and embarrassing attacks publicly online, but nothing was ever done to protect us. Our school promoted anti-bullying and even brought police officers in for a presentation about the criminal repercussions of such actions, but never truly acted to protect its students. We were often silenced and told the situation was handled as bully had been "talked to," but our own lasting mental issues resulting from these long-lasting insults and rumors were never cared for. 

    This is not simply a personal issue, this is a very large problem that is becoming more prominent as social media gains more of a grip on people. People need to pay more attention to these problems and understand the effect social media can play on people's self-esteem and mental health. Even as mental health has gained more attention in today's world, the true impact it has on people is still often been brushed under the rug. A simple Instagram page full of edited and filtered images can cause a person to spiral into such self-deprecating thoughts and misery that it can impact them deeply. This is not necessarily the page's fault, but the impact it can have needs to be highlighted more. Kids today are growing up on social medial; in their most formative years they are faced with these images of unachievable perfection and attacked online by their peers and even strangers. These mental health campaigns pushed by schools and companies need to go further than just showing support publicly, they need to back up their words and do more for these victims. Parents want to protect their children, not see them hurt by something out of their control, but they can control the aftermath and the preventative measures taken. Parents need to push these organizations for more protections for their children; if social media cannot be stopped, then the effects should be addressed. While we can all be hurt by social media, and often are, this pain occurring repeatedly in the formative years of children creates long lasting issues and permanent scarring. Children are hurting, and so little is being done to truly help them. We need to fight for these children's protections, keep them as safe from these lasting damages as we can.