I am not someone who feels strongly about many things. I tend to do my best to keep to myself and have peace with the things that I cannot control. But lately, I have been increasingly frustrated with the harm that social media does to young children and teenagers.
The grasp that social media and other online platforms have on this generation is truly terrifying. The emotional damage that social media causes everyday is, in my eyes, a pandemic. So many people put their self worth in the hands of strangers that like their social media posts.
The reality is, social media and technology are not going away. I know that and I would hope that everyone else knows that. However, hat does not mean that the system should not be critiqued and criticized. Social media needs to be limited and it needs to be monitored from our youth as much as possible.
Some of the earliest memories I have are spent staring at the screen of my family’s old computer. For as long as I can remember, I have loved watching videos. Ranging from my favorite music to comedy skits, I would spend hours browsing content. This exposure to the black hole that is the internet led to me discovering some things that I probably shouldn’t have been seeing at six or seven years old. Whether that be violence, profanity, sexual and drug references, browsing the internet always seemed to lead from one thing to the other. It could take me a matter of three clicks to go from the Annoying Orange videos I used to watch to something like this. And granted, this was during the time before social media became prominent and before every five-year-old kid had their own smartphone.
What this did was expose me to a bunch of things that were way too much for me to handle when I was growing up. It affected the way I thought about things, how I behaved, and the way I interacted with my peers. And for me, it felt like I was trying to grow up and act like an adult way too young.
Once I hit my early high school years, my memory of the things I was exposed to began to fade and I began to mature a bit more. But for the longest time, what I saw on the internet was what I emulated, internally and externally.
Why is any of that important? I know that my experience is not one I share alone. Since the beginning of the internet, young kids have had access to a ton of things they didn’t need access to.
What’s different in today’s world than the one I experienced is that exposure and access to explicit content is at an all time high. Whether it be platforms like Tiktok, Snapchat, or Instagram, more and more young children are joining online platforms every year. There is a specific problem in the amount of content that is related to sex, violence, and other topics that I can’t explicitly mention in a student newspaper.
The more exposure that kids have to this kind of content, the more likely they are to want to replicate it and try the things they see. This leads to a giant rabbit hole of getting into dangerous situations. While I may be getting ahead of myself, far too many times I have seen this happen to my own peers and in the younger generations as well. What we are exposed to at a young age is often what we surround ourselves around.
Exposure to overly mature content is not the only problem that I have with social media. While sometimes it is looked at as a joke, cyberbullying is a serious problem that has a terrible effect on mental health. In a study done by the US National Library of Medicine, it was found that “children who are bullied are more likely to experience symptoms of mental health disorders, such as depression and anxiety. Cyberbullying victims report self-injurious behavior, suicidal ideation, and exhibit suicidal behaviors.”
Social media is the root of cyberbullying and is the root of a lot of recent mental health problems that have developed around the world.
Social media creates all of this pressure to look and act a certain way. I know I am not alone when I say that I have put way too much stock into the amount of likes I get on a post, or what people think about me.
So how are we supposed to solve this grande problem? The honest truth is, there is no solution. The internet isn’t going away, social media isn’t going away, and technology certainly isn’t going to go away. The only solution I could offer are the following:
Remember that your worth is more than what strangers on the internet may perceive you to be. Put down your phone and interact with the world around you. Play a board game with your family, draw a picture of your cat or dog, go for a walk, the options are endless.
Maybe you could take a moment to reflect on how social media has affected either you or someone you care about.
Look, I use social media just as much as the next person. It is a primary way for me to communicate with my friends and family and stay in the loop with what is going on around me.
With that, recently I have tried to take the time to reflect on how social media has harmed me and the people around me. One of the important things I have tried to remind myself is that the beauty of this world is only seen when you first-handedly interact with it.
Your phone will still be there at the end of the day. Your social media accounts will still be there. It is perfectly okay for you to take a deep breath, and understand that there is so much more to life than what we see behind the screen.