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Social Media and The Youth Brain

Snapchat streaks are why this article exists. This feature makes users addicted and keeps

them coming back for more. The company in the other hand, makes profit from all these users

seeing their advertisements. If you follow social media news or you listen to the youth, you

might have realized Snapchat is this generation’s Facebook. Facebook is the original addictive

social network. With the exponential growth of social media sites and new ones created without

regulation, it is no surprise they are bad for us. But these sites mostly affect young people. The

World Health Organization describes young people as those between the age of 15 and 24. These

are the people we expect to take the world after us. We expect them to grow and take care of

themselves and take care of us. But how can we expect this from them, if we are not taking care

of them, now. With unregulated social media around, these kids are at big risk of being

influenced by social media in a negative way. Social media is negatively affecting our young

people’s mental health because it presents unrealistic standards, it takes away human connection,

and it gives rise to cyberbullying.

First it is important to know where social media come from and how it works. The origin

of social media does not date back too long. “Myspace was founded in 2003, Facebook and

Flickr in 2004 and Twitter and YouTube in 2005” (77 Abbott). It’s been one and a half decade

since their start, and almost all of them have kept going strong to this day. Of course, there had

been many social media websites created since then, but they are all a variation of what these

original sites presented. These new sites are more popular amongst young people than any other

demographics. “Facebook and YouTube continue to be the most widely used online platforms

amongst U.S. adults. [But] Snapchat and Instagram are especially popular amongst 18- to 24-

years-olds” (Perrin and Anderson).

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The purpose of social media seems clear at first, it is to connect people. But it also must

make money for the providers. Gradually, social media become all about promotions for

companies and making money for the founders of the social media site (Rohn). But we look

again at the rise of mental health problems amongst teens, which relates to how they spend their

time. If they are out there put in most of their time online, it is no wonder it will start to cause

emotional distress on them.

One of the ways social media negatively affects young people is presents them with

unrealistic standard for their lives. Kids need to grow up with imagination, but they should not be

disillusioned or mislead by fake lives they see online. There are online personalities that are

being paid a large amount of money to sell a product for a company. These personalities jobs are

to basically bring in young people and make them feel like they are friends. They work hard to

relate to their followers and create a brand. Once they have good enough following, they market

their own products and promote other companies. As a teen I was a victim of these kinds of

marketing. Of course, marketing to kids is a reality especially on TV, but what makes this worse

is the parents don’t know what the kids are seeing. If someone tells a teenager something is cool.

They will surely follow that advice because they do not know better. Because on the other side is

the shame this so-called influencer will cause on them. If you do not buy their clothing, then the

friendship is over. So, it is a lot of pressure on the kids and the parents.

The other thing is online relationships take ways time from creating real life human

connection. The conversations people have online and the relationships they create are not ever

going to equal to the real thing. When creating an online personality everyone is filtered.

Everyone has physical and emotional filters they put up. So, even when they find a real

friendship it is never permanent. The other person usually can not handle what happens when the
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filleters are removed. When talking with someone online it is so easy to say whatever, and the

other person would be fine with it. But I have seen so many times one of my friends gets into

online relationship and when they meet in person both parties are disappointed. I have seen the

depression and sadness that comes after these kinds of situations and it is heartbreaking. But the

saddest part is they will not quit, they will be back after a week or so, searching for that same

type of connections, because they are addicted to the apps.

By far the biggest problem in the online community right now is cyberbullying. It is no

secret that “young adults (18-25 years) experienced the highest levels of cyberbullying” (‘studies

from Uni. Of CYND on CSN’). This is doomed to happen since most of these young adults lives

and time are spent on social media. they feel bad about their lives and they are made to feel bad

about how good they have it (especially as an American). All the posts show perseverance of

someone in the most situations that is far removed from the situations and lives they live, and

that makes them feel bad. But in other cases they want to fight back with saying mean words

towards the great person so they feel better. But mostly they are just unhappy about their lives.

It is no surprise, the other side will say, the social media isn’t that bad. Its beings people

news, videos and article to read about what is going on in the world. Of course, it does those

things, but at what cost. We teach our youth useless information and expect them to be great.

Knowing a whole lot about the outside world will not help the youth. What will help the youth is

giving them a good sense of their own lives. They need to know about where they are living.

They need to know more about what is immediately outside their doors. In other words, they

need to know about things they can change. Providing the problem of the whole world in a short

clip will just make a young person feel hopeless and powerless. And unfortunately, that is what

social media does. There are other that argue, social media will broaden people’s horizon. But
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not really, it just creates the popular term fear of missing out (also known as, FOMO). “FOMO is

an underlying mechanism that explains the relationship between excessive social reassurance

needs and (problematic) social media use” (Abeele and Rooij). It is the awful truth.

Social media had a negative affect on young adults for reason like unrealistic standards,

no human connection, and cyberbullying. These kids’ brains are being changed by the amount of

social media they are consuming. They need help stopping this addiction and everyone needs to

wake up and help the kids. If we do not help the kids now. Then we can not hope for a better

future tomorrow.
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