Analysis: Why You Should Limit Your Time On Social Media
Social Media has been known to connect people all around the world. Nowadays, media is part of our daily lives, from the moment we wake up all the way to when we go to sleep. What people don’t know is that being so dependent on social media is affecting our mental health.
This article by Frances Bridges describes the impact social media is having on our mental health. “It has long been hypothesized that social media is having a negative impact on mental health and stress,” Bridges said. “But several studies over the past couple of years have recently proved it.” Also, they provide the reader with five possible consequences on how spending too much time on social media can affect your health. These consequences are: stress, mood, anxiety, depression and sleep.
I’ve always been the type of person to be very cautious when it comes to using my phone. Whenever I get a chance I try take a moment to detach myself from social media but, like anyone nowadays, media has taken a huge part of or daily routines and it’s hard to detach ourselves from that.
As a 21 year old student, I can safely say that I’ve experienced anxiety, stress, some type of sudden mood change, a small portion of depression and obviously lack of sleep. As I read this article, I realized the huge impact social media might be having on my life and how it might be affecting my mental health. But to be completely honest, I wanted to test if this was true so I conducted a small study of my own. Every night before going to bed, I would usually check my social media for around 15 minutes and then attempt to go to sleep but, it would always take a long time for me to actually fall asleep. For about two days I didn't check social media before going to bed and falling asleep was much easier than before.
After reading this article, I started to realize that social media is a great tool but it has to be used moderately. Moderation in life is key, too much of something is never good. According to the article, about 40% of the world’s population uses social media around 61 minutes per day. As an active user of social media, I understand how difficult it is to lose track of time but we shouldn’t have to sacrifize our mental health because of social media. if there’s a way we can stop social media from having a negative impact on our mental health it is our responsibility to find it.
Link to article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/francesbridges/2018/08/30/why-you-should-limit-your-time-on-social-media/#268879d69146
