Do you feel as if you are constantly checking your social media app? I tend to find myself always checking my phone and many people in this generation can relate. With the newer generation of teenagers it tends to feel like a big dependance on social media is increasing. Although, new technology might seem fascinating, social media can actually harm mental health by causing depression, sleep disturbances, and low-self esteem. 

Over the past decade, studies from “Child Mind” have expressed that depression in teens and young adults is increasingly more common and many notice that social media and cell phone use has been increasing around the same time. In older generations people went outside and connected with their peers more. Today, people tend to isolate themselves and have a harder time connecting with their peers with the rise of cell phone use. Spending hours on your phone can cause laziness, and loneliness which can lead up to depression. Isolating yourself from being on your phone has caused many people now to not spend as much time outside. This can also cause depression as humans need sunlight which produces seratonin and this increases anyones mood to be happier. 

Social media has also shown to cause sleep disturbances in today’s generation. According to statistics from the app TikTok, a huge majority of teens around the ages of 13-17 years old are globally active on the app between midnight-5:00A.M. This proves that social media is taking time away from sleep. It is also known that the blue light from a phone screen confuses the brain into thinking it’s time to wake up instead of falling asleep. This has definitely caused issues with many people not being able to fall asleep at night as plenty of teenagers and young adults tend to go on their phone for atleast an hour before they fall asleep. 

In today’s generation beauty standards and facetune apps have a big rise on social media. Many teenagers may compare themselves to someone online which causes low-self esteem. Social media can also be fake when high following celebrities and influencers may edit themselves or get surgeries to look “attractive” which may create their audience to believe that it is really how they look. This can be dangerous as it can attract young teenagers in our generation to thinking that these are non-edited photos and that these celebrities look “perfect”. This then can lead to self image issues and constantly trying to look like someone else. Our generation also tends to have a beauty standard and if someone doesn’t look a certain way they may be bullied. This can be very harmful as it may lead to cyberbullying online. 

Overall, with social media becoming a big part of our lives now we still see how it can harm your mental health by causing, depression, sleep disturbances, and low-self esteem. If you feel as if you are getting a negative impact talk to someone, or take a break from social media!