Teens Mental Health With Social Media

Social media has become a huge part of our daily life, and incredibly well for teenagers. Due to the rise of social media, it has brought both positive and negative effects of social media on the lives of teenagers. On the more upper hand, it has given teens a platform to connect with friends and new people, share experiences and a way to express themselves.
However, on the downside, anxiety, depression and cyberbullying comes with social media as well.
When starting on social media as a teenager, or a pre-teen, it is super easy to get caught up on the bad effects of social media.
It’s so easy to become addicted and constantly wondering what others are up to and following up on different trends and what everyone is saying. Also, when you post your own things, it’s easy to get wrapped into how people will view it and how many likes or views it will get.

When something is so easily accessible, it’s hard to not become addicted and aimlessly scrolling through your feed until it’s suddenly one in the morning.

When being a teenager comparing yourself to others is super common and tons of people struggle with. Social media isn’t the best place to be in that case. There are people using beauty filters and are skinnier than others, people are constantly worrying about how they are needed to look.

Because of this I have known tons of people who have looked in the mirror and wanting to change certain things about themselves.

Whether that be something about their face, if they have too many pimples or fuzz, double chin etc.

Not only is comparing your faces to others but your body as well. Even if the person who made a post isn’t necessarily talking about body image, there will still be people comparing themselves due to the damage of social media.

Due to social media, people have become so aware of their bodies and beginning to critique it in everyway possible. While also continuing to go onto their apps and comparing every single thing.

People may also feel the need to exercise to extreme extents in order to feel accomplished in hopes to ‘fit’ standards, when there shouldn’t be any at all. Once on social media it is so easy to feel the need to wonder how to look a certain and how to fix your body quickly.

This causes for people to go to extreme extents of excercising as well as watching what they eat, whether it be only health foods or go a few days without.

Even if you feel like you want something a little unhealthy, you may immediately feel the need to look for something different. Or, you may pick the unhealthier snack and the guilt of it may creep up.

Every available time, it seems to be spent on social media. When we’re in an awkward position we pull out our phones, when we’re eating, we’ll take out our phones. Most times, we bring up social media when we wake up and before we go to bed.

This causes for people to start our day feeling they aren’t enough or doing enough and ending our day feeling like we haven’t accomplished enough.

We focus so much of our time towards these apps instead of looking around us. People are constantly comparing and having different opinions and thoughts because of social media.