Social Media Addiction and its Effects on Young Adults
With the recent boom in technological development, there has ben rise to a whole new addiction, social media. What seemed as a harmless creation for keeping up with friends and watching short funny videos, has turned into a massive issue for young adults. Since we as humans are biologically designed to be social, our need to be outgoing through these platforms has transitioned from keeping up with a friend to craving the need to be better than everyone and scrolling mindlessly for hours. We have become attached to these devices, worrying professionals because it has become clear that social media is a new addiction. Between creating friendships and growing mental issues, social media has concerning effects on young adults; either way, the effect it is having on the young adults is drastic.
Betul Keles, a Ph.D. student at King’s College London, writes an article about her studies of social media effects and shows fact based evidence on how social media causes depression, anxiety, and psychological destress. Keles’s research discovered a “meta-analysis of 23 studies” which “showed correlation of problematic Facebook use and psychological distress in adolescent and young adults” (Keles). This destress is a very general term because of the many factors social media plays in this problem. Young adults excessively use social media for the attention, dopamine, talking to friends, etc. Keles writes that this “sedentary behaviour has a deleterious effect on mental health in young people” and “the direction of this relationship is unclear” (Keles). Unlike smoking, or any other drug for that matter, social media hasn’t been around long enough to know if the long term effects will be detrimental. what we have found so far is “the prevalence of anxiety and depression has increased by 70% in the past 25 years in young people” (Keles). The data presented isn’t just some numbers to skim over. The major increase in anxiety and depression is alarming. Depression and anxiety is more than just binge watching Friends all day in bed or being nervous to tell the waiter your food was messed up. From past studies we’ve seen that “Depression and anxiety have adverse consequences on adolescent development, including lower educational attainment, school dropout, impaired social relationships, and increased risk of substance abuse, mental health problems and suicide” (Keles). Although we don’t know the adverse effects of long time social media use yet, there is an obvious pattern developing. Unfortunately Keles agrees that it can only get worse, unless young adults learn how to manage their social media use and online expecataions.
Why do young adults feel the need to be so active on social media? This short Buzzfeed video perfectly describes why.
Social media addiction is rampant on our beloved ASU campus, according to ASU student Megan Lindsay. The article, written by Christopher Hernandez, is a study conducted by Lindsay testing whether social media and cellphone use effects development. The study takes 22 students, who Lindsay interviews twice, beginning and end of study, to test how their excessive use changes their behavior. She first found that people “chose what to post and where they posted it” which she thought showed “intriguing results” (Hernandez). The reason there is so many social media platforms is so people can feel comfortable posting so many different things about themselves. For example, Twitter and Tumblr are designed as a way for people to “experiment with thoughts and opinions” rather than Facebook “where users are more likely to have multiple family members and close personal friends viewing what they post” (Hernandez). People are developing different personalities because of the diverse platforms, sometimes fueling a dark personality one person may hold. Lindsay said because of this, “More than one participant mentioned having what I considered to be online abuse experiences from their adolescence” (Hernandez). The ‘online abuse’ she mentions is another way of saying cyber bullying. Cyber bullying is actually very common on social media because people feel bulletproof behind the screen, since they don’t have to face the consequences of their actions face to face. Hernandex concludes that, “Lindsay’s work highlights how words and actions, no matter how they are mediated, still have an effect on the emotions and personality of a person” (Hernandez). In the end it’s no secret social media is going to change the way we think, act, and feel, as we’ve seen through Lindsays’ studies. Her subjects have stated they don’t want to delete their social medias, just change how they act and don’t take crap from other people.
I myself have racked countless hours on social media. I can admit that I have a bit of an addiction to social media apps, and I can see the problems first hand. Between experiencing heavy fomo and forming my own social issues through excessive use, social media has had a pretty big impact on my overall wellbeing. my average weekly screen time is 5 hours and 17 minutes, making up about a third of my day.
it’s almost pathetic seeing that I waste this much time mindlessly scrolling on my phone when I can be using that 5 hours for something productive. A less talked about outcome of social media is really just how much young miss out in the peak of their lives just because they get caught in a rabbit hole of endless scrolling. Data with social media shows the mental health effects and social effects, but they never discuss how kids can miss so much in their life and miss out on memories they would be making. They instead watch short videos of Tom Holland Spider-Man interviews all day. I have spent a ridiculous amount of my college career, my life even, on instagram where I could have instead spent that time making new friends, doing homework, working, and so on. When it comes to the actual mental health effects, I can see that my excessive us has caused me to be less social in social settings and has most likely increased symptoms of anxiety and depression. Luckily I am not suffering from these mental disorders, but have moments of them because I spend a good portion of my day slowly deteriorating my brain. Even though my experience is short, the mindless scrolling and usless pictures aren’t worth it and my time, and other young adults time, is better spent on improving their mental and physical health.
Social media is no doubt a very concerning issue rising in the world and it’s only getting worse. With increasing technological advancements and increasing social media use, there will be a continued rise in mental health effects in young adults. Mindless scrolling will be the biggest waste of everyones youth, however there is hope that we can spread awareness to young adults, or everyone for that matter, to just be aware of how much time they are spending on their devises. We need to encourage the youth to manage their downtime improving, in any manner, just as long as it’s beneficial overall to themselves.
Work Cited
Grealish, Annmarie, and Betul. “A Systematic Review: The Influence of Social Media on Depression, Anxiety and Psychological Distress in Adolescents.” Taylor & Francis, 21 Mar. 2019, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02673843.2019.1590851.
Hernandez, Christopher. “ASU Student Looks at the Individual Impact of Social Media.” ASU News, ASU News, 22 Apr. 2015, https://news.asu.edu/content/asu-student-looks-individual-impact-social-media.
Brueck, Hilary. “Depression among Gen Z Is Skyrocketing — a Troubling Mental-Health Trend That Could Affect the Rest of Their Lives.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 21 Mar. 2019, https://www.businessinsider.com/depression-rates-by-age-young-people-2019-3.
BuzzFeedVideo. How Social Media Affects Your Brain — Youtube. 11 Sept. 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzUb_GeLDg8.
Bellen, Noel. “Many People Will Panic to Find a Charger before Their Phone Dies but Won’t Panic to Find a Plan before Their Dream Dies. — Elon Musk#Quote Pic.twitter.com/fkx865qynn.” Twitter, Twitter, 9 Nov. 2021, https://twitter.com/noelbellen/status/1458097060130041858.