By: ANONYMOUS
Staff writer
Humans are naturally very social creatures, most of us often need companionship to thrive and the strength of those bonds has a huge impact on our mental health and happiness. In today’s world, we largely depend on large social media platforms such as Snapchat, Twitter, and TikTok, to replace these bonds. For a technology designed to make us closer than ever, spending too much time on it can cause a variety of mental health issues, such as depression, anxiety, loneliness, or excessive frustration and anger. If you refer to childmind.org, you will find that roughly 66 percent of teens who use social media suffer from depression from excessive use. Which is roughly 6 in 10 people. Increased levels of depression are known to cause lower productivity as well as, problem-solving skills and short-term memory/attention.
Another large issue in social media is the spread of misinformation, or ¨Fake News¨. Most people don’t analyze information critically and often believe the first thing they are told no matter how absurd. Most social media platforms, namely Twitter, often spread more false than true information. According to News.usc.edu, about 20% of all Americans get their news from social media and about 56% percent of the average news feed is false information. This leads to many of us being divided and violent towards each other, as evident in earlier events within the past couple of years, which also adds to my earlier point.
This past week, myself and a few friends decided to disconnect ourselves from online platforms just to see the impact it might have on us. And honestly, I haven’t felt this good both physically and mentally in a long time, since I haven’t been on many socials, I have found a lot more time in my days to spend time with my family, work out, and even read. I’ve also found it a lot easier to pay attention in class.
Now considering all of this, social media is overall a negative thing, but this technology cannot be cut away from our lives, instead, we can minimize it and learn to live life more effectively outside of our little boxes made of plastic and glass.