How does social media affect young adults? Is it Toxic?

Social Media

Alea Criscitelli

January 3,2021

How does Social Media Affect Young Adults?

" Why am I so ugly?".... "How do they get so many likes?"... "This is not what I asked for"... Ever wonder why our generation has so many disrespectful children and why young adults are so obsessed with social media? This evidence suggests why our young adults and people we surround ourselves with are mentally changing their views on themselves. Adult's declining mental health is because of social media, feeling of competition, and giving them mental health symptoms. .

Considering that many people in this world constantly use their phones for social media or just normal casual uses they are losing sleep. People are obsessed with using their phones which can lead to addictive behaviors and addiction. When people are addicted to their phones they will do anything to use it which includes lack of sleep or restless sleep because of the lights on the phone affecting their eyes and brain signals. According to Future "Last year, 1,700 18- to 30-year-olds about their social media and sleeping habits. They found a link with sleep disturbances – and concluded blue light had a part to play. How often they logged on, rather than time spent on social media sites, was a higher predictor of disturbed sleep, suggesting "an obsessive 'checking'", the researchers said."

Other young adults get affected by social media because other people post on their social media platforms and it makes them think that they are in competition with other people and it makes them jealous about what others post. According to Canadian Medical Association Journal(CMAJ) " In a randomized study of 120 college students, those who scored highly on the tendency to engage in social comparison based on measures from a validated scale had poorer self-perception, lower self-esteem, and more negative affect after browsing the Facebook profile of an acquaintance, relative to those randomized to the control conditions, an effect not seen among students who scored low on social comparison traits" This shows a statistic from a very credible source saying that social media websites like Facebook gives most people lower self esteem and lowered perception on them and their relationship with others. Also according to CMAJ " Social media can affect adolescents' self-view and interpersonal relationships through social comparison and negative interactions, including cyberbullying; moreover, social media content often involves normalization and even promotion of self-harm and suicidality among youth." This is also proving that actions that can be done to another peer on social media can make people suicidal and having depression symptoms.

Another way that social media can affect people is by giving them mental health symptoms for depression and panic disorders among many different studies to young adults and adults alike. According to Lydia Denworth,"A new paper by scientists at the University of Oxford, in Nature Human Behaviour, should help clear up the confusion. It reveals the pitfalls of the statistical methods scientists have employed and offers a more rigorous alternative. And, importantly, it uses data on more than 350,000 adolescents to show persuasively that, at a population level, technology use has a nearly negligible effect on adolescent psychological well-being, measured in a range of questions addressing depressive symptoms, suicidal ideation, pro-social behavior, peer-relationship problems and the like.'' This proves that throughout many surveys it explains that because of how intense the technology is making people get symptoms of depression and suicidal tendencies because they are extremely overwhelmed.

We all use social media as a platform to share our favorite times and the times where we want everyone else to see and like and wish they were us. We want attention when no one can give it to us and using social media can make us obsessed with wanting attention. This can be called the "Economy of Attention". According to the Ted Talk by Bailey Parnell, "In social media, these likes, the comments, the shares, they have become this form of currency by which we attribute value to something. In marketing, we call it the 'Economy of Attention.'. Everything is competing for your attention, and when you give something a like or a piece of that finite attention it becomes a recorded transaction attribute value. Which is great if you are selling albums or clothing. The problem is that in our social media, [WE are the product.] We are letting others attribute value to us. You know someone or are someone that has taken down a photo because it didn't take as many likes as you thought it would. I'll admit, I've been right there with you. We took product off the shelf because it wasn't selling fast enough. This is changing our sense of identity. We are trying up our self-worth of what others think about us and then we are quantifying it for everyone to see. We are obsessed. We have to get that selfie just right, and we will take 300 photos to make sure. Then we'll wait for the perfect one to post." This proves that many people are obsessed and trying to be perfect for social media to seem better than anyone else or give themselves recognition and approval from themselves and others.

Through surveys done by instagram polls, 60/100 people find discomfort in the content they see on a day to day basis on insta. going further into this, I then asked what the discomfort was the pressure the world was putting on them to fit in with the rest or just the content itself. shockingly, 80/100 voted that the pressure of the world to fit in made one feel discomfort and out of place. This truly shows how people think that they are getting very pressured to act in a certain way because of social media. This also shows that people are truly getting affected from what they are pressured to think and act when they are just uncomfortable about if they are thinking they are not perfect or cool enough. People think this when they are not able to get enough attention and competition from others that are "better than" them.

Many bad influences are very popular on social media and children and teens our age think that not being respectful like the bad influences on social media is how to be popular and cool. Other young adults get affected by social media because other people post on their social media platforms and it makes them think that they are in competition with other people and it makes them jealous about what others post. I made an instagram poll and asked my followers if they are affected by social media and according to the poll "60% are followers are affected and 40% are not affected" This shows that more than half of my followers were affected by either sleep deprived or are getting mental health disorder symptoms from overusing social media.

Work Cited

Abi-Jaoude, Elia, et al. "Smartphones, Social Media Use and Youth Mental Health." CMAJ, CMAJ, 10 Feb. 2020, www.cmaj.ca/content/192/6/E136.

Brown, Jessica. "Is Social Media Bad for You? The Evidence and the Unknowns." BBC Future, BBC, 5 Jan. 2018, www.bbc.com/future/article/20180104-is-social-media-bad-for-you-the-evidence-and-the-unknowns.

Denworth, Lydia. "The Kids (Who Use Tech) Are All Right." The Kids (Who Use Tech) Are All Right, 24 Apr. 2020, lydiadenworth.com/articles/the-kids-who-use-tech-are-all-right/.

Parnell, Bailey. " Is Social Media Hurting Your Mental Health? |Bailey Parnell | TEDxRyersonU." Youtube, 22 June 2017, .

Insta poll- by followers giving input