Essay about Relationship between Social Media and Mental Health

Social Media is an outlet for new connections to be made across the planet, whether that be meeting a friend, watching a sports game, or sharing information with the people around you. Social Media has become a very convenient place for humans to share and learn new information, but it has also become just the opposite at the same time. It’s no coincidence human attention spans are shrinking, suicide and depression rates have increased dramatically, cyberbullying and misread information are at the forefront of every major confusion in America these days. Social Media's goal was never to do harm, their goal was to find a way to connect the people on a global scale and create special connections, but corporations and the money makers had other ideas. Despite the massive increase in terms of interaction among Social Media users across the globe, the negatives including addiction and harmful mental effects outweigh the positive. 

Social Media started as a harmless way to bring together ideas, pictures, people and present them to others across the planet. As fantastic of an idea that was, and is to this day, it never could have been that simple, that modern-day humans could interact with one another, share stories, pictures, and opinions with no harm done. What Social Media started as is not what it has become. Current day social media has become an outlet for fake news, putting down others, and frightening enough, as Steven Pinker writes, “ the constant arrival of information packets can be distracting or addictive, especially to people with attention deficit disorder.” ( Mind Over Mass Media)  Not only is addiction an issue, but it’s also an issue that can be easily manipulated, and companies willing to track searches and patterns to keep a user on the platform to increase the addiction, increase the chances of depression, and increase the chances they see something fake or misleading on the platform. Not only are the platforms themselves putting a negative outlook on society as a whole, but the people themselves have been reshaped as a direct result of Social Media. Despite how negative Social Media can be, instant access to information ranging from any topic you could possibly imagine has its advantages, while at the same time it may have its disadvantages. Instant access to information or quick videos to keep you hooked have significantly lowered the average Social Media users attention span, 10 years ago reading a couple of pages of a good story was no problem, but in today’s world, reading more than 1 to some feels like a century of work to create the motivation to keep reading without some form of excitement to keep them entertained as Steven Pinker alludes to in Mind Over Mass Media where he claims “Knowledge is increasing exponentially; human brainpower and waking hours are not.” ( Mind Over Mass Media) In this case, Pinker is informing readers that when he says Knowledge is increasing exponentially he is referring to the quick and easy access to information which makes research and learning very efficient, therefore promoting laziness. When something isn’t given to a user in a blink, users become restless and uneasy, and as this laziness spreads and spreads, patience will be a term forgotten sooner or later. Social Media has plenty of positives and plenty of negatives, positives that will benefit America and the rest of the planet for centuries, and negatives that will tear down that society person to person. Depression, suicide, addiction, cyberbullying, and laziness will only rise, not decline, as Social Media continues to prosper, and the question is, what are we going to do about it?