The Impact of Social Media on Young People

General purpose: to inform

Specific purpose: After listening to our speech, the audience will be more knowledgeable about
the effects of social media on youth, especially about the negative consequences on their lives
and mental health.

KRISTINA

Introduction

Did you know that nowadays there are more people who own a cellphone than a toothbrush?
According to the Consumer Technology Association, around 3.7 billion people own cellphones,
while only 3.5 billion own toothbrushes. Moreover, according to Forbes, more than 5 million FB
users are under the age of 10. These shocking statistics indicate that technology has taken over
us, becoming an integral and fundamental part of our lives and affecting them significantly.
Being young adults, we spend a lot of our time on social media ourselves – thus, we are eligible
to elaborate on this topic. Firstly, we will highlight how social media impact our interpersonal
relationships. Secondly, we will tackle the problem of social networking addiction. After that,
our focus will be the fake ’’reality’’ on social media. Finally, we will emphasize the correlation
between social media and mental health issues in young people.

Body

The primary reason why Facebook, Twitter and other sites were created was to facilitate
communication and connect people all over the globe easily and efficiently. The idea was to
keep in touch with our family or friends if we go abroad or if we are simply physically not
together. However, what we have today is the exact opposite of that – we make social media
accounts in order to get people to know us and become relevant. Your profile comes first –
your connections come second. For example, up to 78% of younger Americans aged 18-24 use
Snapchat, while 71% use Instagram multiple times a day, every day. This definitely alters
interpersonal relationships that we once knew – nowadays it’s not uncommon to see two
friends at a cafe using their phones respectively instead of talking to each other, or spending 15
minutes trying to take a perfect selfie for Instagram. Cyber-relationships are common too – a
lot of young couples spend more time texting than anything else, and your typical face-to-face
flirting has become almost extinct. Taking all of this into account, it is no wonder that internet
addiction disorder (IAD) has been recognized as a serious mental disorder that usually affects
millennials.
TEODORA

According to doctor Christina Gregory, IAD or iDisorder affects up to 8.2% of the general
population in America and Europe. According to some other research, the prevalence of
iDisorder is even more staggering – affecting up to 38% of the general population. A survey that
was conducted in 2011 (mind you, that was 7 years ago) shows how common social media are
among young Asians (mostly Chinese, Malay and Indian). When asked how often they used
social media, shockingly, 98% of them said they used them every single day.

What’s more, when they were confronted with the question ’’ What are the negative impacts
that you face on social networking sites?’’ 60% of the respondents admitted to having some
sort of internet addiction.
These simple statitstics speak volumes about our dependence on sites such as Twitter, FB and
Instagram. We are so deeply immersed in this virtual reality that we let it become the focal
point of everything – from our everyday conversations to news. Media outlets are full of titles
about Instagram, Twitter or Snapchat battles between celebrities – you can see a tabloid
making news out of a famous person’s tweet almost on a daily basis. We see their flawless
pictures with a car or a swimming pool in the background and with clothes worth thousands of
dollars on them. And then – we wish to be like them, to collect all those likes, to get all of that
sweet attention. Then we start to assess our self-worth by how many likes our profile picture
got or how many people saw our Instagram story. We have all been there – posting a new
picture and then refreshing the page and counting the likes over and over again.

Taking pictures specifically for social media or recording videos for your Instagram stories is
increasingly commonplace – no one takes them for grandparents or cousins anymore.
Spontaneity in photography is basically non-existent now. Everything needs to be impeccable.
Everything needs to make others believe that we are living a perfect life consisting of expensive
coffee, eating out every week and staying fit and fashionable.

MILOŠ

This poses an essential question - In this increasingly digital world, are we starting to lose our
grip on reality? The eyes of the world are on the social media, it being a whole new world. We
live through our network accounts and many of us turn a blind eye to this real world, the world
around us. During our life, we can have a myriad of memories, yet how many of them are really
a part of our memory? Moreover, how many of them are paramount for our souls and helpful
to give a purpose to our lives? We tend to find comfort and compassion from our companions
which is fairly reasonable. However, we can go off the beaten track, to that extent that we
completely lose the view of ourselves, as psychologist Dr Richard Sherry, a founding member of
the Society for Neuropsychoanalysis, emphasized "When this starts to happen, feelings of guilt
and distaste towards ourselves can create a cognitive trap of alienation and possibly even a
sense of disconnection and paranoia.” It is striking how insecure, deeply apprehensive and
littered with inarticulate communication we have become.
Taking into account feeds of new clothes, mobile phones and everything revolving around us
which is posted on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, it is no wonder why normal people are
trying to mimic the images they notice on social media. The chase for “likes” and the wish to
keep up with everything, no mather how pointless it may be, has become “a social disease”. For
instance, one of my peers has become so obsessed with her accounts that when even she goes
to her hometown, she completely neglects her family members and friends and is constantly
posting stories of her having full make-up and being fashionable dressed the during the hours
of daylight which is really astounding to note. As a result, we can miss momentous moments in
the lives of our closest people and later only to feel dejected and anxious.

We shoud stay true to ourselves and hence, I must agree with Pope Francis who made a point
declaring "Don't let yourselves be led astray by this false image of reality! Be the protagonists of
your history; decide your own future! ’’

IVANA

It is chilling that people don’t even see how social networks have crawled into our everyday,
lives. It has gone so far, that when people DON’T post content on social networks, it may be
regarded as awkward behavior and others often wonder what is WRONG with them. Those
individuals are always somehow left out of the loop.

In relation to this we will also discuss the effects of social networks on mental health. Most
prone to these mental health effects are teens and young adults, whose self-esteem,
insecurities and similar aspects can be easily dismantled and crushed. The feeling of being left
out nowadays is, paradoxically, present more than ever. Loneliness is one of the major
consequences people face because of the extensive usage of social networks. Face-to-face
interaction has become practically non-existent. How many times have you witnessed a group
of friends looking down in their cell phones, not even uttering a word to each other, and being
completely spellbound by the perfect virtual world of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the
like? And how many times have you experienced it yourself? I myself – a countless number of
times. Then it’s no wonder people are feeling lonely, for when they have the opportunity to
interact with people in person, they still chose their perfect virtual lives.

Then there’s the problem of self-esteem. We are obsessed with other people’s lives, checking
their new posts, latest photos and events they’ve been to and all the while comparing our
virtual lives with theirs. Is our Instagram profile perfect enough? Are our photos aesthetically
appealing to others? A study has been conducted by the University of Copenhagen where they
discovered that people that use Facebook experience a certain feeling of ‘’Facebook envy’’,
whereas people who do not own a Facebook account stated that they are happier with their
lives.

Overuse of social media most definitely causes depression in many cases. It has been reported
in a survey where 1000 respondents have participated that more than one third of the
Generation Z stated they were quitting social media, and 41 per cent of them said that due to
social media they have noticed feelings of anxiety, depression and sadness. There is also a
problem of cyberbullying which leads to mental health issues such as social isolation, suicidal
thoughts and even suicide itself. The danger of cyberbullying lies within the fact that the victim
is being PUBLICALLY shamed, the perpetrator can remain anonymous and due to that the victim
thinks there is no way out. It was of utmost importance to point out some of the effects social
networks make on our brains. Why is that so? Well, there is no right answer to this question.
Social media affect people in different ways, depending on personal traits, their previous lives
and conditions, etc. The first and the hardest step towards combating this condition in our
brains is to admit that the whole humankind has a problem.

But we have to ask ourselves does it have to be like this? Are the Internet and social networks
human arch-enemies or the problem could be solely in ourselves?

TEODORA

To cap it all, we have acknowledged both alarming and pleasing aspects of social networks. It
could be that social networks reveal our true-self in way how we want to present ourselves. If
we truly have ambition to know more and improve ourselves then we would not use social
networks for gathering likes and admirers. Conversely, we could use them to gain knowledge
and improve ourselves which is a far cry from the aforementioned and those are the aims and
objectives to be achieved and fulfilled.

Sources:

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F-8

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