Social Media and Impact on Teenagers

 

Image: Porsche Orland Park

"Everyone sees you in your car" said one of my former classmate several decades ago when asked why getting the newest car was such a big deal in southern California.  I went to a university in Southern California with a lot of southern Californians.  There was a lot I didn't understand as a Midwest person who grew up in a lower/middle class household and a comment like that seemed so foreign and backwards (I know a bit judgey but most 20 years old are).  When I think back about this statement what I realized was that for this student her social status was based on what you could afford and that can be seen in what car you were driving.  Since that time there has been a shift in social status and it is now evaluated by your social media account.  How many followers do you have?  How many likes did I get on this post?  Did anyone share our post?  While I love that I can be connected with my cousins across the pond, there are so many parts of social media that create a negative expectation such as purchasing a new car every other year to keep with the people around you.     

What is Social Media doing to teenagers?

A quote from a teenger in the article titled This is your Brain on Social Media from CNN.com really stood out.  "How people see you, I guess, with social media - you want to put out a good picture of yourself, make it seem like you'r like your life is so perfect, even though not everyone's life is perfect, " 16-year-old Sky Gupta told her father, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, during a deep-dive interview this year in which she touched on the topic of the pressure to be perfect.

Throughout this article, the author continues to point to different problems that have increased in the teenage population.  Keneisha Sinclair-McBride who was interviewed for this article pointed out social media is so present in teenagers life that their feelings about their self worth and mental health are affect by their social media status.  She also said that "she is seeing a lot of depression, anxiety and trauma in her practice.  She describes it as "an epidemic of loneliness and overwhelm" that she connects to social media.

I spent time listening to the podcast on Chasing Life which this article was based on.  In this podcast titled The Selfie Effect on Your Brain, Sinclair-McBride goes into more detail about about what this affect really means.  Selfies from celebrities, influencers or a regular person can be modified through different filters.  Even though teenagers know that people posting selfies are using filters, they end up believing and thinking that everyone's posts are real life.  They then start to feel discouraged about their own lives and it filers into their own lives.  

What can be done?

In the article College student recounts her social media breaking point and how she stopped ‘scrolling mindlessly’ from CNN.com, a college student named Emma Lembke is looking to change how teens look and interact with social media.  After finding that she was mindlessly scrolling and the amount of time she was on her phone was a lot of her day.  She had a breaking point when she heard a ding from an app and realized that these apps had so much power over her.   She said the same issues with her friends including mental health issues.  She is currently working on persuading on Big Tech to help change what is happening to teenagers.  She was one of the people that testified to Congress about the various social media applications.

At the end of the The Selfie Effect on Your Brain Dr. Gupta discusses what he learned.  He points out that social media isn't a problem for most teens but it can be for some.  As a parent, talking with your child is the most important and asking questions about how they are feeling, discuss things that have come up and create a dialog about social media really helps teens.