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Introduction
Latest result from Smart Insights (2018) indicated that global social media users have
increased up to 13 percents this year and now is staying at a solid 3.196 billion users worldwide
which is more than 40% of world population. Adolescents are also involved and have a big part
in this since their lives are revolved around their phones and technology.. [Reach Out, 2017].
They also showed that adolescents aged 15-17 spend over 2 hours of internet per day and 91% of
them use internet for social networking. However, they also manifested that 73% of adolescents
age 15-17 use internet for formal education activities. With this in mind, this report sets out to
explore how detrimental or harmful social media is to adolescent’s well being. Issues will be
explored within global, national and also my personal perspective. After researching for my
home country: Vietnam through Saigoneer, I found that 48% of Vietnamese use social media
daily.
Issues
There are many issues to choose from when looking at how detrimental social media is to
adolescent’s well being, but I have chosen how social media impacts mental health, social
interaction and how it impacts academically. After my initial research I feel that these are the
Mental Health
First issue will be mental health. Excessive exposure of social media is slowly but surely
affecting teen’s well being, and how they feel in general. Hence, leads to many problems like
depression and anxiety since receiving constant updates from friends or family showcasing how
“perfect” their life is can cause feelings of imperfection. This causes them to become anxious,
stressed or even depressed as they worry that their life isn’t as intriguing. Also, When surveyed,
40% of Facebook users admitted that they usually post things to improve their image, which is
very stressed out because you have to decide the perfect one to post [Huffpost]. Not just anxiety
and depression, social media usage linked to suicide is really high too, it experiences 4,600 lives
lost each year in the age group of 10-24. This problem is caused by a lot of teen being bullied
over the internet and experience negative things about them.[TheStar, 2017]. Social media
addiction is also a big problem since there are over 50% of teenagers admitted that they are
In a small country like Vietnam, the problem of teenagers being depressed happens really
often too. For instance, a teenager from Ha Noi recently got hospitalized due to Facebook
addiction, she was smashing things surround her when her parents banned her from using
Facebook, they had to sedate her to get her to the hospital according to Vnexpress.
In my opinion, social media is a big factor of the impact of our mental health, because
social media is the main cause of depression in adolescents, number of adolescents committing
suicide due to cyberbullying is high and the addiction to social media is also concerning since
there are 50% of adolescents are really addicted. In the other hand, it helps teens to enjoy more
when they get in contact with their friends online, learn about news on social media. [Power Of
Positivity]. If we stop using social media, it will help us to feel happier since we don’t have to
prove anyone how good we are in general. Also, we will be happier if we don’t use it because
social media posts usually are very uninspiring. By doing this, it will also create less chance of
Social Interaction
As what I mentioned in my personal perspective in issue 1, it leads to my second issue
about social interaction and whether it’s detrimental to an adolescent’s well being or not. As a
research on PCWorld shown that users aged between 15 and 19 spend at least three hours per
day on average using social media platforms. We could say that social media helps us to interact
with friends online easier and faster. But it doesn’t help the fact that it diminishes our social
interaction, social skills and our real world communication. According to Explore Lifestyle,
people spend over 10 billion minutes everyday on Facebook which is a really big problem
because people nowadays prefer chatting over talking face-to-face to reduce the awkwardness
between them and their surroundings. According to DailyMail, they stated that using a phone for
social media can attract our attentions and makes us ignoring what’s going on around us which
In Vietnam, There is 81% of 18-29 years old using social media daily to interact with
friends and reading news from friends according to Saigoneer. This is a big problem since 81%
is a high number and that is 4 out of 5 people using social media instead of interacting face-to-
face. This problem will lead to the lack of social interaction in the development of Vietnamese
teen’s behaviour.
In the other hand, it’s also an advantage since it helps to contact friends easier for meet
ups during the weekend. Also, it helps them to connect with new friends around the world based
on their passion and likes. It can help them to learn about new cultures and people according to
LiveStrong. As I could see, LiveStrong is a very reliable source with many perspectives to
support my research, they also stated reasonable evidence to the con side as good as the pro.
For me, social media brings our friendly society far away. Nowadays, our daily routine is
consisted of internet and just internet, less social meet up or even interaction. Amount of teens
abusing social medias to avoid talking to normal people just so they don’t feel awkward have
increased surprisingly as shown in my global perspective. This could be bad for me in many
ways as I sometimes also prefer roaming and communicating via social media rather than talking
face to face.
The way that you could do to solve this is to limit yourself from using social media,
create a plan for yourself or someone you know for instance attending to an outside activity to
diminish the amount of time you use social media. Or you could make it a treat of 10 minutes
after you finish a task or homework and the best way is to find a new hobby such as playing
sports or music. But most importantly, interact more with friends and family to improve social
skills.(Bustle 2016).
Impact Academically
For my last and final issue is how social media impact teenagers academically. Teenagers
nowadays can be distracted from a lot of things such as playing games, playing sports or hanging
out with friends rather than doing their homework. Recently, a new distraction got evolved and
that is social media. According to Eastside Online, as social media keeps getting more popular,
there is a higher amount of student from all over the globe spending more time communicating
online instead of doing school works. They also stated that, teenagers nowadays often do their
work at the last minutes, and during those time they would spend on procrastinations such as
texting friends and scrolling through newsfeed. They indicated that there are schools that blocked
social media application because the likeness of students messing around during class rather than
In a result of this, PBS showed that students who use social media score below average at
school. The owner of this study, Albert Posso stated that students who use social media often
tend to obtain lower scores in math, reading, and science than students who never or sometimes
use social media. And the more students use social media is the less score they will obtain. Two-
third of teachers were sure that homeworks have less quality due to students rushing it so they
have time to spend online [Creative Education]. They also stated that, the issue is behavioural
not technological.
In Vietnam,surprisingly there are a lot of people find social media useful. For example,
73% think that social media help them to find the information in which they are interested easier.
Not just that 72% think the network is very easy to use and 71% think that there are many
opportunities in this network to help their studies and catching up purposes(SHS WEB study).
The usage of social media impacts study of adolescents a lot since it distracts them from
doing work and concentrating. Also, sometimes it helps due to the wide information on the social
media related to the topic they study. Not just that, according to LCIBS, they stated that social
media has gained credibility over the years as a trusted source of information where students can
go on and get helps. For instance, they can get in touch with experts through social media and
learn about the topics that they need. They can also use social media for researching such as
collecting data on the majority of people on a particular topic or they can learn from institutions
via facebook and youtube about their issues. In additional, they can write blogs or Tweet in order
to develop writing, reading and essential thinking skills. They can increase their social and
political awareness by watching the news, and searching for political information such as
documents [The Hays Daily News, 2018]. Not just helping academically, they can also build
their own brand through social media to promote their business and make some extra money.
LCIBS and Hays Daily News are reliable sources since they stated about different perspectives,
the contents are also up to date and they state some initial study to help readers understand better.
If teenagers change the way they use social media and use it wisely then the amounts of
low score they get will decrease. Also, their works at school could also improve as they don’t
rush to finish it at the last minute. In additional, teenagers should use social media to contact
with friends for studies or to ask question when they need [Phys]. According to MHeducation,
they stated that social media can help them to find professors use social media to give advices
and they can also use hashtag to learn more about the topic they want for example
#BIOFINALS101.
In my opinion, social medias sometimes help me a lot and sometimes impacts my study
and life in general. I usually get distracted while studying when notifications pop up on my
screen which is very tempted sometimes. But social medias also help me to collect data of people
over the world, it helps me to learn more about other’s cultures and improve my political
awareness.
Conclusion
In conclusion, my perspectives on social media has changed a lot since I researched more
about it. For my first issue about mental health, there isn’t always negative impacts, there is also
a way for us to be happier since we get to contact new people, learn about the news rather than
stressing out. While researching for my second issue, I learned that social media helps us to
connect with new friends around the globe, to get to know more about their cultures and their
people easier and it doesn’t require a lot of time and money. And the last one is impacting
academically which was a two sided issue because there are a lot of disadvantages and
advantages which was very hard to decide if it benefits or not. In the future, social media will be
a bigger part in our society as it grows larger and wider. Governments and parents around the
globe should find solutions to the negative sides of social media since it’s creating a lot of
troubles such as suiciding, teenagers isolate themselves and the addictions of social media