How social media affects Health

Social media is online platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and various other websites. These platforms allow users to create, share and interact with each other’s content, sites like Facebook allow users to create “Groups” and “Pages”. This sounds good, however, social media can have dark repercussions on the users of the sites. For example, social media can be a very addicting thing to do, this can cause people to forget to do more important stuff (like studying, doing chores).

Instagram, while at first it may look innocent, promotes harmful standards for its users. Instagram pushes unhealthy content to young teenagers that use their platform. This might cause teenagers to have a feeling of body dysmorphia, because they'll see edited photos of "ideal" body types. Having these feelings towards their bodies might make them do dangerous activities to achieve the unrealistic body type. For example, they might stop eating or forcefully throwing up after meals which leads to the eating disorder, Bulimia.

Yeah, but what's the statistics backing these claims?

Statistics show that the daily time spent on social media is 151 minutes (2 hours and 31 minutes) [Credit: Statista]. Snapchat, another platform that lots of teenagers use has had a significant gain of active users in the past couple of years, going from just 46 users in the first quarter of 2014, to 406 active users in the third quarter of 2023 [Credit: Statista]. TikTok, another platform that primarily teenagers use had counted 1,179 million users. TikTok also sometimes promotes harmful content that causes teenagers to do bad things.

For example, the "KIA challenge" and "Nyquil Chicken". The KIA challenge was a challenge where you would go around, break into a KIA branded car, rip off the steering column and the ignition, grab a USB, shove it over where the ignition normally went, and start the car. This worked because some models of KIA cars didn't have the proper security measures to ensure that the person starting the car actually had the key. Nyquil Chicken was another TikTok trend that basically meant grabbing chicken and covering it with Nyquil (Flu & Cold medicine).

What are the worst platforms that are addicting?

Personally, the worst platform for me was Twitter. It promoted hateful content and promised "freedom of speech". Instead of providing freedom of speech, it mostly only gave voices to the conservatives of the site and any liberal content was either deleted by moderators, shadow banned (despite the fact that Elon claimed it was removed), or the owner got suspended. For example, the account that was used to spread hate against transgender people was reinstated multiple times after Elon Musk took over.

However, most teenagers are using platforms like Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok. As mentioned previously, both Instagram and TikTok can be very harmful to a teenager's developing mind, but what about Snapchat? Snapchat can also be very harmful to young teenagers, just like other platforms, it has a built-in friends list. It's main focus is on photos (snaps) and filters, as mentioned previously, filters can be dangerous to young teenagers minds as it skews what they think they should look like.

Another problem Snapchat has, is the ability to friend anybody, this could lead to teenagers getting scammed or explict imagery traded and then later blackmailed by the "attacker", for example a 17 year old committed suicide after sending photos to what he thought was a young teenage girl, he was later blackmailed by the "teenage girl" who was actually a scammer, and was unable to pay anymore money to stop his photos from being leaked. The three men were later extradited to the United States where they would go to court. This all happened on Instagram.

What are some downsides of the addiction?

There are tons of downsides to social media addictions. However, to begin with, I'll tell you why social media is a good thing.

Allows you to connect with family and friends
Gives you the ability to find people who like similar things
Allows you to have the opportunity to spread ideas
Can be a good thing to pass the time when bored

Now that I've talked about the positives, let's talk about the negatives (warning, there's a lot more negatives than positives).

low self-esteem, which may be prompted by incorrect perceptions that others’ lives are “better” than yours
increased isolation and loneliness
anxiety or depression
onset of social anxiety disorder
a fear of missing out (FOMO), which can lead to even more social media usage
disrupted sleep patterns, especially if you use social media right before bedtime
decreased physical activity, which may affect your overall health
poor grades or work performance
ignoring the relationships in your “real” life
reduced ability to empathize with others

[Credit: Healthline]

How to determine if someone has an addiction

As you can see from these couple of examples, social media networking can have big repercussions. Social media is also very addicting, some possible ways that you can detect if someone has an addiction:

Do they spend a lot of time thinking about social media or planning to use social media?
Do they feel urges to use social media more and more?
Do they use social media to forget about personal problems?
Do they often try to reduce use of social media without success?
Do they become restless or troubled if unable to use social media?
Do they use social media so much that it has had a negative impact on their job or studies?

[Credit: AddictionCenter]

How can I get rid of an addiction?

There are numerous ways to get rid of a social media addiction, such as, cutting down your time on platforms, going outside more often, even deleting the apps can help, and deactivating accounts. Personally, all I needed to do to stop having an addiction towards Twitter was to delete the apps from my devices, ensure two factor authentication is setup (to make it more annoying to login), and just logout. It was hard but after a while, I had finally left Twitter. After I left, I felt way better and had even more focus than I did previously. You may end up feeling the same way when you try to stop as well. What is being done to prevent issues in the future?

Some social media networks are introducing AI-based moderation systems that automatically remove content or mark it as harmful if it is deemed harmful towards users. Many parents are adding screen time systems on their teenager's devices to limit the amount of time on social media. This can reduce the amount of harmful content that their children see. Another way to prevent this, if you're a parent, is to try and find things to keep your children occupied, like chores or walking the dog (if you have one). It should be noted that, in my opinion, people should still be allowed on social media but should have limited time on it.

References

(No date) Cornell health self-induced vomiting. Available at: https://health.cornell.edu/sites/health/files/pdf-library/self-induced-vomiting.pdf (Accessed: 29 November 2023).

Barr, L. (2023) Parents of teenager who died by suicide after sextortion scam urge ‘tough’ conversations with children, ABC News. Available at: https://abcnews.go.com/US/parents-teenager-died-by-suicide-after-sextortion-scam-urge/story?id=99047305 (Accessed: 30 November 2023).

Cherney, K. (2020) Social Media Addiction: What it is and what to do about it, Healthline. Available at: https://www.healthline.com/health/social-media-addiction (Accessed: 30 November 2023).

Dixon, S.J. (no date) Topic: Social media, Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/topics/1164/social-networks/#topicOverview (Accessed: 30 November 2023).

The relationship between social media and body dysmorphia: D’amore (2023) D\’Amore Mental Health. Available at: https://damorementalhealth.com/social-media-and-body-dysmorphia (Accessed: 30 November 2023).

Social Media Addiction (2023) Addiction Center. Available at: https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/social-media-addiction (Accessed: 30 November 2023).

The Statistics Portal (no date) Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/markets/424/topic/540/social-media-user-generated-content (Accessed: 30 November 2023).