Can Social Media be Toxic and Affect Your Mental Health?
Social media can affect peoples mental health. There are many social media users who say things online about other people which is one way on how social media can become toxic. These comments can mentally be very harmful to the person and receiving certain comments can begin to negatively affect a persons mental health.
Describe the main issues you are going to cover.
How social media can affect your mental health
How it can make you insecure about yourself/your life
How it can make you feel lonely/left out
How it can cause depression/anxiety
What were the results of your survey? Describe your findings here.
For my survey 2 people said no and 23 said yes meaning 8% of people said no and 92% said yes. The reasons people said no were because social media users should know not to let certain things affect them. The reasons people said yes were that social media can be really toxic and people can say harmful things and can cause depression.
Interview Summary
For my interview I interviewed my 23 year old brother. He said that he believed social media was toxic because a lot of people tend to compare themselves to others. He brought up that there are also things online that may not be age appropriate for some younger social media users. He also mentioned that cyberbullying is still a thing and can cause people to develop depression and make them mentally struggle.
Your Personal Opinion
In my opinion social media is toxic and can affect someone's mental health. I believe that being on social media can cause some people to develop insecurities and when they look into their insecurities it can start to affect their mental health negatively. People on there don't know how to control what the say and can be very harmful to others and people getting picked on can cause depression. I feel like sometimes there's also things online that cause anxiety.
Write your paper here.
Can social media affect your mental health? Social media can have a negative impact on your mental health. It can make you feel insecure about your life or yourself, it can cause you to feel lonely, it can cause depression and anxiety etc. The question I asked on my survey was “Do you think social media is toxic and can affect someone's mental health in a bad way?” Out of the twenty five people, twenty three said yes while two said no. In my survey, people mentioned that social media can cause people to become insecure, bullying could be taking place online, people compare their lives to others and can be unhealthy and a few other good reasons. So even though social media may have its positive aspects, it can also have its negative aspects and really mess with someone's mental health.
Social media can make you feel insecure about yourself or your life. Sometimes influencers, celebrities or even people you may already know will post pictures of themselves or pictures of things they do or have. People may see these pictures and start to think about how they might not have what the other person has. This can develop insecurities for the person viewing the other person's post and become unhealthy. Let's say you see your favorite celebrity post a picture of themselves on vacation in Hawaii while they're on the beach. You see the beautiful place they're at and you also see them in a bathing suit and you start thinking “I wish I could look like her/him” or “I wish I could be able to travel to nice places like them.” This could make you think that they have a better life than you or even a better appearance than you which in my opinion isn’t very healthy for you mentally. In an article it says “Findings showed that more frequent upward comparisons reduced positive feelings, leading social media users to feel worse about themselves.” This shows that comparing yourself to others on social media isn’t very good for you because it just causes you to feel bad about yourself which also isn’t good for you because it brings you negative feelings that can mess with you mentally.
Social media can make you feel lonely or left out. You may see something that everyone has that you may not have on social media. People may post themselves with all their friends or you may see people post about something new and then everyone having it except you. Let's say you see your friends post on snapchat and they all got together to go out but didn't invite you. Then you would see that and feel left out from the friend group because they didn't invite you. You could also see a bunch of people you know getting something new that recently came out like a pair of shoes but you haven't gotten them. This could lead to making you feel like you wont fit in because you don't have them. A lot of people including me may not care if their friends invite them to go out or about getting the newest pair of shoes, but there are people who can feel left out for some of these reasons and it could possibly affect them in a negative way. In another article they give an example on how someone can feel left out if they dont get an invitation to a party that everyones going to. It continues to talk about how the uninvited person can see others on social media at the party so it states “The person who did not receive an invitation visually interprets the smiling and singing, concluding that he or she is missing a fantastic event.”
Social media can cause depression and anxiety. Social media can be very addictive. Humans need in person interactions with one another. People tend to go on social media for hours which obviously keeps them from interacting with other people in person. Since social media can be so addictive, this could lead people to just stay on their phones and have them end up staying in all day. I don't know about certain people but I feel like social media is so draining at some points. I’m the type of person that loves to go out and I go out any chance I get so then when i don't go out it sometimes just makes me feel sad. So i feel like people not going out enough or interacting with other things or people and just being on social media all day can cause depression by having people realize that they don't go out often so then they just kind of isolate themselves and become lonely or depressed because they have no motivation to go out. I've also seen things on social media that have caused me to have anxiety so I feel like seeing certain things on social media like fake news can also cause people to develop anxiety.
In conclusion, social media can affect your mental health in a negative way. My three reasons were that social media can make you feel insecure about your life and yourself, it can make you feel lonely or left out, and it can cause depression and anxiety. I think all of these reasons are good reasons as to why and how social media can be effective to someone's mental health. There's still so many other reasons I could have used too. I feel like social media can just be a lot sometimes and if it starts to make you feel drained or sad or left out then maybe you should take a step back and take a break from it and make sure your mental health is good.