Unpopular Opinion: Social Media Is Bad By: Mason Munier

For many people it is hard to live a life without a smart phone, technology or internet access. Around 72% of Americans use social media apps such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. With the pandemic this year and people having to spend so much time inside, I can only imagine that these numbers increased during our long months of quarantine. Social media, like many other things, has both pros and cons. Here are some of the positive things social media has to offer: Allows people to improve relationships and make new friends, stay connected with family members that may live in different areas, facilitates political change and empowers people and gives them a voice, helps small businesses to promote themselves and many more reasons. Although there are many positive things social media has to offer I believe that the cons heavily outweigh the pros. Below is a list of all the cons to social media. 

1. Seriously harms your mental health. 

The rate of adolescents reporting symptoms of major depression in 2009 to 2017 was 63%.

Experiencing psychological distress in a given month grew 71% in young adults from 2008 to 2017.

Even worse, the rate of suicidal thoughts in young adults increased 47% during that same time.

Between 2012 and 2015, depression in boys increased by 21% and in girls by 50%.

The suicide rate for 8th to 12th grade girls increased by 65% in 2010 to 2015. 

Child suicide rates increased by up to 150%.

These disturbing facts should hopefully open the eyes of all people to deter future generations from getting attached and addicted to social media. This example of how social media is harmful doesn't need much of an explanation, however, some people fail to realize this is an issue among our current generations. 

2. Enables the spread of unreliable and false information.

Since our world is so wrapped up in social media, some people rely on Instagram, Facebook and other apps as their news source. It's hard to know whether or not you are being told honest, real information or if its fake news and cyber propaganda. Studies have been done and its proved that social media users are more likely to believe fake news. With one click of a button you can pull up loads of news articles and current events from your phone. This is a lot more convenient then tuning into the news to get the honest truth about what is going on in or world. Since social media users are more likely to believe whatever they see or read, our society is becoming brainwashed. 

3. Lacks privacy and safety.

Social media is becoming a bigger part of our lives everyday and with this we are constantly being exposed to more risks. As a younger generation we might not all be aware of the dangers and risks we face everyday on our favorite apps. Just some of the issues we face daily with social media are; account hacking and impersonation, stalking and harassment, being compelled to turn over passwords, location based services, marketing strategies have become invasive to our privacy. We need to be aware of these issues so we can be safe on the internet and social media. 

4. Is harmful to relationships and face to face communication. 

Social media allows us to communicate with all people at all times. Because of this there is no need for as much social interactions. Now to deliver a message we can simply send a text and never have to be in contact with the person. This seems beneficial in some ways but it can cause problems. Since phones have made the communication process easier, people would rather send a text to someone rather then speak to them face to face. When in a social environment, some people don't know how to act anymore. Social media has caused this antisocial society and we are becoming more and more distant from the world we used to live in.

5. Facilitates cyber bulling.

Here's a mind blowing statistic for you. 85% of teens are social media users and of that 85%, it's reported that 69% of teens have done something abusive towards other users. Throughout the years cyber bullying has become a much more common occurrence and I think that is because of social media. Because of social media people can speak their mind because they are hiding behind a screen. I guarantee some people would think twice or not even say anything harmful at all if they had to be face to face with the person- which brings me back to my previous point of social media ruining face to face interactions. 

6. FOMO 

FOMO, fear of of missing out, is a term commonly used nowadays to express how teens feel when using social media. Some may say to just unplug and distance yourself from social media but it is hard when your entire generation is wrapped up in it. There’s concern among teens that if they are not involved they’ll miss jokes, connections, or invitations. Missing these events majorly affects kids thoughts and feeling, especially when you see it posted on multiple social media platforms. 

7. Grow up much faster and miss out on life. 

You're only a kid for so long so it's important to have fun and make memories and be crazy while you can. Kids today are wasting their childhoods by watching their lives through a lens. When something fun or crazy happens, the first thing kids do is take out their phone to record it to either post to their private stories or send to a group chat of friends. Instead of doing this we should leave our phones aside and live in the moment so we can properly capture the moments of our time growing up. Kids today miss so much of the life around the,m because they are caught only seeing life through a lens.  

8. Wrapped up in the competitive environment. 

It doesn't matter what social media platform we are talking about here because they all have one thing in common; and that is that every app portrays everyone to have a perfect life. For example, as you're scrolling though Instagram you may see a photo of a family on vacation, or friends out to lunch, or a couple on a cute date. Based on the photos people post, it may just seem like everyone has the perfect life, when in reality, nobody's life is perfect. From the other end of the phone you are only aware of your own struggles and you may think nobody else has issues in their own life and this is due to the false reality people portray on their social media pages. This causes people to be competitive and and it also causes constant comparison between yourself and others. In the end, comparing your life to others will do you no good because nobody's posting about their struggles and hardships, they only post the things they want people to know about. 

https://etactics.com/blog/social-media-and-mental-health-statistics