Newsbeat Post 2

Social networking has a huge impact on our world today, it is a part of our everyday lives. Social media effects user’s mental health and they don’t fully understand how this is taking a toll on our society. Out of all the social media platforms, Instagram was found to have the most negative effects on mental health. People who use this social networking platform post pictures for likes and more followers. When you post a picture, you are constantly checking to see how many likes you receive and comparing your likes to other people you follow. If you aren’t obsessing over your likes, you are obsessing over how many followers you have. This popular photo sharing platform impacts people’s sleep, body image, increases bullying, and fear of missing out “FOMO”. These negative effects lead to depression, anxiety, and loneliness for the platform users. Social media users are constantly trying to keep up with false representation of reality. Users will see someone completely photoshopped with a perfect body and think its real. Looking at this photoshopped body women automatically start comparing it to their own. Social media continuously has unrealistic exceptions of reality from Instagram influencers. Most of these influencers have either had surgery to completely change their bodies, photoshopped their picture, or has done both. Women start to think that they have to look like this to be liked or to get the followers that they want. This is teaching young girls and women that you have to alter yourself to look “perfect”. Social media is changing the way women look at themselves in our society, women are starting to appreciate their natural bodies less which is causing mental health issues. It is important to understand how these photo sharing platforms our changing the way we think about ourselves and others. Photo sharing platforms have positive effects to them, but the negative ones out way the good.