The Impact of Social Media on Teenager’s Mental Health
Social media has become a part of our everyday life. For an average person, there is rarely ever a day where they don’t at least check if there is anything new happening on their favorite social network. Things happening on it may often seem better than our own “boring” lives and because of it, we would much rather be stuck reading some random person’s post about how their day went on social media than spend time doing what we should be doing, whether it be work related, school or hobbies, we just get stuck on the internet reading things that we don’t necessarily want to read. And that is the problem.
Social media is in no way a bad thing, it helps us connect with people that we cannot interact with otherwise, we can learn new things (like helpful tips, tricks, life hacks, DIYs, etc.), see some funny jokes that we can share with our friends and family… There are a lot of things correct with social media and it is hard to name them all here. However, one of the bad things that comes from social media, that people don’t usually realize at first, is how it can affect our psyche. We are spending so much time daily on the phone or on the computer looking at a bunch of posts from various people on social media, so much so that it gets into our routine. When we wake up, before we go to sleep or anywhere in between, we are locked onto our screens for hours at a time looking at social media. We have to look at social media in order to get through the day. We don’t want to accept it, but it’s the truth and something that is so important in our lives has to have some sort of impact. It does and that impact is usually negative (in some cases, however, it can be positive).
The morning is where it all begins. Every morning, an average person wakes up looking at their phone. It’s usually to see if they have any new messages, but sometimes it doesn’t stop there and before they even get out of bed they find themselves scrolling through social media, perhaps without even realizing it. The posts they see in that morning and the thoughts that come with them is what can define a person’s entire day, whether they like it or not. If a person sees someone misbehaving on an online platform (example, random user being a jerk to someone else), it can really set them off and get them in a bad mood that will last throughout the entire day. The person would like to shrug off that angry (or any other negative) feeling they had in the morning while reading the comment, but it is stuck to them and affects their mental state and impacts their behavior because it is constantly in the back of the mind of the person reminding them that people like the one in the comment section exist. That commenter could have been an internet troll who was sarcastically insulting someone, but there is no real way for the person reading it to know that.
Now, young adults and onward can create a strong mental state for themselves throughout their life and not allow these sort of thoughts to plague their minds. However, teenagers are not like that because they are young and insecure about everything around them and they let themselves fall in a bad mood because of some random person’s comment about their physical look or their opinion on something. Teenagers are also easily influenced by a lot of things they see in the online world and can create their own personality based on a certain tweet or video. They care about fitting in the society around them and they want to be cool and unique in their own way.
Parents usually think that their teenage son or daughter don’t want to hang out with them because they hate them, but that is rarely ever the case. Teenagers want to be the ones experiencing the world and it is true that they don’t want parents around them while they are doing it. In other cases where the hate towards parents is present, it may be because the kid saw a certain type of behavior from somebody else on the internet and it seems to them like it is the cool thing to do, not realizing the effects it has and the difference in situations and lives between the two teenagers.
So, what can and should a parent do about their teenage kid?
There is not much a parent can do here except always be there for their kid and help whenever they are asked. The teenager wants to fit in with everything because they want to experience everything for themselves but sometimes it is too much for their young mind and it can create a scenario where they start doubting themselves and fall into a depression. That’s where the parent needs to step in, a teenage kid will rarely talk to their parents but if it seems like they are spending a little too much time in their bed and if they are rarely going out or, in the modern world, socializing through the internet (online games and forums) then it is time for the parent to step in and ask to help their kid because there is obviously something wrong and the issue can definitely be resolved.
To conclude, social media can and does impact one’s mental state and behavior. If used too much it can lead to bigger consequences, some that may be irreversible. Be careful how you use it and, if you have a kid, be alert to what they are doing on it.
