Adolescents and Social Media

Adolescents and Social Media

There is no denying that social networking has had such a tremendous impact on today’s world. This generation is practically defined by social media along with other technological advances of course. Social networking has become a routine part of our lives.While most people would agree that social networking has opened doors to the expansion of communication and self expression, it is also capable of causing negative effects on people especially the typical developing young adult in both a psychological and development aspect.

    Adolescence is the stage of life that the character of oneself is really evaluated created in a sense. Social media has caused our youth to become more narcissistic than previous generations. With social media sites constantly asking about what exactly we are doing at what exact moment, adolescents get more and more involved..with themselves. Uploading pictures becomes a popularity contest because the ultimate goal is not even to express the picture being uploaded, but how many people “liked” it or commented on it. Some people would argue that social media allows for adolescents to express themselves and share thoughts, and while I partially do agree, I feel that that aspect is only positively fulfilled when done correctly. However, with outcomes such as cyberbullying, there is sufficient proof that adolescents are not, in fact, using social networking in a positive way. Cyberbullying is a type of bullying that occurs online and commonly on social media sites. Cyberbullying is more difficult to deal with because the adolescent is not able to run away or escape because it is possible for this harassment to be 24/7. Cyberbullying would most likely not exist if it were not for social networking. Adolescents are so vulnerable and fall victim to cyber bullying because of all the personal information shared through social media. “Teenagers can’t emotionally process these painful experiences in the same way they do their face-to-face equivalents. There aren’t the same opportunities to work it out online.” This is a valid point made by Hollie Sobel PhD, a family institute clinician who specializes in treating adolescent clients and their families, in the article titled, Cyber Bullying More Difficult for Teenagers to Process Psychologically Than In-Person Bullying.

    Social media sites can potentially cause depression in adolescents. It is no secret that adolescents tend to be more vulnerable mentally. It only makes sense, they are still trying to find themselves and create a persona. With that said, it is not uncommon for young adults to experience a form of depression that is associated with social media use. It was established by the American Academy of Pediatrics that “facebook depression”  is one of the risk factors that young teens face with over exposure to social media.  Not only can facebook depression cause anxiety, but also propensity to engage in risky activities such as substance abuse, self destruction acts or behaviors and unsafe sex. A study of adolescent girls found that the more the adolescent girls used text messaging and social media sites to discuss their problems the more depressive symptoms they presented.

    Dr. Jim Taylor, adjunct faculty at the University of San Francisco, describes his findings about internet addiction and adolescents in his article The Bad, the Ugly and the Good of Children’s use of Social Media. He mentions that some experts would argue that internet addicts use technology to self medicate and relieve their symptoms. Those symptoms would include depression and anxiety. This ties into adolescents being too attached to material things or have superficial values.

Adolescence is a time of rapid and intense emotional and physical changes. Body image is definitely something that many people but especially female adolescents have trouble with. It’s hard growing up in a society that idolizes a certain body image and unfortunately social media only magnifies it. Regarding females, social media tends to make girls want to post pretty pictures of themselves (selfies) and only do it for the attention they get. It has nothing to do with who they are as a person and that is the problem. They are getting the wrong idea. It’s not all about physical features. This alone makes girls become judgemental towards each other and that is simply not good. In other words, this is causing objectification, which is a psychology term that refers to a tendency to treat an individual not as a person with emotions and thoughts, but as a physical being or “object.”  Most of time this is portrayed as viewing the women as a sexual object. “The problem with objectification of women occurs when they start to think of themselves as nothing more than sex objects. Their self-esteem becomes dependent on how sexy they look, not how smart, nice, friendly, or inwardly attractive they are.” Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D explains how this ties into men inevitably having less respect for women in her article published in Psychology Today.

    Social media can become so pressing on adolescents’ image and can become overwhelming especially if cyber bullying is occurring. In the worst cases, some adolescents have taken their own lives to escape all the pressure. It is not uncommon for an adolescent to be pushed to the edge. It’s a terrible thing to wake up to a phone call and be told that a loved one has committed suicide for the sole reason of cyber bullying. My long time friend couldn’t take the harassment any longer and on February 21 took her own life. She was a quiet girl that didn’t cause problems but social media made it possible for other adolescents to steal pictures of her without her permission and make a Facebook under false pretenses; a Facebook that kids would write mean things about her and make fun of her. She felt trapped because no matter where she went social media was around 24/7 and she couldn’t hide from it. Which brings me to my next point. Has social media caused adolescents to become less empathetic?

We have all seen them. “Funny” pictures of obese women with a “catchy” slogan and people with “funny” faces. I think we tend to forget that these are actual people and maybe these pictures were not authorized by them. Yet, these pictures that are clearly making fun of people have thousands and thousands of likes and shares. Why is that? Why is it that posts about news, education, inspiring stories don’t have as many likes as pictures meant to embarrass someone? It is frankly, a general assumption to make that adolescents are becoming less empathetic due to social media but psychiatrist Dr. Gary Small expresses the same concern in Are texting, multitasking Teens losing Empathy Skills?. I couldn’t agree with him more when he states “The digital world has rewired teen brains and made them less able to recognize and share feelings of happiness, sadness or anger.” Dr. Gary Small is a UCLA professor of psychiatry and aging, but he has also studied adolescent brains. This article mentions a study from 2010 regarding the amount of time teenagers spend  with technology.  The study found that typical eight to 18-year-olds devote an average of seven hours and 38 minutes to using entertainment media across a typical day, or more than 53 hours a week. Thanks to multitasking, they are actually packing a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes’ worth of media content into those seven and a half hours.

    Social media definitely has its pro’s and con’s and while I am not arguing that it is all bad, I am arguing that social media is not fit for an adolescent for various reasons. They are too vulnerable and I believe they should be developed before enveloping themselves in that world. I think boundaries need to be set so that we can prevent cyberbullying and sexting. Social media is very powerful and can cause negative effects to adolescents; especially with body image and psychological details. I understand that social media can not be prevented and that it is something that has shaped our generation, but I do believe that boundaries need to be set to ensure the safety and well being of young adults.