The Negativity of Social Media -Hope Reed

Hope Reed 

13 December 2015 

The Negativity of Social Media 

Nine hours. Nine hours of an average teenager's day is spent on social media, whether it be texting, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, anything that is at the tips of a teen's fingers on their smart phones (Wallace 1). Let me do the math for you. Over one-third of a teenager's day is spent on social media. That's more hours than the average teenager gets of sleep on a daily basis. If our generation keeps these statistics rolling, then we will spend years of our lives looking at a screen. If that doesn't hit you hard, then I don't know what will.  Is that really how we want to spend a huge portion of our lives?  We could be doing so much more with this time we waste scrolling through endless pictures and posts.  Now you may be wondering if I'm suggesting that we, as a generation, should abandon technology all together. No, that's not what I'm saying; for technology can be used for both good and bad.  Technology can inform or deceive; it can encourage or criticize; it can be used for love or for hate. What I'm saying is that our generation needs to grasp the concept of using technology for the positive. We also need to balance our time. Sure, we can use our phones on a daily basis, but when it becomes an addiction and simply a time filler for whenever we're bored, it becomes unhealthy. Our addiction to texting and social media has grown into a monster, stealing away our time, sleep, and energy and leading to mental, physical, and social downfalls in society. 

 Without phones in a teen's sight, they tend to feel anxious, and some even have panic attacks. This is a serious sign of addiction. Cell phones addicts show similar outlooks and hormones of that of a drug addict, and both addictions trigger the same hormones inside a person's brain (Kowalski). A teenage boy admits to Kelly Wallace in an interview, "I have never done drugs, but I can say that this social media is... addictive. It feels like I have to do it, and whenever I'm bored I just automatically go to my app on my phone and scroll, scroll..."  Unfortunately, I think to some extent, this is true for all of us. We're all mentally captivated by this glowing screen, so captivated that, without even thinking, we spend hours and hours in solitude just staring at our phones. When we isolate ourselves with our phones, we block out everyone else, which tends to make us feel very lonely. Scientists are beginning to conduct experiments that suggest spending a superfluous amount of time on online or on our smart phones leads to depression. But that's not the only factor about technology that can lead to depression. Social media tends to lower pre-teen and teenagers' self esteem. This is typically found more in girls than boys, but some boys feel the same way. Young girls are following many beautiful celebrities and as a result looking down on themselves. Many comments on the celebrity's photos include, "can I please be you" or "why can't I have this body."   

Emily Hales says, "Media in particular has come under scrutiny as the entertainment industry becomes more pervasive. A study from the National Institutes of Health found that media portrayals of body image and the 'ideal' life create unrealistic expectations for teenagers, disrupting their 'normal identity development' and leading to depression."  

But teenagers aren't just comparing themselves to celebrities; they are also comparing themselves to their friends based on their followers and the number of likes on a photo. Just a few days ago I heard one of my classmates exclaim, "Oh gosh, she's one of them! She really follows more people than people follow her?" I was honestly shocked when I heard this. Society has become so judgmental in social media.  It's disturbing that people label each other solely on their follower count. It's judgmental comments like that, and cyber bullying as well, that account for the spike in depression and anxiety among teenagers in the past decade. Behind a screen, people are more brave; they can say what they want without facing them in person. This is especially dangerous, because people have and will say whatever they want over social media to put another human down to make them feel better about themselves.  The world of social media can destroy relationships with other people, as well as your relationship with yourself with just a click of a button. Technology is truly being used to damage people mentally-whether it be addiction or self esteem. Don't let someone label who you are based on how you display yourself on the media, and don't put yourself down looking at how other people display themselves on the internet. If it causes that much trouble, then just delete the apps! Social media shouldn't be what defines people. 

So, we can see how technology can mentally hurt people, but believe it or not, it can also physically harm you. Studies have shown that radioactive waves are actually emitted from many of our cell phones while we are just holding them. This means that while we talk on the phone, or merely have it close to our heads, the radiation produces glucose inside of your brain. But scientists are not completely sure yet if there are long-term impacts on people's health that can cause terminal illnesses, such as cancer (Ornes). Many believe cellphones can permanently damage the brain if we keep using them excessively. Technology also affects people's sleep habits. Volpi says, "Modern technology is affecting our sleep. The artificial light from TV and computer screens affects melatonin production and throws off circadian rhythms, preventing deep, restorative sleep."  Insomnia is becoming very widespread among young adults these days, and technology is the main cause in the rise of it in the past few years. Many teens these days stay up playing video games, surfing the internet, or texting people. The average teenager needs nine and a quarter hours of sleep, but the average teenage American only receives only 6 hours. "Today's generation can feed its insomnia in any number of electronic ways, especially texting, making winding down for... sleep... that more difficult. (Jensen 93)." Sleep is essential for all people, and more importantly teenagers. Technology is a major distraction in getting to bed at a decent time, especially with their phone in sight. There's an easy solution to this problem though: put the phone down and out of sight.  

 The biggest negative impact that social media and technology has made on society is the social impacts it's had in our world. Humanity is losing sight of how real relationships really work. We rarely talk face to face anymore; it's all over social media and through texting. This is creating a significant deficit of empathy in our society.  I look around at school in the hallways, in restaurants, in stores, in my home--everywhere, and all I see is people staring at their phones. Many times I get together with people, and they're on their phones the whole time. I've even seen people on dates where one or even both of them are on their phones.  Is humanity really that out of touch with each other?  I don’t know about you, but I value a good face-to-face conversation with someone in person a lot more than a conversation over text. We can't see people's facial gestures or their body language over text, which means texting can easily be misunderstood. I know I've misunderstood texts many times, and I've been misunderstood by other people too. Face-to-face conversations are so much more effective than texting, and they're a lot more personal too. Our generation has become so anti-social. Ironic isn't it? It's called "social media", but it makes so many of us anti-social, because we're constantly refreshing our feeds, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, trying to see what's new. We're completely oblivious to the outside world, ignoring people that love us the most.  

Teenagers today are completely addicted to technology. We feel the need to document every single part of our lives. We try to portray our lives perfectly. We communicate solely through texts. We compare ours pictures to other people's pictures. It's all so fake. We obviously aren't going to post our troubles in life on the media or ugly pictures of ourselves. So do not measure your self-worth based on everyone else's lives displayed on their social media account; that's like comparing your behind the scenes to someone's highlight reels. If we just raised our heads from looking down at our screens, we could see the world's beauty for what it really is. The most beautiful things in life aren't things that you can get from your phone. As the popular inspirational rapper, Prince Ea, says, "Take control or be controlled, make a decision. Me? No longer do I want to spoil a precious moment by recording it with a phone. I'm just gonna keep them... I'm so tired of  performing in the pageantry of vanity and conforming to this accepted form of digital insanity." See, we're focusing on the world of media so much, that it seems as if we spend more time in the media world rather than reality. I'm guilty of this too. We just need to look up, stop using up all our time on our phones, and use that time for something that actually means something to us--something that can leave a mark on the world, or at least someone else's world. Stop letting technology define our generation, for technology does not reflect who we really are.   

Works Cited 

Can We Auto-Correct Humanity? Dir. Joseph Lombardi. Perf. Prince Ea. Can We Auto-Correct Humanity? N.p., 29 Sept. 2014. Web. 10 Dec. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRl8EIhrQjQ>. 

Hales, Emily. "Understanding and Responding to the Increase in Teen Depression." Editorial. Descret News, 21 July 2014. Web. 10 Dec. 2015. <http://national.deseretnews.com/article/1947/understanding-and-responding-to-the-increase-in-teen-depression.html>. 

Jensen, Frances E., and Amy Ellis. Nutt. The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist's Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print. 

Ornes, Stephen. "Cell Phones on the Brain." Editorial. Https://student.societyforscience.org/article/cell-phones-brain. Science News for Students, 7 Apr. 2011. Web. 10 Dec. 2015. <https://student.societyforscience.org/article/cell-phones-brain>. 

Ornes, Stephen. "Watch Out: Cell Phones Can Be Addictive." Editorial. Science News for Students, 17 Sept. 2014. Web. 10 Dec. 2015. <https://student.societyforscience.org/article/watch-out-cell-phones-can-be-addictive>. 

Volpi, David, M.D. "Heavy Technology Use Linked to Fatigue, Stress and Depression in Young Adults." Editorial. Huffington Post, 2 Aug. 2012. Web. 10 Dec. 2015. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-volpi-md-pc-facs/technology-depression_b_1723625.html>. 

Wallace, Kelly. "Teens Spend a 'mind-boggling' 9 Hours a Day Using Media, Report Says." CNN (2015): n. pag. 3 Nov. 2015. Web. 10 Dec. 2015. <http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/03/health/teens-tweens-media-screen-use-report/>.