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Opinion Piece

 " Should social media be forbidden for teenagers?"

Research shows that social media can significantly impact the mental health of teenagers. Several studies highlighted the connection between social media use and depression. The more time teenagers spend on social media, the higher is the chance they get depressed or develop an anxiety disorder. Studies that show the impact of social media on the mental health of adolescents are JAMA Psychiatry from 2019, The Royal Society for public health from 2017, American Journal of preventive medicine from 2020 and many more. All those studies show that social media is bad for teenagers and even for adults. That's why I think social media should be limited or forbidden for teenagers.

First, social media is fake. Influencers only show the good sides of their live and hide their feelings while the camera is rolls. How often does it happen, that you think that you are watch the perfect couple, and they will love each other for ever and in the end, they break up with each other? How often don't you see that an influencer is depressed or has other issues? Very often, right? That's because you only see the sunny side and never the dark one, but that's understandable. I mean who wants to show their bad days if you can just show off your good days. However, it is not good for people, especially for teenagers to see perfect lives all the time, because then you start to question your own live. No one's live is perfect, but you might start to think that as a teenager, when you see that many happy people and their lives seme interesting and wonderful. All you do is scrolling and scrolling, nothing else. That makes you feel worthless, empty and sad.

Teenage brains are still developing and therefore they can easily get influenced, either in a good or a bad way. That brings us to the next point. If there are influencers committing crimes or doing dangerous challenges and show them online, they can get a lot of attention, and some teenagers might think they want to get the same attention or just love this influencer and start doing the same thing. If you think of it, it seems ridiculous, but lots of children lost their lives due to deadly challenges. There was the tide Pod challenge in 2018, The hot chip challenge, where you eat an extremely spicy tortilla chip, which lead to abdominal cramps, vomiting and circulatory collapse, The blackout challenge and many more. In May this year a 14-year-old boy from Massachusetts died, because he ate the hot chip and afterwards had a cardiac arrest. A 13-year-old girl from Germany also died in May this year, because of the black-out challenge, where you strangle yourself until you pass out. That are only two examples, but there where many more teenagers who died only because of idiotic Tik-Tok trends. It's tragic and I think it's time to intervene.

Some people might say social media is important for teenagers to make new friend and share their opinion, but I think it isn't. If you have real life friends, you don't need online friends and if you don't have friends, you can start a hobby or something like that to find someone who likes the same things as you. There is also the risk of cyber bullying. You can block the people, but they can just get a new account and start bullying you repeatedly. Sometimes they don't know the person who bullies them, and they can feel hopeless. Some teenagers get depressed and take their lives, because they don't see a way out.

Social media is dangerous and there are lots of terrifying videos online. Sometimes they just show up on your "for you page" and you get traumatized. Social media also gives predators the chance to pretend to be different person. Minors don't always think about this and might send photos of themselves or worse, meet the predator. You can't always see how old a person is, especially when the person acts like she is somebody else.

I think it's important teenagers don't get confronted with all of this. That's why it is important that social media gets limited or forbidden for teenagers, so they can't get influenced by others and develop their own opinions on different things. Parents should limit the social media use of their children and be aware of new trends to protect their children.