Jayne O’Donnell USA Today Article Analysis Essay

Jayne O’Donnell published an article in USA Today that created a lot of buzz. O’Donnell talks about generational loneliness in teens and social media use being the cause of it all. Through history, you can see that each generation is different. The world changes so much and so it shows in the way children grow up. When adults of a previous generation birth children into a new generation, they never have the same childhood their parents had. This is because of all the technological advances that continue to grow everyday. With all the advances, we stop doing a lot of the things our previous generations would always do. Now that we have social media in this generation, a lot has changed for our growing teenagers. Although social media is easy access to the people you know, it is causing our teenagers to be more lonely than the generations before them were.

After reading the article, my reaction was eagerly interested. I also feel more compelled to read more research on the topic. In my life, I have younger siblings. There is a big age gap between us, about a 9 year difference. So throughout the reading, I really reflected on how different my siblings and I grew up even though we lived in the same household. It made me realize a lot about the things that we may take for granted. For example, just going to the park with a friend after school to hang out. At least that is what I used to do and I have very fond memories of those moments. However, my siblings have never gone to the park to just hangout. They always wanted to  be involved in some activity that required money if they hung out with friends.

O’Donnell pitched that due to generational changes and social media use, loneliness has increased among teens. I agree with this statement. The reason being is because technology grows very fast. We get a new iPhone every year with some new feature that everyone just has to get as soon as it drops. As technology grows, people want the next best thing. And a lot of those things cause you to interact with people less and less. For example, back then we did not have amazon or insta cart. If you needed something, you would have to go to your neighborhood store and buy it. Along the way you might see and friend and chat for awhile in the aisle. Maybe even plan a time where your friend will come over for dinner with the family. Now that we have amazon and insta cart, less and less people are going out to shop. Everyone is staying home because their shipment will come the next day. So now we miss out on running into people that we know,. We also have FaceTime now. So if you want to see your family or friends, you no longer have to go to their house. You just easily call to see their faces anytime you want to. With all human interaction decreasing, it can get very lonely.

Like I said previously, my siblings and I have a 9 year age gap. So looking back on the experience I had with social media growing up, it is very different. To go in detail, When I grew up in my teen years I always went to the movies or the mall to hang out with friends outside of school. If it wasn’t there, we had sleep overs or birthday parties to attend. I would say I saw my friends at least 2 weekends out of the month as a teen. I did not use social media often because I grew up where Facebook was just starting up. My siblings, who are still teens,  probably see their friends 1 weekend out of the month. Sometimes they may skip a month. It is very rare for them to ask to go out with friends. They stay at home a lot of the time. They do have friends but they interact with them through social media or online video games. I will say they do chat with their friends often on FaceTime but rarely in person. So after reading this article, I do think there is a correlation between social media use and loneliness in teens.

Upon researching more about the topic I found a study done by Emily B. O’Day and Richard G. Heimberg that supports O’Donnell’s argument. They examined if social media use had an impact of social anxiety in teens and came across some findings that social media use leads to loneliness. In O’Donell’s article, she mentions that this world of social media use is leading to increasing loneliness so there is a correlation between the two. I believe that the results of the study proves O’Donells argument to be true.

The study was done through studying other literature that pertained to the topic of social media use and child behavior. The results show that both socially anxious and lonely individuals engage online more problematically and seek out social support on social media, potentially to compensate for lack of in-person support. SA and LO are associated with problematic SMU; LO appears to be a risk factor for engaging problematically online (O’Day E.B., & Heimberg R.G. 2021).

​As each generation grows, so does the world of technology. It is amazing to see what the next best thing is. But is all the technology worth it? Social media will probably advance in the future. As we see now, social media use has an effect on the loneliness of our growing teenagers. The teen years are the years that shape you towards adulthood. I can only think about how social media will affect the social health of our soon to be adults. Hopefully, with the continuation of research on the topic, we can find a better way to impact the mental health of each generation in a positive manner. I would strongly recommend this article to others as I suggest this is something to definitely think about.