Social Media Use Should Be Banned for Minors (Argumentative Essay Example)

A family sits around their dining room table on an average evening, sharing a meal together. Yet if you take a closer look, the children in the family are not sharing time with each other, rather spending it on their devices. The son is clicking away on his phone texting his online friends about how boring his life is. His sister is endlessly scrolling on her phone, constantly comparing herself to the photoshopped models she sees.  Albeit one may not realise it, teenagers’ lives are being ruined due to online social platforms. Social media use should be banned for minors as it is addictive, reduces real-life interactions, and causes poor mental health.

One of the negative effects of social media is that it leads to addiction. In the beginning, social media platforms mainly had one purpose which was connecting people. Yet, these platforms have much different intentions now than they used to. For instance, nowadays one of the major purposes of social media is advertisements. No longer do these platforms care about what is best for their users, rather they have ulterior motives. The users are no longer customers but rather the consumers of the real customers, the advertisers. To be able to make the most amount of money from their advertisers, social media is designed to be addictive to keep the consumer using their sites for as long as possible. Platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook cause the same neurological response as gambling and drugs to get their consumers to continue using their products as often as possible. This is because these sites stimulate the brain to release dopamine, rewarding the behaviour and making users want to continue the habit. Teenagers often use social media as a way to spend their spare time. However, after some time, they begin using it during times when they should not. The more they use these platforms, the more they crave to use them again. Teenagers may use social media as a way to make friends, but research has shown that this usage makes them feel even more isolated than before. Social media is decreasing the attention span of teens, making it harder for them to complete everyday tasks. This is an issue because it makes studying, learning and completing assignments much more difficult for teens. Social media can cause teenagers to become addicted and lowers their attention span. 

Many minors' real-life interactions are weakened due to the use of social media. Teenagers are reported to use texting more than any other form of communication. This is a concern because texting does not include much non-verbal communication, making it harder for those who use social media to read emotional cues associated with personal, social and academic success. Teens who understand emotional cues can develop better social skills and better peer relationships. As a result, many teenagers who use social media have difficulties communicating in person because they have trouble understanding others’ emotions. One can argue that social media can help those with social anxiety to communicate. In spite of that, studies have found that doing this only causes a rise in the social anxiety of teenagers. When teens are at social gatherings, it is very common for them to be occupied scrolling on social media. They tend to go on their devices for long periods of time during these gatherings rather than trying to socialize with those around them. Sometimes friends will be beside each other and still they text one another instead of talking to each other. Lastly, if teenagers continue to grow this way, they will be unable to effectively communicate during job interviews, making it much harder for them to find a job. The use of social media is significantly lowering teenagers' in-person social skills.

Along with the temporary dopamine boost social media can provide, comes damaging mental health effects. Cyberbullying is one of the ways social media affects the mental health of teenagers. One in three teens are victims of online bullying, and most of them do not tell any trusted adults to stop it. Cyberbullying can cause many problems such as increased stress and anxiety, and depression. The problem with this kind of bullying is that people think that they will not be caught because they can hide behind their screens, making cyberbullying more common. As many teenagers post for the approval of others, they have depressive feelings when one comments hateful comments. As teenagers' minds are still developing, sometimes they can not decipher what is right and what is wrong. They may feel pressured to do things they see others doing because they saw someone they idolised do it. Teenagers tend to compare their lives to others on social media, causing them to feel as though they are not enough and their lives are boring. In addition, those who use social media tend to compare themselves to photoshopped models making them believe that they need to look like them to look beautiful, causing them to constantly compare themselves to unattainable standards. This perpetual comparison leads to problems with self-esteem, especially in girls. Many girls look at the pictures of the photoshopped celebrities, wondering why they look so terrible in comparison. It used to be a problem when girls compared themselves to models in magazines, yet now that they can constantly see photos of models on their phones, the problem is only growing worse and causing their self-confidence to lower. Lastly, high levels of social media use are linked to depression and anxiety. Many studies have shown social media use is linked with higher levels of depression and anxiety. Multiple studies have shown that those who use social media have higher levels of anxiety and depression than those who do not. Some teenagers use social media to cope with their anxiety or depression but it ends up rising higher. In fact, a study published in the journal Computers and Human Behaviour found that people who used social media were three times as likely to have higher levels of anxiety and depression. Social media use also highers suicidal thoughts. According to the Association of Suicidology, suicide among teens has grown more than fifty precent over the last three decades. Many use social media at night, causing them to have restless nights due to the blue light emitted from their devices.  If social media was to be banned for minors, fewer teenagers will suffer from depression, anxiety, lack of self-confidence and other problems. 

Many days passed and the parents remained blind to the harmful side effects that social media was causing to their children. Their daughter cried herself to sleep every night and rarely ate in hopes to look like those models she saw online. Their son became depressed and made an attempt to take his own life. Even if it may not have been apparent to the parents of the family at the time, the teenagers’ constant social media use was something that should have stopped.  Online social platforms should be banned for those under eighteen years of age as they cause more harm than good to teenagers as these platforms dwindle their real-life social skills, cause psychological disorders, and addiction.  We must put an end to social media use by minors; We need to ban social media for those under eighteen years of age.