The Effects and Dangers Of Social Media

The current teenage generation are in a cloud of confusion with regards to the way they compose themselves on social media and the things they will do to grow as a profile and not a person. Social media is slowly but surely taking over people’s mental health, memory, attention span, sleep pattern and human connection and everyone is so wrapped up on how they come across online rather than as a human being. The current generation are already deep in the waters of the social media but who knows what the future will bring with the way technology is rapidly growing and the availability of Social Media on mobiles.

One of the most severe dangers of Social Media is the effect it has on people’s mental state and self-esteem. Social media has literally been proven to cause unhappiness and develop mental health issues including anxiety and depression especially with the amount of time people spend on it making themselves sick over there profile.

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In March, a survey that 1,000 people participated in resulted in 41% of them deciding to quit social media for good after discovering the severity of Social Media on their mental state, which was causing them to have intense depression and anxiety. Also Ben Jacobs, a DJ who’s has over 5,000 Twitter followers, decided to go on a hiatus from the social platform back in 2016 and stated that he found it extremely beneficial to his mental state. He stated that “Twitter did indeed make me feel anxious from time to time as it slowly drained on me I was concerning myself with the feelings of the thousands of strangers I followed, while they didn’t necessarily know who I was.

Since my Twitter hiatus, I have had a clearer head with plenty of time to devote to other things such as waking up in a cold sweat at 3am and reading a book instead.” Now although that is a lengthy statement from Jacobs, it clearly shows how beneficial a break from the wonderland of Social Media can really be for everyone.

Moving on to another factor that social media effects, human connection. As human beings, it’s crucial for us to be able to communicate to one another and share connections with one another in person, not behind a glass screen. It’s almost impossible to keep human connection running with social media as we’re not connecting as humans, were connecting with our digital identities rather than in person. Stina Sanders, a former model who has over 107,000 Instagram followers , explained to the independent how social media sometimes makes her feel like she’s being left out. “I know from my experience I can get paranoid when I see my friends photos from a party I didn’t go to, and this, in turn, can make me feel quite lonely and anxious,” she explained to the Independent. Now as well as this affecting human connection, this gives another insight of someone whose mental state has been affected in a bad way due to social media’s evil powers.

Another massive issues due to social media, is people's memory being massively affected by it. It can be a great thing to look back fondly on memories and relive fun times, however, it can also distort the way in which you remember certain incidents from your life. So many people spend so much time trying to get the perfect picture for Instagram and Facebook, that they don’t actually experience that event with their own eyes and don’t fully take in that night. “If we direct all our attention towards capturing the best shots for our social media followers to admire, less will be available to enjoy other aspects of the experience in real time. Spending too much time on our phones will detract from those other aspects of the experience, undermining the happiness we could be gleaning from them.” Stated Dr Bono. This gives a great overall look on how damaging social media is and how much it takes over people, you can’t possibly fully enjoy a night out if your main concern is what angle your picture is taken from and how good you look, it’s about time people gave themselves a break from this craze.

A really important thing for people to get enough of is sleep, but most people don’t get enough sleep at all because there spending all their time on their phones. Before going to bed most people like a scroll through Facebook or Instagram and this making it even harder to doze off. “Getting worked up with anxiety or envy from what we see on social media keeps the brain on high alert, preventing us from falling asleep. Plus the light from our phones just inches from our face can suppress the release of melatonin, a hormone that helps us actually feel tired.” How can we possibly expect to get a good night’s sleep when before we; ‘hit the hay' spend all of our time on our phones, working ourselves up about how much better someone looks than yourself, it’s simply insane and can’t be justified. But we humans still decide to do it, repeatedly, and most likely aren’t planning on stopping. But there’s ways to refrain wasting your time and actually getting a sleep, you could set yourself a strict rule of not going on your phone at least forty minutes before you intend on going to sleep, which will allow the brain to cool down and relax, resulting in a greater quality sleep.

My final point I would like to make is that social media is rapidly damaging peoples attention span which is also affecting human connection massively. You don’t just have to worry about your brain going to mush thanks to social media, it’s the extent to which your brain can hold a level or concentration while you are awake, and personally I think this targets people going through education the most as they need their attention to focus on the lecturer or teacher. Although our phones are astonishing and filled with great information that is readily available at our fingertips, it’s actually terrifying to think how easily distracted people have become all because of Social Media and the use of phones. “Social media has provided a means of constantly giving into the temptation of instant, easy-access entertainment,” stated Dr Bono. Every day try and hold back yourself from checking your phone so often and cut down the amount you check it every day step by step, which will test your will power and give you the power to overcome your addiction to social media and the dangerous online world.

To bring this tragic issue to an end, my purpose was to try to make you aware of how damaging social media can be and how using it too often has severe damaging effects on people’s sleep pattern, attention span and of course their mental health. People need to focus on loving themselves and not improving their online personas as that is not the be all and end all of the world, how you compose yourself in real life is what counts and not your online status. But the choice is yours to make.