How to Minimize the Negative Effects of Technology and Social Media?

Social media has serious effects on people, but mostly on teenagers. There are positive and negative aspects of social media, and teenagers are more likely to be affected by the negativities of social media. The parenting website (raisingchildren.net.au) states that adolescence is a time of significant growth and development inside the teenage brain. Therefore, the rate of usage of technology and social media become a significant issue during the time of growth in their brains. Even though social media and technology make human life easier and become the cornerstone of modern communication, they can also become a reason for serious psychological effects such as addiction to social media and the obsession of beauty standards in social media. From a mental health perspective, addiction to social media has an impact on teenagers’ real-life relationships and academic achievements. Most of the teenagers forget the value of their time and they spend it irresponsibly. Social media can be seriously distracting and may become the biggest reason for wasting time. The time wasted may cause academic problems such as not working hard because of the distraction and even laziness. One of the social media’s negative aspects is that everyone has easy access to social media. Therefore, it is very likely that it can set bad examples for young people. Fear-of-missing-out (FOMO) can be shown as an example of these negative aspects, which refers to feelings of anxiety that arise from the realization that you may be missing out on rewarding experiences that others are having. As the Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2018 states; “FOMO can be identified as an intra-personal trait that drives people to stay up to date of what other people are doing, among others on social media platforms.” Therefore, FOMO can be shown as an example of the serious psychological effects of social media and the result of the addiction to social media. Additionally, the obsession with beauty standards in social media is on the rise in the teenage world. According to the study done by the beauty company; Dove in 2014, women between the ages of 18 and 64 wrote 5 million disparaging tweets about beauty, most of which were about themselves. This explains that the portrayal of women on social media is unrealistic. These unrealistic beauty examples in social media create the problem of the obsession with beauty standards in social media. The time that teenagers spend with technology and social media should be in control by their parents to avoid the serious psychological effects of social media and negative aspects of the technology. Then, the negative aspects of technology and social media can be minimized.