Social Media and Mental Health Essay Example

You may not realize it, but technology has many negatives along with the many positives it brings us as a society. One of the biggest platforms you can see this happening on is social media. Social media comes in a variety of apps and websites across the internet and are a way for many to further communicate with others. Some examples of social media would include Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, along with many others. I, along with many other teenagers, use these apps daily to keep in touch with news and to communicate with friends and loved ones. Although I use these apps every day to stay in touch with friends, I have realized that there are many issues within the realm of social media, which can lead to a variety of negative outcomes for people, especially teenagers like myself. Not to say that social media is a terrible thing, because social media is vitally important to the progress of socialization in society. However, social media apps present a false reality to their viewers in many ways across many of their platforms. Thus, social media creates psychological issues within its various communities and apps.   

Firstly, social media creates a false sense of reality about what someone's life should be like through the ideals it promotes. I have been on social media for almost 10 years, or since I was 9. I use these apps daily to keep up to date with news, sports, and to communicate with my friends. Once I became a teenager, I started to see the issue of self-idealization in social media, especially on Instagram, an app where you can post pictures like Facebook. Self-idealization is when someone adds positive qualities to themselves to make them look better than they are. I see this a lot on social media due to editing and filters, which change the color of the photo and background. I also have been guilty of using filters to make myself look better before I post on social media. This leads to psychological issues within other users’ heads when they see these pictures of people who are “good looking” and “happy”, even though people edit their pictures to portray themselves that way. As Sherry Thomas, quotes Dr. Ali Jazayeri, an associate professor of clinical psychology at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology’s L.A. Campus, who said “People, when they are happy, post a lot of happy things. But when I’m not happy I will consciously, or unconsciously, compare myself to others. As a result, I create a world that is not a true world because I imagine that everybody is happy in that world, except me.” (Thomas). This shows that people judge others by what they post, which causes many negative side effects for viewers, but also the person who posted. 

Furthermore, these negative side effects can include many psychological disorders. As for the person who posted the self-idealized photo, these side effects could lead to depression. Within social media, there are “likes”. This is when other people who use the same app see the image and like their post. I do not care about how many likes I get when I post on social media, I only self-idealize so I look good. On the other hand, I do know a lot of people, mostly women, who self-idealize themselves in hopes for their likes to skyrocket with each post. When these people don’t get the likes they were expecting, they become saddened, angered, and sometimes even depressed. This is supported by L. Monacis, an individual in the Department of Humanities at the University of Foggia, who stated “A recent study reported that a strong need for approval was associated with higher levels of false/lying self-presentation, which significantly increased depression.” (Monacis). This shows that this need for approval through likes can cause mental illnesses like depression if not realized early on. Self-idealization in social media creates an altered reality for viewers that can alter viewers’ mental health. 

Secondly, social media becomes an issue if used too much. On average, I spend 9 hours and 17 minutes on my phone a day, which includes school, games, and social media. I would consider myself somewhat addicted to my phone. This presents an issue for many, including me, which psychologically hurts us by getting “sucked into” the realm of social media and losing a sense of reality. I have many friends who are addicted to social media like me, and we all experience some psychological issues that can affect our communication. I sometimes experience fear of missing out and attention deficits, just like some of my friends. This makes it tougher for me to properly communicate with them because I must be selective of topics I can talk to them about, which can sometimes be an issue. This is seen when Monacis says, “Among recent studies concerning SMA, the most investigated variables have been gender, social anxiety and loneliness, fear of missing out (FoMO), compulsive use behavior, self-esteem, attention deficits, impulsivity, life satisfaction, empathy, and personality constructs.” (Monacis).  This shows that when someone gets social media addiction (SMA), there is a wide range of possible psychological disorders that can occur. Therefore, too much social media can negatively impact your outlook on reality and impact how others communicate with you. 

Lastly, social media presents a platform for which propaganda and false news have become common. As we all have seen in recent times, political campaigns have become heavily focused online through ads and social media as a way for politicians to get their points off to their audience. For example, propaganda has taken a new meaning since it was first produced. This is seen when Christopher Till, who is from Leeds Beckett University, UK, described that propaganda was initially for describing and spreading information, especially in war times. He then described that it has now changed to take on meaning with more manipulation and disinformation (Till). Although I couldn’t vote until this year, I still saw this problem occurring all over social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter. This can evidently lead to an audience getting the wrong assumptions about a politician, which would lead to voting for the wrong person based on false information. An example of this is when Till said, “The lying and denunciation of critics as ‘fake news’ by US President Donald Trump and the micro-targeted and deceptive social media advertising in the 2016 US presidential election and United Kingdom’s EU referendum brought the tenuous character of political reality to the fore.” (Till). This shows that we have seen this in recent elections, like 2016 and 2020 for example. My point is that propaganda has slowly evolved over time to include more misleading information, not that all propaganda today has misleading information on social media. Social media has led to a change in propaganda which has affected various political campaigns due to misleading information to the public. 

Many may argue that the pros of social media outweigh the cons, and I neither agree nor disagree. I completely agree that there are way more positives to social media than negatives, but I believe that we should be more aware of the negatives of social media so that people can be saved from developing psychological disorders due to the misuse of social media. If people become more aware of the negatives of social media, I believe that it could become much safer and have a better overall environment among users. For example, Kelly A. Allen, an educational and developmental psychologist, said “Evidence for the life-changing capacity of interacting on social networking includes the mobilization of rallies, boycotts, and protests, the establishment and maintenance of romantic relationships, and the real-time prevention of potential acts of suicide.” (Allen). This shows how vital social media has been to our society, and how it is helping us advance so far in recent years, which is why social media is so important, but there are also negatives that should be brought to the forefront. 

All in all, there are many pros to social media, but there are also some cons that create issues with users. These issues stretch over a variety of topics, from editing to propaganda, and have a variety of possible effects like psychological disorders or mental illnesses. Furthermore, your mental health is vital to your overall health, so if you feel like you have been “sucked into” social media for too long, take a break so you don’t end up hurting yourself psychologically. I believe that social media is a great way to communicate with a wide range of individuals and I can’t wait to see what advancements and changes are made to it in the future to create a safer and better environment for its users. 

Works Cited Page

Allen, Kelly A., et al. “Social Media Use and Social Connectedness in Adolescents: The Positives and the Potential Pitfalls.” The Australian Educational and Developmental Psychologist, 19, Oct. 2020, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1017/edp.2014.2.

Monacis, L., et al. “The risk of social media addiction between the ideal/false and true self: Testing a path model through the tripartite person-centered perspective of authenticity.” ScienceDirect, Elsevier B.V., 13 Sept. 2021, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0736585321001489.

Thomas, Sherry. “A Virtual Life: How Social Media Changes Our Perceptions.” Insight Digital Magazine, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, 7 Dec. 2021, https://www.thechicagoschool.edu/insight/from-the-magazine/a-virtual-life/. 

Till, Christopher. “Propaganda through ‘reflexive control’ and the mediated construction of reality.” Sagepub, 2021, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1461444820902446.