By Lucas Wang
Over the past decade, the use of social media has become the centerpiece of people’s social lives. Similar to most novel technology, the benefits it has brought upon humankind are endless, inconceivable to those who have lived before us. Simultaneously, social media has harmed the psychological and emotional well-being of those in Generation Z. While one who does not chronically use social media may see the convenience, connections, efficiency, and entertainment on the surface, many of those who do use it will eventually fall victim to its negative impacts, especially when children 8 to 12 years old are using it for an average of 5.5 hours daily and 13 to 18 years old around 9 hours, according to a 2021 survey by Common Sense Media.
Wasting around one-third of our days to pointless scrolling is just the beginning of the harms of social media. The bigger issue is how it negatively impacts our mental state. Social media and more broadly the internet has been shown to result in less curiosity, lower self-control, more distractibility, more difficulty making friends, less emotional stability, being more difficult to care for, and inability to finish tasks. These effects were discovered in a research conducted in 2018, which examined a national random sample of 40,000 children and adolescents including comprehensive measures of screen time and other measures of psychological well-being. Among 14 to 17 year olds, those who use screens more than 7 hours a day were more than twice as likely to have been diagnosed with depression, anxiety, been treated by a mental health professional, or have taken medication for psychological or behavioral issues in the last 12 months. These issues affect adolescents more than any other age group, as it has been shown that they are highly sensitive to acceptance and rejection through social media.
Furthermore, social media offers novel stimuli to its users with the click of a button. Let us take a look at life from the perspective of our grandparents when they were our age, or even better- any of our ancestors in the past two centuries. If you are from a more privileged strata of society, school takes up a decent portion of your day. If not, then chores or work takes the place of school. Either way, you will have a few hours of free-time everyday. After being finished with your responsibilities, it’s time to…do something. The options are limited: you could get together with some friends, play outside, read, complete more work, or enjoy your hobbies. All of these activities are nowhere as stimulating as social media. In nearly all cases you would need to stop at a certain point. Reading not only requires concentration, but also you are forced to continue down the storyline, page by page. While you are able to escape to another world, you either stay in that one or return to reality. On the other hand, applications such as Youtube and especially TikTok allow you to switch the video you are walking in less than a second. Most social media platforms implement algorithms to keep its users “hooked” onto the content. Increasing user engagement means more advertisement viewership and data collection, which are the two primary sources of revenue for social media platforms. Maximizing profit is the primary goal of corporations, so they are implemented to the fullest extent. Thus, it is not a surprise that you will rarely hear about someone addicted to drawing, reading, or playing a sport while the term “social media addiction” has been used more and more frequently in the recent decade.
Social media, one of the most revolutionary products in history, fully changed the way we communicate, receive information, spread information, and interact with the world. At the same time, the convenience and uninhibited access to the world it provides causes mental health problems in our generation. Many of the problems widespread in Generation Z such as depression and anxiety can be attributed to or are at the very least exacerbated by social media use. The first step for us to fight back against the mental health crisis is to lower our social media usage, ie. Youtube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and more.
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