Essay on Is Social Media Toxic for Teens?

It's that deep breath you take before picking up your pencil to take a test, it's that pit you feel in your stomach when you get second place at your basketball tournament, it’s that weight that you carry around with you, even on your best days. The pressure of being perfect, something almost unavoidable. The feeling of being less than the standards you set for yourself, and the exception of the world around you. And social media is a perfect environment for this mentality to thrive. With a new trend lurking around the corner every time you pick up your phone, it can feel like a never ending cycle of jealousy, bitterness, and a need to invest. And just like trends, there is always some new diet to try, or a new way your body should look. All of this to try to fit a new standard that has been set by a broken society. Social media is an amazing tool that has helped millions of people around the world. But is this pathway to the wonders of the world, actually promoting a toxic perfection based, and unhealthy view of reality to young and impressionable children? 

The average adult spends about 3 hours a day on their phone. The average teen, spends over 9 hours a day on their phone. 24 hours in a day, 8 of which should be spent sleeping, around 7 at school, 1 getting exercise, 1 studying, 2 eating. That leaves 5 hours left, 5 hours that should be spent with friends, family, pets. Instead this time spent scrolling through hundreds of instagram posts. This is the world we know, a world online. But many people forget this is a world of photoshop, plastered on smiles, and posed bodies. According to Jasmine Fardouly, a postdoctoral researcher at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. “People are comparing their appearance to people in Instagram images, or whatever platform they're on, and they often judge themselves to be worse off”. And these fake and unrealistic photos online also couldn’t come at a worse time. “In addition to providing young people with a window through which they can view missed experiences, social media puts a distorted lens on appearances and reality. Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat increase the likelihood of seeing unrealistic, filtered photos at a time when teen bodies are changing (Mclean Hospital).” Pictures you see online are a view into a person's life through the eyes they want you to see it with, not the way it really looks. 

This idea of being perfect has been drilled into our brains since the day we were born, it is not something new, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise. We tell kids that they need to find their one thing, their passion, they need to be perfect at it, they need to win. We tell teenagers that their success can be measured by the opinions of teachers that barely know them, or a test that may or may not get them into college. We tell young adults they need to have a family to be successful, get married, have kids, and have a job. Our society is teaching us to measure our success by comparing ourselves to others . Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” Generally speaking, this quote tells us that constantly comparing yourself to others will take all the joy out of your own life. “The current generation of 7-12 grade students has the highest rates of depression and anxiety because of their desire to achieve perfection. The habitual need to label everything as a failure or success only further perpetuates perfectionism(Kracht).” And after going to school all day where your success is literally being scored, teens come home and get on social media. Just another place where you set new unrealistic standards for yourself to achieve, whether you want to or not. Whether it's a new car you want to buy, a new record amount of comments on a post you want to get, or a new number on a scale you want to see appear before your first trip to the pool. 

But why do we keep using social media if it promotes these harmful standards for our life?  A study done by McLean Hospital explained it like this, social media is so attractive to us as a society because it releases dopamine. We as humans operate on a reward system, we thrive off recognition from others. And social media gives us the perfect oprountiy to acchevie both of these things. Imagine a slot machine, if before playing the game you were told you were never going to get any money, you would never play. But the idea of a theoretical future reward keeps you at bay of the machine. The same concept is applied to social media sites. One does not know how many likes a picture will get, who will ‘like’ the picture, and when the picture will receive likes. In an attempt to boost self-esteem and grab on to a feeling of belonging in society, people, especially young teens will often post with the deeper psychological desire of receiving positive feedback. But this is dangerous. Tying your self worth to an amount of likes on a post compared to your friends prompts the idea that self worth comes from others. 

We live in a divided world, we have learned to avoid people who have a different view of the world than us, instead of respecting their difference, instead of remembering how many more things unite us than divide us. We associate ourselves with people like us because those people are more likely to agree with us, and give us the approval we want. “Users on social media tend to self-isolate in some respects, unfriending and unfollowing sources who say things they don’t agree with and seeking out people who do agree with them. This limits our ability to remain open minded to new ideas, causes us to demonize people we don’t agree with, and in some cases, allows us to continue believing untruths (Alton)” . By having the power to unfollow, unlike, and scroll past posts you don’t agree with, or people who have wronged you, we are promoting an unhealthy psychological tool of avoidance. The idea that by not talking about something or by doing a certain adverse action to undo what has been done, we can solve a problem. And young children and teens are still trying to establish their place in the world and learn what views and values they relate to, they are trying to find themselves. But with 1,000s of online users telling them who is in and who is out, who to support, and who to be, they learn to grow up trusting the opinions of others before listening to their own. 

From the filters on instagram pictures, to the photoshopped bodys, from understanding the attraction of social media, to attaching your self worth to the amount of likes on a post, and even using social media as a tool for avoiding the people and problems you face in your everyday life. Kids as young as 4 years old are walking into this online world. Not knowing who they are, none of the less who they want to be, but seeing anything and everything telling them what to do, what to believe, and what to think. So the answer is yes, yes social media is promoting a toxic perfection based, and unhealthy view of reality to young and impressionable children. Social media can be a very good thing, and there is a good reason that it is so popular worldwide. But social media is dangerous. With all the wonderful things social media has given us access to, it has also opened a door to photoshop, likes on pictures, and unrealistic body standards. And now that that door has been opened, it will be hard to close.