Social Media: Anxiety

Every minute half a million Instagram posts, Snapchat and tweets are posted. Social media was invented in 1997 and it was an app called six degrees and from there on the social media world has grown into such a big part of our lives. Throughout time more and more social media platforms have been created and are now running our lives. Social media is harmful to society due to the fact that it causes people to get depression and anxiety, makes people self-conscious and makes it hard to focus and sleep.

Being on social media a lot plays a huge role in the world’s depression and anxiety cases. People that use seven or more socials are three times more likely to have high-level anxiety symptoms than people that use 2 or fewer social media apps. A study showed that people with more social media accounts had three times more likely chance to get anxiety and depression, the study included 1700 people (par. 2 & 3). Two similar studies involving over 700 people showed that depressive symptoms, such as feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness and low mood swings, were linked to poor quality of internet interactions(par 3).

More time spent on social media can lead to cyberbullying, having a distorted perspective of other’s lives. Social media can make you feel happy for a little but using it frequently will increase your chance of feeling unhappy and isolated with long term use.

Magazines have made women feel self-conscious for a long time with unrealistic body expectations by using underweight models and photoshop but now social media has made it worse. Ladies on social using filters angles and lighting are now a primary concern to campaigning groups. (par. 10). A survey taken by 1500 people shows that half of 18- 34-year-olds said social media makes them feel unattractive. A study done in 2016 reported that people felt less happy and confident because they used Facebook to compare their lives to other successful careers and happy relationships, this was causing them to feel less successful.

Finally, social media makes it hard to focus and sleep. People are spending an average of 2 hours every day on social platforms and check their phones up to 28 times a day. When you hang out with your friends you tend to spend more time trying to get the perfect picture or video to show your followers, instead of focusing on what’s happening around you, so you miss out on the moment. We all use our phones before we go to bed but doing so actually messes with our sleep schedule. Dr. Bono states that our brain releases a chemical called melatonin telling our body it’s time for bed, but the light of our phones stops it from releasing making it hard to fall asleep.

Also seeing exciting things on your feed gets your brain on high alert making it difficult to calm down. If you set a routine of staying off your phone for 40 minutes before bed, it will help you fall asleep.

Social media is slowly harming society. It may seem fun for a little bit as you get addicted it can affect your mental and emotional health. Using filters and lighting makes people feel less about themselves. The light from your cell phones stops important chemicals from releasing and stalking others on social media to see their seemingly perfect lives is causing people to get depression and anxiety. People need to realize the long term consequences and stop depending on an app for everything.

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