What is The Harmfulness of Social Networks?

The majority of people believe that social media is more beneficial than a consequence, unfortunately, social media can be very harmful to society. Technology began to rapidly advance in the 20th century from the first recognizable social media “Six Degrees” in 1997, to adding Facebook and many more social media outlets before the year 2010. A large diversity of audiences from kids to adults use social media all the time. In this day in age, social media has become a big part of our generation.

30 years ago people would interact with one another, nowadays in society people would barely look off their phones. Social Media can have a massive influence on society's personality development, time, mental health, and self-esteem.

Being your authentic true self is so rare nowadays on social media, it seems like everyone wants to hop on trends ancand do what's popular at the time. Seems like no one brings out their true selves on social media because if you're not doing what everyone else is then you won’t get the likes, comments, or follows, and if you don’t have any of that then you would be considered “irrelevant”.

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For example, VSCO is a photo app and a lot of people used it and dressed up as people in the 80s and 90s, later on, trends on TikTok became so popular to act and dance as VSCO girls/boys. Now it feels like everyone dresses up as a VSCO girl/boy in school and in public, and dresses less of themselves.

You don’t need to be popular to feel good or to feel accepted by others, because chances are you’re not being your authentic self.

Social Media is very time-consuming whether people admit it or not, regardless if it’s for positive or negative use, just depending on how it's being consumed. Running a business online is understandable why you would be always glued to your phone taking care of orders and whatnot, but the majority of teenagers would risk sleep to stay up later watching YouTube or Snapchatting. Being sleep-deprived has increased because so many people would stay up late. Lack of sleep takes a toll on your health because your body is not getting the right amount of sleep that it should be getting daily.

There's still discussion that social media is harmful to the mental health of teens and young adults. Some studies show a small portion of people can be beneficial to teens, while some others show risk and a rising rate of symptoms of anxiety, lack of self-esteem, and depression. Social media is constantly evolving and changing, but that isn’t gonna stop cyberbullying and many other issues. So many people come forward on social media, including celebrities constantly to share that they are taking a break off social media to focus on their mental health and well-being due to the hurtful comments/bullying.

Self-esteem is confidence in one's worth and abilities and social media have played a role in many people's ability to love themselves. Girls, especially teens girls who see on Instagram supermodels and think that they have to be or look like that to feel wanted. The public sees oversized clothes as a weird or unusual thing so for some young teens to see that and think you are not worth enough if you weighed this much then forcan trigger eating disorders. Social media can trigger loneliness, and envy those who really do suffer from low self-esteem.

In conclusion, social media will continue to evolve and change and it's up to us to continue to be ourselves and to manage to keep it positive because the power it has over us is dangerous and often gets unnoticed. Social media can cause national and international problems if no one addresses the issue with the harmful effects social media can do.