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Social media harms teens’ mental health, mounting evidence shows. what now.

Understanding what is going on in teens’ minds is necessary for targeted policy suggestions

Most teens use social media, often for hours on end. Some social scientists are confident that such use is harming their mental health. Now they want to pinpoint what explains the link.

Carol Yepes/Getty Images

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By Sujata Gupta

February 20, 2024 at 7:30 am

In January, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook’s parent company Meta, appeared at a congressional hearing to answer questions about how social media potentially harms children. Zuckerberg opened by saying: “The existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal link between using social media and young people having worse mental health.”

But many social scientists would disagree with that statement. In recent years, studies have started to show a causal link between teen social media use and reduced well-being or mood disorders, chiefly depression and anxiety.

Ironically, one of the most cited studies into this link focused on Facebook.

Researchers delved into whether the platform’s introduction across college campuses in the mid 2000s increased symptoms associated with depression and anxiety. The answer was a clear yes , says MIT economist Alexey Makarin, a coauthor of the study, which appeared in the November 2022 American Economic Review . “There is still a lot to be explored,” Makarin says, but “[to say] there is no causal evidence that social media causes mental health issues, to that I definitely object.”

The concern, and the studies, come from statistics showing that social media use in teens ages 13 to 17 is now almost ubiquitous. Two-thirds of teens report using TikTok, and some 60 percent of teens report using Instagram or Snapchat, a 2022 survey found. (Only 30 percent said they used Facebook.) Another survey showed that girls, on average, allot roughly 3.4 hours per day to TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, compared with roughly 2.1 hours among boys. At the same time, more teens are showing signs of depression than ever, especially girls ( SN: 6/30/23 ).

As more studies show a strong link between these phenomena, some researchers are starting to shift their attention to possible mechanisms. Why does social media use seem to trigger mental health problems? Why are those effects unevenly distributed among different groups, such as girls or young adults? And can the positives of social media be teased out from the negatives to provide more targeted guidance to teens, their caregivers and policymakers?

“You can’t design good public policy if you don’t know why things are happening,” says Scott Cunningham, an economist at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

Increasing rigor

Concerns over the effects of social media use in children have been circulating for years, resulting in a massive body of scientific literature. But those mostly correlational studies could not show if teen social media use was harming mental health or if teens with mental health problems were using more social media.

Moreover, the findings from such studies were often inconclusive, or the effects on mental health so small as to be inconsequential. In one study that received considerable media attention, psychologists Amy Orben and Andrew Przybylski combined data from three surveys to see if they could find a link between technology use, including social media, and reduced well-being. The duo gauged the well-being of over 355,000 teenagers by focusing on questions around depression, suicidal thinking and self-esteem.

Digital technology use was associated with a slight decrease in adolescent well-being , Orben, now of the University of Cambridge, and Przybylski, of the University of Oxford, reported in 2019 in Nature Human Behaviour . But the duo downplayed that finding, noting that researchers have observed similar drops in adolescent well-being associated with drinking milk, going to the movies or eating potatoes.

Holes have begun to appear in that narrative thanks to newer, more rigorous studies.

In one longitudinal study, researchers — including Orben and Przybylski — used survey data on social media use and well-being from over 17,400 teens and young adults to look at how individuals’ responses to a question gauging life satisfaction changed between 2011 and 2018. And they dug into how the responses varied by gender, age and time spent on social media.

Social media use was associated with a drop in well-being among teens during certain developmental periods, chiefly puberty and young adulthood, the team reported in 2022 in Nature Communications . That translated to lower well-being scores around ages 11 to 13 for girls and ages 14 to 15 for boys. Both groups also reported a drop in well-being around age 19. Moreover, among the older teens, the team found evidence for the Goldilocks Hypothesis: the idea that both too much and too little time spent on social media can harm mental health.

“There’s hardly any effect if you look over everybody. But if you look at specific age groups, at particularly what [Orben] calls ‘windows of sensitivity’ … you see these clear effects,” says L.J. Shrum, a consumer psychologist at HEC Paris who was not involved with this research. His review of studies related to teen social media use and mental health is forthcoming in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research.

Cause and effect

That longitudinal study hints at causation, researchers say. But one of the clearest ways to pin down cause and effect is through natural or quasi-experiments. For these in-the-wild experiments, researchers must identify situations where the rollout of a societal “treatment” is staggered across space and time. They can then compare outcomes among members of the group who received the treatment to those still in the queue — the control group.

That was the approach Makarin and his team used in their study of Facebook. The researchers homed in on the staggered rollout of Facebook across 775 college campuses from 2004 to 2006. They combined that rollout data with student responses to the National College Health Assessment, a widely used survey of college students’ mental and physical health.

The team then sought to understand if those survey questions captured diagnosable mental health problems. Specifically, they had roughly 500 undergraduate students respond to questions both in the National College Health Assessment and in validated screening tools for depression and anxiety. They found that mental health scores on the assessment predicted scores on the screenings. That suggested that a drop in well-being on the college survey was a good proxy for a corresponding increase in diagnosable mental health disorders. 

Compared with campuses that had not yet gained access to Facebook, college campuses with Facebook experienced a 2 percentage point increase in the number of students who met the diagnostic criteria for anxiety or depression, the team found.

When it comes to showing a causal link between social media use in teens and worse mental health, “that study really is the crown jewel right now,” says Cunningham, who was not involved in that research.

A need for nuance

The social media landscape today is vastly different than the landscape of 20 years ago. Facebook is now optimized for maximum addiction, Shrum says, and other newer platforms, such as Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok, have since copied and built on those features. Paired with the ubiquity of social media in general, the negative effects on mental health may well be larger now.

Moreover, social media research tends to focus on young adults — an easier cohort to study than minors. That needs to change, Cunningham says. “Most of us are worried about our high school kids and younger.” 

And so, researchers must pivot accordingly. Crucially, simple comparisons of social media users and nonusers no longer make sense. As Orben and Przybylski’s 2022 work suggested, a teen not on social media might well feel worse than one who briefly logs on. 

Researchers must also dig into why, and under what circumstances, social media use can harm mental health, Cunningham says. Explanations for this link abound. For instance, social media is thought to crowd out other activities or increase people’s likelihood of comparing themselves unfavorably with others. But big data studies, with their reliance on existing surveys and statistical analyses, cannot address those deeper questions. “These kinds of papers, there’s nothing you can really ask … to find these plausible mechanisms,” Cunningham says.

One ongoing effort to understand social media use from this more nuanced vantage point is the SMART Schools project out of the University of Birmingham in England. Pedagogical expert Victoria Goodyear and her team are comparing mental and physical health outcomes among children who attend schools that have restricted cell phone use to those attending schools without such a policy. The researchers described the protocol of that study of 30 schools and over 1,000 students in the July BMJ Open.

Goodyear and colleagues are also combining that natural experiment with qualitative research. They met with 36 five-person focus groups each consisting of all students, all parents or all educators at six of those schools. The team hopes to learn how students use their phones during the day, how usage practices make students feel, and what the various parties think of restrictions on cell phone use during the school day.

Talking to teens and those in their orbit is the best way to get at the mechanisms by which social media influences well-being — for better or worse, Goodyear says. Moving beyond big data to this more personal approach, however, takes considerable time and effort. “Social media has increased in pace and momentum very, very quickly,” she says. “And research takes a long time to catch up with that process.”

Until that catch-up occurs, though, researchers cannot dole out much advice. “What guidance could we provide to young people, parents and schools to help maintain the positives of social media use?” Goodyear asks. “There’s not concrete evidence yet.”

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• Open access
• Published: 06 July 2023

Pros & cons: impacts of social media on mental health

• Ágnes Zsila 1 , 2 &
• Marc Eric S. Reyes   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5280-1315 3  

BMC Psychology volume  11 , Article number:  201 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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The use of social media significantly impacts mental health. It can enhance connection, increase self-esteem, and improve a sense of belonging. But it can also lead to tremendous stress, pressure to compare oneself to others, and increased sadness and isolation. Mindful use is essential to social media consumption.

Social media has become integral to our daily routines: we interact with family members and friends, accept invitations to public events, and join online communities to meet people who share similar preferences using these platforms. Social media has opened a new avenue for social experiences since the early 2000s, extending the possibilities for communication. According to recent research [ 1 ], people spend 2.3 h daily on social media. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat have become increasingly popular among youth in 2022, and one-third think they spend too much time on these platforms [ 2 ]. The considerable time people spend on social media worldwide has directed researchers’ attention toward the potential benefits and risks. Research shows excessive use is mainly associated with lower psychological well-being [ 3 ]. However, findings also suggest that the quality rather than the quantity of social media use can determine whether the experience will enhance or deteriorate the user’s mental health [ 4 ]. In this collection, we will explore the impact of social media use on mental health by providing comprehensive research perspectives on positive and negative effects.

Social media can provide opportunities to enhance the mental health of users by facilitating social connections and peer support [ 5 ]. Indeed, online communities can provide a space for discussions regarding health conditions, adverse life events, or everyday challenges, which may decrease the sense of stigmatization and increase belongingness and perceived emotional support. Mutual friendships, rewarding social interactions, and humor on social media also reduced stress during the COVID-19 pandemic [ 4 ].

On the other hand, several studies have pointed out the potentially detrimental effects of social media use on mental health. Concerns have been raised that social media may lead to body image dissatisfaction [ 6 ], increase the risk of addiction and cyberbullying involvement [ 5 ], contribute to phubbing behaviors [ 7 ], and negatively affects mood [ 8 ]. Excessive use has increased loneliness, fear of missing out, and decreased subjective well-being and life satisfaction [ 8 ]. Users at risk of social media addiction often report depressive symptoms and lower self-esteem [ 9 ].

Overall, findings regarding the impact of social media on mental health pointed out some essential resources for psychological well-being through rewarding online social interactions. However, there is a need to raise awareness about the possible risks associated with excessive use, which can negatively affect mental health and everyday functioning [ 9 ]. There is neither a negative nor positive consensus regarding the effects of social media on people. However, by teaching people social media literacy, we can maximize their chances of having balanced, safe, and meaningful experiences on these platforms [ 10 ].

We encourage researchers to submit their research articles and contribute to a more differentiated overview of the impact of social media on mental health. BMC Psychology welcomes submissions to its new collection, which promises to present the latest findings in the emerging field of social media research. We seek research papers using qualitative and quantitative methods, focusing on social media users’ positive and negative aspects. We believe this collection will provide a more comprehensive picture of social media’s positive and negative effects on users’ mental health.

Data Availability

Not applicable.

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Harriger JA, Thompson JK, Tiggemann M. TikTok, TikTok, the time is now: future directions in social media and body image. Body Image. 2023;44:222–6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2021.12.005 .

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Chi LC, Tang TC, Tang E. The phubbing phenomenon: a cross-sectional study on the relationships among social media addiction, fear of missing out, personality traits, and phubbing behavior. Curr Psychol. 2022;41(2):1112–23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-0135-4 .

Valkenburg PM. Social media use and well-being: what we know and what we need to know. Curr Opin Psychol. 2022;45:101294. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2020.101294 .

Bányai F, Zsila Á, Király O, Maraz A, Elekes Z, Griffiths MD, Urbán R, Farkas J, Rigó P Jr, Demetrovics Z. Problematic social media use: results from a large-scale nationally representative adolescent sample. PLoS ONE. 2017;12(1):e0169839. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0169839 .

American Psychological Association. (2023). APA panel issues recommendations for adolescent social media use. Retrieved from https://apa-panel-issues-recommendations-for-adolescent-social-media-use-774560.html .

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Acknowledgements

Ágnes Zsila was supported by the ÚNKP-22-4 New National Excellence Program of the Ministry for Culture and Innovation from the source of the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund.

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Ágnes Zsila

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Department of Psychology, College of Science, University of Santo Tomas, Manila, 1008, Philippines

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How Harmful Is Social Media?

By Gideon Lewis-Kraus

In April, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt published an essay in The Atlantic in which he sought to explain, as the piece’s title had it, “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.” Anyone familiar with Haidt’s work in the past half decade could have anticipated his answer: social media. Although Haidt concedes that political polarization and factional enmity long predate the rise of the platforms, and that there are plenty of other factors involved, he believes that the tools of virality—Facebook’s Like and Share buttons, Twitter’s Retweet function—have algorithmically and irrevocably corroded public life. He has determined that a great historical discontinuity can be dated with some precision to the period between 2010 and 2014, when these features became widely available on phones.

“What changed in the 2010s?” Haidt asks, reminding his audience that a former Twitter developer had once compared the Retweet button to the provision of a four-year-old with a loaded weapon. “A mean tweet doesn’t kill anyone; it is an attempt to shame or punish someone publicly while broadcasting one’s own virtue, brilliance, or tribal loyalties. It’s more a dart than a bullet, causing pain but no fatalities. Even so, from 2009 to 2012, Facebook and Twitter passed out roughly a billion dart guns globally. We’ve been shooting one another ever since.” While the right has thrived on conspiracy-mongering and misinformation, the left has turned punitive: “When everyone was issued a dart gun in the early 2010s, many left-leaning institutions began shooting themselves in the brain. And, unfortunately, those were the brains that inform, instruct, and entertain most of the country.” Haidt’s prevailing metaphor of thoroughgoing fragmentation is the story of the Tower of Babel: the rise of social media has “unwittingly dissolved the mortar of trust, belief in institutions, and shared stories that had held a large and diverse secular democracy together.”

These are, needless to say, common concerns. Chief among Haidt’s worries is that use of social media has left us particularly vulnerable to confirmation bias, or the propensity to fix upon evidence that shores up our prior beliefs. Haidt acknowledges that the extant literature on social media’s effects is large and complex, and that there is something in it for everyone. On January 6, 2021, he was on the phone with Chris Bail, a sociologist at Duke and the author of the recent book “ Breaking the Social Media Prism ,” when Bail urged him to turn on the television. Two weeks later, Haidt wrote to Bail, expressing his frustration at the way Facebook officials consistently cited the same handful of studies in their defense. He suggested that the two of them collaborate on a comprehensive literature review that they could share, as a Google Doc, with other researchers. (Haidt had experimented with such a model before.) Bail was cautious. He told me, “What I said to him was, ‘Well, you know, I’m not sure the research is going to bear out your version of the story,’ and he said, ‘Why don’t we see?’ ”

Bail emphasized that he is not a “platform-basher.” He added, “In my book, my main take is, Yes, the platforms play a role, but we are greatly exaggerating what it’s possible for them to do—how much they could change things no matter who’s at the helm at these companies—and we’re profoundly underestimating the human element, the motivation of users.” He found Haidt’s idea of a Google Doc appealing, in the way that it would produce a kind of living document that existed “somewhere between scholarship and public writing.” Haidt was eager for a forum to test his ideas. “I decided that if I was going to be writing about this—what changed in the universe, around 2014, when things got weird on campus and elsewhere—once again, I’d better be confident I’m right,” he said. “I can’t just go off my feelings and my readings of the biased literature. We all suffer from confirmation bias, and the only cure is other people who don’t share your own.”

Haidt and Bail, along with a research assistant, populated the document over the course of several weeks last year, and in November they invited about two dozen scholars to contribute. Haidt told me, of the difficulties of social-scientific methodology, “When you first approach a question, you don’t even know what it is. ‘Is social media destroying democracy, yes or no?’ That’s not a good question. You can’t answer that question. So what can you ask and answer?” As the document took on a life of its own, tractable rubrics emerged—Does social media make people angrier or more affectively polarized? Does it create political echo chambers? Does it increase the probability of violence? Does it enable foreign governments to increase political dysfunction in the United States and other democracies? Haidt continued, “It’s only after you break it up into lots of answerable questions that you see where the complexity lies.”

Haidt came away with the sense, on balance, that social media was in fact pretty bad. He was disappointed, but not surprised, that Facebook’s response to his article relied on the same three studies they’ve been reciting for years. “This is something you see with breakfast cereals,” he said, noting that a cereal company “might say, ‘Did you know we have twenty-five per cent more riboflavin than the leading brand?’ They’ll point to features where the evidence is in their favor, which distracts you from the over-all fact that your cereal tastes worse and is less healthy.”

After Haidt’s piece was published, the Google Doc—“Social Media and Political Dysfunction: A Collaborative Review”—was made available to the public . Comments piled up, and a new section was added, at the end, to include a miscellany of Twitter threads and Substack essays that appeared in response to Haidt’s interpretation of the evidence. Some colleagues and kibbitzers agreed with Haidt. But others, though they might have shared his basic intuition that something in our experience of social media was amiss, drew upon the same data set to reach less definitive conclusions, or even mildly contradictory ones. Even after the initial flurry of responses to Haidt’s article disappeared into social-media memory, the document, insofar as it captured the state of the social-media debate, remained a lively artifact.

Near the end of the collaborative project’s introduction, the authors warn, “We caution readers not to simply add up the number of studies on each side and declare one side the winner.” The document runs to more than a hundred and fifty pages, and for each question there are affirmative and dissenting studies, as well as some that indicate mixed results. According to one paper, “Political expressions on social media and the online forum were found to (a) reinforce the expressers’ partisan thought process and (b) harden their pre-existing political preferences,” but, according to another, which used data collected during the 2016 election, “Over the course of the campaign, we found media use and attitudes remained relatively stable. Our results also showed that Facebook news use was related to modest over-time spiral of depolarization. Furthermore, we found that people who use Facebook for news were more likely to view both pro- and counter-attitudinal news in each wave. Our results indicated that counter-attitudinal exposure increased over time, which resulted in depolarization.” If results like these seem incompatible, a perplexed reader is given recourse to a study that says, “Our findings indicate that political polarization on social media cannot be conceptualized as a unified phenomenon, as there are significant cross-platform differences.”

Interested in echo chambers? “Our results show that the aggregation of users in homophilic clusters dominate online interactions on Facebook and Twitter,” which seems convincing—except that, as another team has it, “We do not find evidence supporting a strong characterization of ‘echo chambers’ in which the majority of people’s sources of news are mutually exclusive and from opposite poles.” By the end of the file, the vaguely patronizing top-line recommendation against simple summation begins to make more sense. A document that originated as a bulwark against confirmation bias could, as it turned out, just as easily function as a kind of generative device to support anybody’s pet conviction. The only sane response, it seemed, was simply to throw one’s hands in the air.

When I spoke to some of the researchers whose work had been included, I found a combination of broad, visceral unease with the current situation—with the banefulness of harassment and trolling; with the opacity of the platforms; with, well, the widespread presentiment that of course social media is in many ways bad—and a contrastive sense that it might not be catastrophically bad in some of the specific ways that many of us have come to take for granted as true. This was not mere contrarianism, and there was no trace of gleeful mythbusting; the issue was important enough to get right. When I told Bail that the upshot seemed to me to be that exactly nothing was unambiguously clear, he suggested that there was at least some firm ground. He sounded a bit less apocalyptic than Haidt.

“A lot of the stories out there are just wrong,” he told me. “The political echo chamber has been massively overstated. Maybe it’s three to five per cent of people who are properly in an echo chamber.” Echo chambers, as hotboxes of confirmation bias, are counterproductive for democracy. But research indicates that most of us are actually exposed to a wider range of views on social media than we are in real life, where our social networks—in the original use of the term—are rarely heterogeneous. (Haidt told me that this was an issue on which the Google Doc changed his mind; he became convinced that echo chambers probably aren’t as widespread a problem as he’d once imagined.) And too much of a focus on our intuitions about social media’s echo-chamber effect could obscure the relevant counterfactual: a conservative might abandon Twitter only to watch more Fox News. “Stepping outside your echo chamber is supposed to make you moderate, but maybe it makes you more extreme,” Bail said. The research is inchoate and ongoing, and it’s difficult to say anything on the topic with absolute certainty. But this was, in part, Bail’s point: we ought to be less sure about the particular impacts of social media.

Bail went on, “The second story is foreign misinformation.” It’s not that misinformation doesn’t exist, or that it hasn’t had indirect effects, especially when it creates perverse incentives for the mainstream media to cover stories circulating online. Haidt also draws convincingly upon the work of Renée DiResta, the research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, to sketch out a potential future in which the work of shitposting has been outsourced to artificial intelligence, further polluting the informational environment. But, at least so far, very few Americans seem to suffer from consistent exposure to fake news—“probably less than two per cent of Twitter users, maybe fewer now, and for those who were it didn’t change their opinions,” Bail said. This was probably because the people likeliest to consume such spectacles were the sort of people primed to believe them in the first place. “In fact,” he said, “echo chambers might have done something to quarantine that misinformation.”

The final story that Bail wanted to discuss was the “proverbial rabbit hole, the path to algorithmic radicalization,” by which YouTube might serve a viewer increasingly extreme videos. There is some anecdotal evidence to suggest that this does happen, at least on occasion, and such anecdotes are alarming to hear. But a new working paper led by Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth, found that almost all extremist content is either consumed by subscribers to the relevant channels—a sign of actual demand rather than manipulation or preference falsification—or encountered via links from external sites. It’s easy to see why we might prefer if this were not the case: algorithmic radicalization is presumably a simpler problem to solve than the fact that there are people who deliberately seek out vile content. “These are the three stories—echo chambers, foreign influence campaigns, and radicalizing recommendation algorithms—but, when you look at the literature, they’ve all been overstated.” He thought that these findings were crucial for us to assimilate, if only to help us understand that our problems may lie beyond technocratic tinkering. He explained, “Part of my interest in getting this research out there is to demonstrate that everybody is waiting for an Elon Musk to ride in and save us with an algorithm”—or, presumably, the reverse—“and it’s just not going to happen.”

When I spoke with Nyhan, he told me much the same thing: “The most credible research is way out of line with the takes.” He noted, of extremist content and misinformation, that reliable research that “measures exposure to these things finds that the people consuming this content are small minorities who have extreme views already.” The problem with the bulk of the earlier research, Nyhan told me, is that it’s almost all correlational. “Many of these studies will find polarization on social media,” he said. “But that might just be the society we live in reflected on social media!” He hastened to add, “Not that this is untroubling, and none of this is to let these companies, which are exercising a lot of power with very little scrutiny, off the hook. But a lot of the criticisms of them are very poorly founded. . . . The expansion of Internet access coincides with fifteen other trends over time, and separating them is very difficult. The lack of good data is a huge problem insofar as it lets people project their own fears into this area.” He told me, “It’s hard to weigh in on the side of ‘We don’t know, the evidence is weak,’ because those points are always going to be drowned out in our discourse. But these arguments are systematically underprovided in the public domain.”

In his Atlantic article, Haidt leans on a working paper by two social scientists, Philipp Lorenz-Spreen and Lisa Oswald, who took on a comprehensive meta-analysis of about five hundred papers and concluded that “the large majority of reported associations between digital media use and trust appear to be detrimental for democracy.” Haidt writes, “The literature is complex—some studies show benefits, particularly in less developed democracies—but the review found that, on balance, social media amplifies political polarization; foments populism, especially right-wing populism; and is associated with the spread of misinformation.” Nyhan was less convinced that the meta-analysis supported such categorical verdicts, especially once you bracketed the kinds of correlational findings that might simply mirror social and political dynamics. He told me, “If you look at their summary of studies that allow for causal inferences—it’s very mixed.”

As for the studies Nyhan considered most methodologically sound, he pointed to a 2020 article called “The Welfare Effects of Social Media,” by Hunt Allcott, Luca Braghieri, Sarah Eichmeyer, and Matthew Gentzkow. For four weeks prior to the 2018 midterm elections, the authors randomly divided a group of volunteers into two cohorts—one that continued to use Facebook as usual, and another that was paid to deactivate their accounts for that period. They found that deactivation “(i) reduced online activity, while increasing offline activities such as watching TV alone and socializing with family and friends; (ii) reduced both factual news knowledge and political polarization; (iii) increased subjective well-being; and (iv) caused a large persistent reduction in post-experiment Facebook use.” But Gentzkow reminded me that his conclusions, including that Facebook may slightly increase polarization, had to be heavily qualified: “From other kinds of evidence, I think there’s reason to think social media is not the main driver of increasing polarization over the long haul in the United States.”

In the book “ Why We’re Polarized ,” for example, Ezra Klein invokes the work of such scholars as Lilliana Mason to argue that the roots of polarization might be found in, among other factors, the political realignment and nationalization that began in the sixties, and were then sacralized, on the right, by the rise of talk radio and cable news. These dynamics have served to flatten our political identities, weakening our ability or inclination to find compromise. Insofar as some forms of social media encourage the hardening of connections between our identities and a narrow set of opinions, we might increasingly self-select into mutually incomprehensible and hostile groups; Haidt plausibly suggests that these processes are accelerated by the coalescence of social-media tribes around figures of fearful online charisma. “Social media might be more of an amplifier of other things going on rather than a major driver independently,” Gentzkow argued. “I think it takes some gymnastics to tell a story where it’s all primarily driven by social media, especially when you’re looking at different countries, and across different groups.”

Another study, led by Nejla Asimovic and Joshua Tucker, replicated Gentzkow’s approach in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and they found almost precisely the opposite results: the people who stayed on Facebook were, by the end of the study, more positively disposed to their historic out-groups. The authors’ interpretation was that ethnic groups have so little contact in Bosnia that, for some people, social media is essentially the only place where they can form positive images of one another. “To have a replication and have the signs flip like that, it’s pretty stunning,” Bail told me. “It’s a different conversation in every part of the world.”

Nyhan argued that, at least in wealthy Western countries, we might be too heavily discounting the degree to which platforms have responded to criticism: “Everyone is still operating under the view that algorithms simply maximize engagement in a short-term way” with minimal attention to potential externalities. “That might’ve been true when Zuckerberg had seven people working for him, but there are a lot of considerations that go into these rankings now.” He added, “There’s some evidence that, with reverse-chronological feeds”—streams of unwashed content, which some critics argue are less manipulative than algorithmic curation—“people get exposed to more low-quality content, so it’s another case where a very simple notion of ‘algorithms are bad’ doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. It doesn’t mean they’re good, it’s just that we don’t know.”

Bail told me that, over all, he was less confident than Haidt that the available evidence lines up clearly against the platforms. “Maybe there’s a slight majority of studies that say that social media is a net negative, at least in the West, and maybe it’s doing some good in the rest of the world.” But, he noted, “Jon will say that science has this expectation of rigor that can’t keep up with the need in the real world—that even if we don’t have the definitive study that creates the historical counterfactual that Facebook is largely responsible for polarization in the U.S., there’s still a lot pointing in that direction, and I think that’s a fair point.” He paused. “It can’t all be randomized control trials.”

Haidt comes across in conversation as searching and sincere, and, during our exchange, he paused several times to suggest that I include a quote from John Stuart Mill on the importance of good-faith debate to moral progress. In that spirit, I asked him what he thought of the argument, elaborated by some of Haidt’s critics, that the problems he described are fundamentally political, social, and economic, and that to blame social media is to search for lost keys under the streetlamp, where the light is better. He agreed that this was the steelman opponent: there were predecessors for cancel culture in de Tocqueville, and anxiety about new media that went back to the time of the printing press. “This is a perfectly reasonable hypothesis, and it’s absolutely up to the prosecution—people like me—to argue that, no, this time it’s different. But it’s a civil case! The evidential standard is not ‘beyond a reasonable doubt,’ as in a criminal case. It’s just a preponderance of the evidence.”

The way scholars weigh the testimony is subject to their disciplinary orientations. Economists and political scientists tend to believe that you can’t even begin to talk about causal dynamics without a randomized controlled trial, whereas sociologists and psychologists are more comfortable drawing inferences on a correlational basis. Haidt believes that conditions are too dire to take the hardheaded, no-reasonable-doubt view. “The preponderance of the evidence is what we use in public health. If there’s an epidemic—when COVID started, suppose all the scientists had said, ‘No, we gotta be so certain before you do anything’? We have to think about what’s actually happening, what’s likeliest to pay off.” He continued, “We have the largest epidemic ever of teen mental health, and there is no other explanation,” he said. “It is a raging public-health epidemic, and the kids themselves say Instagram did it, and we have some evidence, so is it appropriate to say, ‘Nah, you haven’t proven it’?”

This was his attitude across the board. He argued that social media seemed to aggrandize inflammatory posts and to be correlated with a rise in violence; even if only small groups were exposed to fake news, such beliefs might still proliferate in ways that were hard to measure. “In the post-Babel era, what matters is not the average but the dynamics, the contagion, the exponential amplification,” he said. “Small things can grow very quickly, so arguments that Russian disinformation didn’t matter are like COVID arguments that people coming in from China didn’t have contact with a lot of people.” Given the transformative effects of social media, Haidt insisted, it was important to act now, even in the absence of dispositive evidence. “Academic debates play out over decades and are often never resolved, whereas the social-media environment changes year by year,” he said. “We don’t have the luxury of waiting around five or ten years for literature reviews.”

Haidt could be accused of question-begging—of assuming the existence of a crisis that the research might or might not ultimately underwrite. Still, the gap between the two sides in this case might not be quite as wide as Haidt thinks. Skeptics of his strongest claims are not saying that there’s no there there. Just because the average YouTube user is unlikely to be led to Stormfront videos, Nyhan told me, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t worry that some people are watching Stormfront videos; just because echo chambers and foreign misinformation seem to have had effects only at the margins, Gentzkow said, doesn’t mean they’re entirely irrelevant. “There are many questions here where the thing we as researchers are interested in is how social media affects the average person,” Gentzkow told me. “There’s a different set of questions where all you need is a small number of people to change—questions about ethnic violence in Bangladesh or Sri Lanka, people on YouTube mobilized to do mass shootings. Much of the evidence broadly makes me skeptical that the average effects are as big as the public discussion thinks they are, but I also think there are cases where a small number of people with very extreme views are able to find each other and connect and act.” He added, “That’s where many of the things I’d be most concerned about lie.”

The same might be said about any phenomenon where the base rate is very low but the stakes are very high, such as teen suicide. “It’s another case where those rare edge cases in terms of total social harm may be enormous. You don’t need many teen-age kids to decide to kill themselves or have serious mental-health outcomes in order for the social harm to be really big.” He added, “Almost none of this work is able to get at those edge-case effects, and we have to be careful that if we do establish that the average effect of something is zero, or small, that it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be worried about it—because we might be missing those extremes.” Jaime Settle, a scholar of political behavior at the College of William & Mary and the author of the book “ Frenemies: How Social Media Polarizes America ,” noted that Haidt is “farther along the spectrum of what most academics who study this stuff are going to say we have strong evidence for.” But she understood his impulse: “We do have serious problems, and I’m glad Jon wrote the piece, and down the road I wouldn’t be surprised if we got a fuller handle on the role of social media in all of this—there are definitely ways in which social media has changed our politics for the worse.”

It’s tempting to sidestep the question of diagnosis entirely, and to evaluate Haidt’s essay not on the basis of predictive accuracy—whether social media will lead to the destruction of American democracy—but as a set of proposals for what we might do better. If he is wrong, how much damage are his prescriptions likely to do? Haidt, to his great credit, does not indulge in any wishful thinking, and if his diagnosis is largely technological his prescriptions are sociopolitical. Two of his three major suggestions seem useful and have nothing to do with social media: he thinks that we should end closed primaries and that children should be given wide latitude for unsupervised play. His recommendations for social-media reform are, for the most part, uncontroversial: he believes that preteens shouldn’t be on Instagram and that platforms should share their data with outside researchers—proposals that are both likely to be beneficial and not very costly.

It remains possible, however, that the true costs of social-media anxieties are harder to tabulate. Gentzkow told me that, for the period between 2016 and 2020, the direct effects of misinformation were difficult to discern. “But it might have had a much larger effect because we got so worried about it—a broader impact on trust,” he said. “Even if not that many people were exposed, the narrative that the world is full of fake news, and you can’t trust anything, and other people are being misled about it—well, that might have had a bigger impact than the content itself.” Nyhan had a similar reaction. “There are genuine questions that are really important, but there’s a kind of opportunity cost that is missed here. There’s so much focus on sweeping claims that aren’t actionable, or unfounded claims we can contradict with data, that are crowding out the harms we can demonstrate, and the things we can test, that could make social media better.” He added, “We’re years into this, and we’re still having an uninformed conversation about social media. It’s totally wild.”

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By Roz Chast

By Bruce Headlam

By Helen Shaw

By Louisa Thomas

Social Media: Negative Impacts

Introduction, intrusive advertising, bullying/harassment, privacy threats, works cited.

Social media is a natural phenomenon of modern hi-tech life. The impact of virtual communication is significant as people are often willing to pay more attention to online interaction. Besides, due to the development of technology, social media plays the role of platforms not only for communication but also fir effective advertising and entertainment. Digital content that is published in various groups has a large target audience, which allows influencing people and providing demand for specific goods or services. However, the controversy of the benefits of social media lies in the potentially negative impacts they have. In addition to using specialized web resources for communication, many Internet users utilize them as tools for bullying, intimidation, humiliation, and even violence. An opportunity to remain anonymous opens up significant prospects for cybercriminals, which complicates the task for law enforcement agencies. As a counterargument, today, there are various means of account verification and support services that are ready to ensure the safety of communication on social media and provide users with protection from scammers or blackmailers. Nevertheless, people who are well versed in the digital field can bypass such locks easily. Among the real negative effects that social media have, one can note intrusive advertising, bullying and harassment, privacy threats, fake news, and violence. Social media are gradually losing the function of communication tools and gaining the status of platforms that allow posting any content, including illegal and immoral materials.

Advertising on social media has become so intrusive and widespread that it has ceased to have its promotional function and often causes users more negative emotions than interest. At the same time, it is hard to get rid of advertising completely since many creators of digital content sign contracts with advertisers, and profit depends directly on the activity of the public. However, in case of excess advertising, people feel annoyed and ignore certain offers deliberately. According to Shareef et al., “irritation due to any advertisement can distract consumers from receiving the intended meaning of the statement, and thus can have a negative effect on the value of the advertising” (p. 61). Such a statement is logical because, in their quest for profit, advertisers provoke a natural reaction from the target audience to condemn the excess of promoting content. Customer perception largely depends not only on the essence of specific offers but also on the way marketers deliver them. Therefore, in case of intrusiveness, advertising content on social media causes rejection and is often blocked by users. Shareef et al. confirm this and argue that the context of marketing materials may be more important as a driver to convince the public of the value of specific goods or services (p. 66). The objectivity of such an idea is due to the fact that initially, social media were not intended for advertising, and only the creativity of marketers can be an effective way to attract public attention. Finally, Shareef et al. mention viral marketing as one of the methods of intrusive advertising on social media and note that this form of promotion are relevant only among a narrow target audience. In other words, the more annoying the advertisement is, the lower is the chance to attract a wide range of new consumers. Nevertheless, intrusive advertising is significantly less dangerous than bullying or harassment, which are found in modern social media.

The anonymity factor that may persist when interacting on social media is one of the reasons for bullying that some Internet users are forced to experience. A sense of impunity for aggressive behavior and insults towards another person exacerbate the situation. Moreover, bullying is a trend that is common in children’s communication on social media, which poses a serious threat to the fragile psyche of young users. According to Canty et al., online bullying is a unique phenomenon that has expanded in the virtual space due to the emergence of means to preserve anonymity and, in particular, the ability to go unpunished (p. 52). These factors are most obvious reasons why children, who are often humiliated by their peers on social media, become self-absorbed and cannot figure out the wrongdoers. Harassment is a similar problem, which, however, is characteristic of the adult population and often has a sexual background. Chadha et al. state that modern digital technologies “amplify attacks on gender-based and sexual minorities,” thereby acting as negative consequences of progress (p. 241). This statement assumes that the context of harassment is not limited to one topic. In addition, as findings show, virtual space is a favorable environment for this phenomenon:

Online communities and social media platforms offer many benefits, but they also have become breeding grounds for an assortment of sexist and misogynist behaviors. Importantly, the harassment behaviors evident today differ from off-line and pre-social media-era harassment, given the affordances of these networked spaces, including – but not limited to – the visibility and persistence of content, the anonymity/pseudonymity of users, the spreadability of content, and the multimediality of smartphones (Chadha et al, p. 250).

As a result, the openness of online communication creates a favorable environment for harassment and affects user behavior. Chadha et al. mention requests for personal data and addresses as easy consequences of harassment and note that people who have faced with real threats see this phenomenon as an extremely dangerous and aggressive trend (p. 243). This conclusion is logical because, despite different environments, online and real-life harassment have a common background. In this regard, the issues of privacy and accompanying risks are negative consequences of social media.

Privacy threats are fraught not only with identity theft but also with other problems that may entail anonymous bullying or blackmail. Today, for users of social media, communication options are not limited solely to correspondence. Interlocutors can comment on each other, share links, and perform other actions that go beyond a particular platform. As a result, as Aghasian et al. note, “the distribution of information in real world is almost local, the publically shared information in online social media can be retrieved on the internet anytime, anywhere and by anyone” (p. 13118). The significance of this statement is that virtually no one can be fully protected, and precautions should be taken. Aghasian et al. argue that users should be able to protect their personal data not only from intruders but also from familiar people who can become intermediaries in the leak of information (p. 13118). Those people who face privacy threats may lose their money or valuable digital content through negligence by providing their data to third parties. Due to the widespread use of virtual interaction, various leakage channels are discussed:

For example, a user normally share his/her personal information in Facebook which may pose a privacy risk. This user may share his/her occupation history and background in another site such as LinkedIn. His/her job information has again its own privacy risk, but a combination of the information from two social media accounts can pose the user to higher risk as more information is revealed. Consequently, by considering the overall information from multiple source, a more accurate quantification of the privacy disclosure score can be obtained. (Aghasian et al, p. 13118)

In addition to individual data leakage channels, the forms of privacy risks themselves are numerous. Aghasian et al. mention the threat of government data theft, the disclosure of confidential information about trade transactions, and even religious secrets (13119). Such a variety of risks explains the need for comprehensive protection. Social media, in turn, are a favorable environment for such fraud since the predominant number of Internet users have accounts at least at one specialized site. Wherein, according to Aghasian et al., “one of the challenges in addressing privacy concerns is how to measure the privacy of a user participating in multiple social networks” (p. 13129). The increasing role of social media in people’s lives inevitably leads to threats to personal data, especially if they are stored on different platforms. However, not all negative aspects of virtual communication are aimed at interacting with a particular person, and the example of fake news distributed online is a confirmation.

Social media are becoming the most common sources of news, including both entertaining content and serious political and economic reports, which, however, are not always reliable. One of the main reasons is the desire to attract a large target audience. The greater the news resonance is, the greater is the potential success of a particular media platform. For example, Shu et al. give the following statistics: “62 percent of U.S. adults get news on social media in 2016, while in 2012, only 49 percent reported seeing news on social media” (p. 22). This ratio proves that even the adult population of the country began to use virtual platforms more often. In addition, this growth may be due to the wider use of social media by numerous agencies that have individual accounts. The authors emphasize that fake news as a negative consequence of digital communication is disseminated most actively through social media due to an opportunity to create a public outcry quickly (Shu et al, p. 23). News groups fight for the target audience in any way possible, which entails publications based on unverified or false facts. Spohr explains the reasons and argues that “the producers and curators of fake news content are able to monetize their content through advertising platforms from Facebook and Google” (p. 156). This conclusion is logical since material gain is the most objective explanation for such publications. In addition, the researcher notes that fake news creates a resonance that, regardless of whether it is positive or negative, serves as a means of popularization (Spohr, p. 150). Therefore, the ability to influence the masses opens up prospects for fraudulent actions, although fake news cannot do such harm as violence, which is another negative effect of social media.

Despite the fact that violence in its natural sense cannot be realized online, the manifestations of violent acts through social media are possible. This phenomenon is similar to cyberbullying, but it involves strict measures of intimidation or harassment, while bullying can be superficial. Today, particular attention is paid to youth virtual violence, as children and adolescents are vulnerable groups. As Tripathi notes, “most children and adolescents (65-91%) report little or no involvement in violence over social media platforms” (2). At the same time, the author argues that time spent online is one of the factors on which the risk of violence depends (Tripathi, p. 3). In other words, the longer and more actively a child interacts with other users, the higher is the threat of psychological violence. This statement is reasonable and carries an open message about the need to reduce the access of young users to free online communication. Also, gender-based online violence is another form of bullying, and its consequences can be extremely dangerous from a social perspective:

Gender-based violence online is rampant, ranging from harassment of women who are public figures on social media to stalking intimate partners using purpose-built apps. This is not an issue that can be addressed by individual states alone, nor can it be addressed satisfactorily through legal means. The normalization of misogyny and abuse online both reflects and reinforces systemic inequalities. (Suzor et al, p. 84)

This position on gender-based violence proves the effect that indifference to this problem may cause. According to Suzor et al., most modern social media promote themselves as platforms for expressing individuality and personal opinions, which can be dangerous in conditions of the freedom of speech and anonymity (p. 89). Not only women but also other vulnerable groups can experience the effects of virtual violence, and impunity is one of the most dangerous consequences. The authors are convinced that “deeply entrenched structural features of existing social media platforms often exacerbate the effects of online harassment and abuse” (Suzor et al, p. 94). Thus, social media carry many negative implications, and an opportunity to go unpunished for aggressive or annoying behavior is a severe social omission.

• Aghasian, Erfan, et al. “Scoring Users’ Privacy Disclosure Across Multiple Online Social Networks.” IEEE Access , vol. 5, 2017, pp. 13118-13130.
• Canty, Justin, et al. “The Trouble with Bullying – Deconstructing the Conventional Definition of Bullying for a Child‐Centred Investigation into Children’s Use of Social Media.” Children & Society , vol. 30, no. 1, 2016, pp. 48-58.
• Chadha, Kalyani, et al. “Women’s Responses to Online Harassment.” International Journal of Communication , vol. 14, 2020, pp. 239-257.
• Shareef, Mahmud Akhter, et al. “Social Media Marketing: Comparative Effect of Advertisement Sources.” Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services , vol. 46, 2019, pp. 58-69.
• Shu, Kai, et al. “Fake News Detection on Social Media: A Data Mining Perspective.” ACM SIGKDD Explorations Newsletter , vol. 19, no. 1, 2017, pp. 22-36.
• Spohr, Dominic. “Fake News and Ideological Polarization: Filter Bubbles and Selective Exposure on Social Media.” Business Information Review , vol. 34, no. 3, 2017, pp. 150-160.
• Suzor, Nicolas, et al. “Human Rights by Design: The Responsibilities of Social Media Platforms to Address Gender‐Based Violence Online.” Policy & Internet , vol. 11, no. 1, 2019, pp. 84-103.
• Tripathi, Vivek. “Youth Violence and Social Media.” Journal of Social Sciences , vol. 52, no. 1-3, 2017, pp. 1-7.

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Feb 15, 2023

6 Example Essays on Social Media | Advantages, Effects, and Outlines

Got an essay assignment about the effects of social media we got you covered check out our examples and outlines below.

Social media has become one of our society's most prominent ways of communication and information sharing in a very short time. It has changed how we communicate and has given us a platform to express our views and opinions and connect with others. It keeps us informed about the world around us. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn have brought individuals from all over the world together, breaking down geographical borders and fostering a genuinely global community.

However, social media comes with its difficulties. With the rise of misinformation, cyberbullying, and privacy problems, it's critical to utilize these platforms properly and be aware of the risks. Students in the academic world are frequently assigned essays about the impact of social media on numerous elements of our lives, such as relationships, politics, and culture. These essays necessitate a thorough comprehension of the subject matter, critical thinking, and the ability to synthesize and convey information clearly and succinctly.

But where do you begin? It can be challenging to know where to start with so much information available. Jenni.ai comes in handy here. Jenni.ai is an AI application built exclusively for students to help them write essays more quickly and easily. Jenni.ai provides students with inspiration and assistance on how to approach their essays with its enormous database of sample essays on a variety of themes, including social media. Jenni.ai is the solution you've been looking for if you're experiencing writer's block or need assistance getting started.

So, whether you're a student looking to better your essay writing skills or want to remain up to date on the latest social media advancements, Jenni.ai is here to help. Jenni.ai is the ideal tool for helping you write your finest essay ever, thanks to its simple design, an extensive database of example essays, and cutting-edge AI technology. So, why delay? Sign up for a free trial of Jenni.ai today and begin exploring the worlds of social networking and essay writing!

Want to learn how to write an argumentative essay? Check out these inspiring examples!

We will provide various examples of social media essays so you may get a feel for the genre.

6 Examples of Social Media Essays

Here are 6 examples of Social Media Essays:

The Impact of Social Media on Relationships and Communication

Introduction:.

The way we share information and build relationships has evolved as a direct result of the prevalence of social media in our daily lives. The influence of social media on interpersonal connections and conversation is a hot topic. Although social media has many positive effects, such as bringing people together regardless of physical proximity and making communication quicker and more accessible, it also has a dark side that can affect interpersonal connections and dialogue.

Positive Effects:

Connecting People Across Distances

One of social media's most significant benefits is its ability to connect individuals across long distances. People can use social media platforms to interact and stay in touch with friends and family far away. People can now maintain intimate relationships with those they care about, even when physically separated.

Improved Communication Speed and Efficiency

Additionally, the proliferation of social media sites has accelerated and simplified communication. Thanks to instant messaging, users can have short, timely conversations rather than lengthy ones via email. Furthermore, social media facilitates group communication, such as with classmates or employees, by providing a unified forum for such activities.

Negative Effects:

Decreased Face-to-Face Communication

The decline in in-person interaction is one of social media's most pernicious consequences on interpersonal connections and dialogue. People's reliance on digital communication over in-person contact has increased along with the popularity of social media. Face-to-face interaction has suffered as a result, which has adverse effects on interpersonal relationships and the development of social skills.

Decreased Emotional Intimacy

Another adverse effect of social media on relationships and communication is decreased emotional intimacy. Digital communication lacks the nonverbal cues and facial expressions critical in building emotional connections with others. This can make it more difficult for people to develop close and meaningful relationships, leading to increased loneliness and isolation.

Increased Conflict and Miscommunication

Finally, social media can also lead to increased conflict and miscommunication. The anonymity and distance provided by digital communication can lead to misunderstandings and hurtful comments that might not have been made face-to-face. Additionally, social media can provide a platform for cyberbullying , which can have severe consequences for the victim's mental health and well-being.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the impact of social media on relationships and communication is a complex issue with both positive and negative effects. While social media platforms offer many benefits, such as connecting people across distances and enabling faster and more accessible communication, they also have a dark side that can negatively affect relationships and communication. It is up to individuals to use social media responsibly and to prioritize in-person communication in their relationships and interactions with others.

The Role of Social Media in the Spread of Misinformation and Fake News

Social media has revolutionized the way information is shared and disseminated. However, the ease and speed at which data can be spread on social media also make it a powerful tool for spreading misinformation and fake news. Misinformation and fake news can seriously affect public opinion, influence political decisions, and even cause harm to individuals and communities.

The Pervasiveness of Misinformation and Fake News on Social Media

Misinformation and fake news are prevalent on social media platforms, where they can spread quickly and reach a large audience. This is partly due to the way social media algorithms work, which prioritizes content likely to generate engagement, such as sensational or controversial stories. As a result, false information can spread rapidly and be widely shared before it is fact-checked or debunked.

The Influence of Social Media on Public Opinion

Social media can significantly impact public opinion, as people are likelier to believe the information they see shared by their friends and followers. This can lead to a self-reinforcing cycle, where misinformation and fake news are spread and reinforced, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

The Challenge of Correcting Misinformation and Fake News

Correcting misinformation and fake news on social media can be a challenging task. This is partly due to the speed at which false information can spread and the difficulty of reaching the same audience exposed to the wrong information in the first place. Additionally, some individuals may be resistant to accepting correction, primarily if the incorrect information supports their beliefs or biases.

In conclusion, the function of social media in disseminating misinformation and fake news is complex and urgent. While social media has revolutionized the sharing of information, it has also made it simpler for false information to propagate and be widely believed. Individuals must be accountable for the information they share and consume, and social media firms must take measures to prevent the spread of disinformation and fake news on their platforms.

The Effects of Social Media on Mental Health and Well-Being

Social media has become an integral part of modern life, with billions of people around the world using platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to stay connected with others and access information. However, while social media has many benefits, it can also negatively affect mental health and well-being.

Comparison and Low Self-Esteem

One of the key ways that social media can affect mental health is by promoting feelings of comparison and low self-esteem. People often present a curated version of their lives on social media, highlighting their successes and hiding their struggles. This can lead others to compare themselves unfavorably, leading to feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem.

Cyberbullying and Online Harassment

Another way that social media can negatively impact mental health is through cyberbullying and online harassment. Social media provides a platform for anonymous individuals to harass and abuse others, leading to feelings of anxiety, fear, and depression.

Social Isolation

Despite its name, social media can also contribute to feelings of isolation. At the same time, people may have many online friends but need more meaningful in-person connections and support. This can lead to feelings of loneliness and depression.

Addiction and Overuse

Finally, social media can be addictive, leading to overuse and negatively impacting mental health and well-being. People may spend hours each day scrolling through their feeds, neglecting other important areas of their lives, such as work, family, and self-care.

In sum, social media has positive and negative consequences on one's psychological and emotional well-being. Realizing this, and taking measures like reducing one's social media use, reaching out to loved ones for help, and prioritizing one's well-being, are crucial. In addition, it's vital that social media giants take ownership of their platforms and actively encourage excellent mental health and well-being.

The Use of Social Media in Political Activism and Social Movements

Social media has recently become increasingly crucial in political action and social movements. Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have given people new ways to express themselves, organize protests, and raise awareness about social and political issues.

Raising Awareness and Mobilizing Action

One of the most important uses of social media in political activity and social movements has been to raise awareness about important issues and mobilize action. Hashtags such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter, for example, have brought attention to sexual harassment and racial injustice, respectively. Similarly, social media has been used to organize protests and other political actions, allowing people to band together and express themselves on a bigger scale.

Connecting with like-minded individuals

A second method in that social media has been utilized in political activity and social movements is to unite like-minded individuals. Through social media, individuals can join online groups, share knowledge and resources, and work with others to accomplish shared objectives. This has been especially significant for geographically scattered individuals or those without access to traditional means of political organizing.

Challenges and Limitations

As a vehicle for political action and social movements, social media has faced many obstacles and restrictions despite its many advantages. For instance, the propagation of misinformation and fake news on social media can impede attempts to disseminate accurate and reliable information. In addition, social media corporations have been condemned for censorship and insufficient protection of user rights.

In conclusion, social media has emerged as a potent instrument for political activism and social movements, giving voice to previously unheard communities and galvanizing support for change. Social media presents many opportunities for communication and collaboration. Still, users and institutions must be conscious of the risks and limitations of these tools to promote their responsible and productive usage.

The Potential Privacy Concerns Raised by Social Media Use and Data Collection Practices

With billions of users each day on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, social media has ingrained itself into every aspect of our lives. While these platforms offer a straightforward method to communicate with others and exchange information, they also raise significant concerns over data collecting and privacy. This article will examine the possible privacy issues posed by social media use and data-gathering techniques.

Data Collection and Sharing

The gathering and sharing of personal data are significant privacy issues brought up by social media use. Social networking sites gather user data, including details about their relationships, hobbies, and routines. This information is made available to third-party businesses for various uses, such as marketing and advertising. This can lead to serious concerns about who has access to and uses our personal information.

Lack of Control Over Personal Information

The absence of user control over personal information is a significant privacy issue brought up by social media usage. Social media makes it challenging to limit who has access to and how data is utilized once it has been posted. Sensitive information may end up being extensively disseminated and may be used maliciously as a result.

Personalized Marketing

Social media companies utilize the information they gather about users to target them with adverts relevant to their interests and usage patterns. Although this could be useful, it might also cause consumers to worry about their privacy since they might feel that their personal information is being used without their permission. Furthermore, there are issues with the integrity of the data being used to target users and the possibility of prejudice based on individual traits.

Government Surveillance

Using social media might spark worries about government surveillance. There are significant concerns regarding privacy and free expression when governments in some nations utilize social media platforms to follow and monitor residents.

In conclusion, social media use raises significant concerns regarding data collecting and privacy. While these platforms make it easy to interact with people and exchange information, they also gather a lot of personal information, which raises questions about who may access it and how it will be used. Users should be aware of these privacy issues and take precautions to safeguard their personal information, such as exercising caution when choosing what details to disclose on social media and keeping their information sharing with other firms to a minimum.

The Ethical and Privacy Concerns Surrounding Social Media Use And Data Collection

Our use of social media to communicate with loved ones, acquire information, and even conduct business has become a crucial part of our everyday lives. The extensive use of social media does, however, raise some ethical and privacy issues that must be resolved. The influence of social media use and data collecting on user rights, the accountability of social media businesses, and the need for improved regulation are all topics that will be covered in this article.

Effect on Individual Privacy:

Social networking sites gather tons of personal data from their users, including delicate information like search history, location data, and even health data. Each user's detailed profile may be created with this data and sold to advertising or used for other reasons. Concerns regarding the privacy of personal information might arise because social media businesses can use this data to target users with customized adverts.

Additionally, individuals might need to know how much their personal information is being gathered and exploited. Data breaches or the unauthorized sharing of personal information with other parties may result in instances where sensitive information is exposed. Users should be aware of the privacy rules of social media firms and take precautions to secure their data.

Responsibility of Social Media Companies:

Social media firms should ensure that they responsibly and ethically gather and use user information. This entails establishing strong security measures to safeguard sensitive information and ensuring users are informed of what information is being collected and how it is used.

Many social media businesses, nevertheless, have come under fire for not upholding these obligations. For instance, the Cambridge Analytica incident highlighted how Facebook users' personal information was exploited for political objectives without their knowledge. This demonstrates the necessity of social media corporations being held responsible for their deeds and ensuring that they are safeguarding the security and privacy of their users.

Better Regulation Is Needed

There is a need for tighter regulation in this field, given the effect, social media has on individual privacy as well as the obligations of social media firms. The creation of laws and regulations that ensure social media companies are gathering and using user information ethically and responsibly, as well as making sure users are aware of their rights and have the ability to control the information that is being collected about them, are all part of this.

Additionally, legislation should ensure that social media businesses are held responsible for their behavior, for example, by levying fines for data breaches or the unauthorized use of personal data. This will provide social media businesses with a significant incentive to prioritize their users' privacy and security and ensure they are upholding their obligations.

In conclusion, social media has fundamentally changed how we engage and communicate with one another, but this increased convenience also raises several ethical and privacy issues. Essential concerns that need to be addressed include the effect of social media on individual privacy, the accountability of social media businesses, and the requirement for greater regulation to safeguard user rights. We can make everyone's online experience safer and more secure by looking more closely at these issues.

In conclusion, social media is a complex and multifaceted topic that has recently captured the world's attention. With its ever-growing influence on our lives, it's no surprise that it has become a popular subject for students to explore in their writing. Whether you are writing an argumentative essay on the impact of social media on privacy, a persuasive essay on the role of social media in politics, or a descriptive essay on the changes social media has brought to the way we communicate, there are countless angles to approach this subject.

However, writing a comprehensive and well-researched essay on social media can be daunting. It requires a thorough understanding of the topic and the ability to articulate your ideas clearly and concisely. This is where Jenni.ai comes in. Our AI-powered tool is designed to help students like you save time and energy and focus on what truly matters - your education. With Jenni.ai , you'll have access to a wealth of examples and receive personalized writing suggestions and feedback.

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Just How Harmful Is Social Media? Our Experts Weigh-In.

A recent investigation by the Wall Street Journal revealed that Facebook was aware of mental health risks linked to the use of its Instagram app but kept those findings secret. Internal research by the social media giant found that Instagram worsened body image issues for one in three teenage girls, and all teenage users of the app linked it to experiences of anxiety and depression. It isn’t the first evidence of social media’s harms. Watchdog groups have identified Facebook and Instagram as avenues for cyberbullying , and reports have linked TikTok to dangerous and antisocial behavior, including a recent spate of school vandalism .

As social media has proliferated worldwide—Facebook has 2.85 billion users—so too have concerns over how the platforms are affecting individual and collective wellbeing. Social media is criticized for being addictive by design and for its role in the spread of misinformation on critical issues from vaccine safety to election integrity, as well as the rise of right-wing extremism. Social media companies, and many users, defend the platforms as avenues for promoting creativity and community-building. And some research has pushed back against the idea that social media raises the risk for depression in teens . So just how healthy or unhealthy is social media?

Two experts from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia Psychiatry share their insights into one crucial aspect of social media’s influence—its effect on the mental health of young people and adults. Deborah Glasofer , associate professor of psychology in psychiatry, conducts psychotherapy development research for adults with eating disorders and teaches about cognitive behavioral therapy. She is the co-author of the book Eating Disorders: What Everyone Needs to Know. Claude Mellins , Professor of medical psychology in the Departments of Psychiatry and Sociomedical Sciences, studies wellbeing among college and graduate students, among other topics, and serves as program director of CopeColumbia, a peer support program for Columbia faculty and staff whose mental health has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. She co-led the SHIFT research study to reduce sexual violence among undergraduates. Both use social media.

What do we know about the mental health risks of social media use?

Mellins : Facebook and Instagram and other social media platforms are important sources of socialization and relationship-building for many young people. Although there are important benefits, social media can also provide platforms for bullying and exclusion, unrealistic expectations about body image and sources of popularity, normalization of risk-taking behaviors, and can be detrimental to mental health. Girls and young people who identify as sexual and gender minorities can be especially vulnerable as targets. Young people’s brains are still developing, and as individuals, young people are developing their own identities. What they see on social media can define what is expected in ways that is not accurate and that can be destructive to identity development and self-image. Adolescence is a time of risk-taking, which is both a strength and a vulnerability. Social media can exacerbate risks, as we have seen played out in the news. 

Although there are important benefits, social media can also provide platforms for bullying and exclusion, unrealistic expectations about body image and sources of popularity, normalization of risk-taking behaviors, and can be detrimental to mental health. – Claude Mellins

Glasofer : For those vulnerable to developing an eating disorder, social media may be especially unhelpful because it allows people to easily compare their appearance to their friends, to celebrities, even older images of themselves. Research tells us that how much someone engages with photo-related activities like posting and sharing photos on Facebook or Instagram is associated with less body acceptance and more obsessing about appearance. For adolescent girls in particular, the more time they spend on social media directly relates to how much they absorb the idea that being thin is ideal, are driven to try to become thin, and/or overly scrutinize their own bodies. Also, if someone is vulnerable to an eating disorder, they may be especially attracted to seeking out unhelpful information—which is all too easy to find on social media.

Are there any upsides to social media?

Mellins : For young people, social media provides a platform to help them figure out who they are. For very shy or introverted young people, it can be a way to meet others with similar interests. During the pandemic, social media made it possible for people to connect in ways when in-person socialization was not possible.  Social support and socializing are critical influences on coping and resilience. Friends we couldn’t see in person were available online and allowed us important points of connection. On the other hand, fewer opportunities for in-person interactions with friends and family meant less of a real-world check on some of the negative influences of social media.

Whether it’s social media or in person, a good peer group makes the difference. A group of friends that connects over shared interests like art or music, and is balanced in their outlook on eating and appearance, is a positive. – Deborah Glasofer

Glasofer : Whether it’s social media or in person, a good peer group makes the difference. A group of friends that connects over shared interests like art or music, and is balanced in their outlook on eating and appearance, is a positive. In fact, a good peer group online may be protective against negative in-person influences. For those with a history of eating disorders, there are body-positive and recovery groups on social media. Some people find these groups to be supportive; for others, it’s more beneficial to move on and pursue other interests.

Is there a healthy way to be on social media?

Mellins : If you feel social media is a negative experience, you might need a break. Disengaging with social media permanently is more difficult­—especially for young people. These platforms are powerful tools for connecting and staying up-to-date with friends and family. Social events, too. If you’re not on social media then you’re reliant on your friends to reach out to you personally, which doesn’t always happen. It’s complicated.

Glasofer : When you find yourself feeling badly about yourself in relation to what other people are posting about themselves, then social media is not doing you any favors. If there is anything on social media that is negatively affecting your actions or your choices­—for example, if you’re starting to eat restrictively or exercise excessively—then it’s time to reassess. Parents should check-in with their kids about their lives on social media. In general, I recommend limiting social media— creating boundaries that are reasonable and work for you—so you can be present with people in your life. I also recommend social media vacations. It’s good to take the time to notice the difference between the virtual world and the real world.

Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Social Media — Negative Effects Of Social Media: Relationships And Communication

Negative Effects of Social Media: Relationships and Communication

• Categories: Effects of Social Media Negative Impact of Technology Social Media

About this sample

Words: 904 |

Published: Mar 14, 2019

Words: 904 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

A Good Hook Examples for “Why Social Media is Bad” Essay

• A Modern Dilemma: In an era dominated by likes, shares, and filters, have you ever paused to consider the darker side of social media? Join me as we unveil the reasons why this digital phenomenon may be more harmful than we realize.
• An Eye-Opening Statistic: Did you know that the average person spends nearly two and a half hours on social media every day? Let’s dive into the implications of this staggering statistic and why it’s cause for concern.
• A Thought-Provoking Quote: Plato once warned, “At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.” But in the age of social media, is the touch of love being replaced by the click of a button? Explore with me how these platforms can dilute genuine human connections.
• A Personal Awakening: As someone who has experienced the negative effects of social media firsthand, I invite you to join me in reflecting on the ways in which these platforms may be undermining our mental health, relationships, and overall well-being.
• A Societal Wake-Up Call: Social media is no longer just a personal choice; it’s a societal force. Discover how it has reshaped our culture, influenced our behaviors, and potentially posed a threat to the fabric of our society.

Works Cited

• Buunk, B. P., & Dijkstra, P. (2017). Gender differences in jealousy: Men are more jealous about physical infidelity than emotional infidelity. Evolutionary Psychology, 15(1), 1474704916680157.
• Eslit, N. (2017, May 5). Effects of social media on communication skills. TechJury. https://techjury.net/blog/effects-of-social-media-on-communication-skills/
• Phoon, A. (2017, March 8). Social media is bad for communication skills and replaces need for human interaction. Medium. https://medium.com/@alphoenix/social-media-is-bad-for-communication-skills-and-replaces-need-for-human-interaction-d78b1c2d1e1b
• Wikerson, M. (2017). The impact of social media on relationships. Marshall Digital Scholar, 1. https://mds.marshall.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=student_scholarship
• Wu, A. M. S., Cheung, V. I., & Ku, L. (2013). Continual and problematic internet use as predictors of low self-esteem, depression, and suicidal ideation among Chinese adolescents. Journal of Adolescent Health, 52(2), S122-S127.
• Wu, Y. Q., Li, J., & Li, X. (2020). Cyberbullying victimization and depressive symptoms: The mediating role of resilience and the moderating role of social support in Chinese adolescents. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 2071.
• Zhang, S., Li, X., Chen, H., & Liu, Y. (2017). A longitudinal study of the relationship between problematic internet use and subjective well-being among college students. Social Indicators Research, 133(1), 345-355.

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Social Media Essay: Benefits and Drawbacks of Social Networking Sites

The advent of various social media channels has revolutionized the internet landscape by introducing us to global networking. Today, an individual can connect with another in a completely different part of this world just in a matter of seconds. We will take you through various notions and opinions associated with social media and how they impact our everyday lives. Also, there are some incredible tips to give you a better insight into how to write a social media essay.

Sep 03 2020 ● 8 min read

Table of Contents

What is social media essay, how do you write a social media essay, structure of social media essay, various tones of a social media essay, incorporate an attractive topic.

As you know, an social media essay is a piece of writing that is used to introduce an essential topic to the world with its underlying advantages and disadvantages. These aspects are driven solely by facts and should not contain the opinions of the writers. It is drafted to give others a better understanding of the subject in hand.

No matter which subject it pertains to, an essay ends with a conclusion where the writers are permitted to give their opinion after weighing the advantages and disadvantages.

Similarly, a social media essay is written to appreciate the positive aspects and highlight the negative impacts of social media in this time and day. The conclusions include the analysis of the two elements by the writers in their own lives and give an open-ended point of view. Depending upon the essay writer or paper writing service , the decision can be decisive, too, but that is not encouraged.

Today, the use of social networks, whether it is Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, or LinkedIn, has increased exponentially. An average millennial spends 2 hours and 58 minutes per day on social media platforms like Facebook. While some say that the platform is super-informative, others argue that all the information gathered on this platform is trivial and doesn't justify long hours invested in the use of social media.

The above arguments make using social media by individuals with a debatable issue, and this is why a lot of students are required to write an essay on social media. So, here are some incredible tips to help you out in writing an essay on social media even if you don't have marketing skills .

A classic essay consists of 3 parts – the introduction, main body, and the conclusion.

• The Introduction

As you introduce the main topic, always begin with how it is relevant to the current scenario. You can do this by providing some background information. The information can be made richer by adding some reliable stats and data . Once you have established the topic, you need to give a strong thesis statement of the hypothesis on which your essay is based.

The thesis statement in your essay should be precise and debatable. If not, the arguments that you are going to put forward in the essay would make no sense.

The main body of your text should consist of logical arguments in relevance to your hypothesis. Make sure you put forward one statement in one paragraph and start a new one with another section. This will make your essay look more organized.

Also, when developing ideas, only include the ones you can write clearly about. If not, avoid them. Make sure that the essay develops coherently.

To conclude the essay about social media, bring back your hypothesis, and state how the aspects you discussed earlier support or nullify it. Make it a point to summarize all ideas, but do not start adding more ideas when you are about to conclude. You can now give an, ideally, open end to your essay.

A great conclusion is the one that provokes thought and will make your readers question the use of social media in their everyday lives.

Also, remember that essays do not have to include pros and cons always. They can either be full of pros or cons or both, depending upon your hypothesis. Just ensure they are relevant.

You might believe that an essay is an essay, and two of them would be similar, but that's a misconception. Different essays have varying tones depending on how the author is treating the thesis statement through the main body of the text. Here are a few examples of essays on social media in different tones.

• Sample of a Persuasive Essay

If you are asked to write an academic paper about the effects of social media on the mental health of teenagers and young adults, you should make it persuasive. For this, just writing about the topic is not enough. It would help if you had an impactful thesis, followed by powerful arguments to support or question your theory.

The perils associated with social media addiction are forcing parents and "grown-ups" to throw their benefits in bad light today. In the race to become best in academics and non-academic activities, people are losing their grip on how social networks bring people together. They empower individuals with knowledge about various cultures and languages, which might not have been possible otherwise.

Social media sites can be addictive, and students might waste their formative years scrolling through the trivial feed and gain nothing but superficial knowledge. But that is just because neither parents nor the school is encouraging positive social media behavior. If these institutions start offering tips to students to limit and utilize their time on social media , one would be amazed to see their achievements.

Is social media a catalyst for the downfall of student life? Well, social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and more are teeming with inspirational achievers and content creators who go the extra mile to share their stories and inspire students. If the children are taught to see their access to social media as an opportunity to grow rather than a competition for likes and followers, they are bound to work harder and achieve goals that seemed insurmountable earlier.

• Sample of Negative Essay about social media

If you have been asked to highlight the negative aspects of social media, your teacher does not mean that you have to cross all limits to present the use of social media in a bad light. Instead, what they are asking for is some logical and believable arguments that tell us why social media is harmful to society.

Social media is destroying family links by creating a virtual shell for each individual, which dissociates them with their own parents and siblings. The kids are adversely affected by increased access to social media if parents are always indulged in their devices and ignore them. Eventually, even kids start using tools to connect to other people, ignoring their family members.

Since kids and teenagers are the most impressionable age groups, they start believing that everything that glitters on social media platforms is gold, and they become materialistic. Their lives start revolving around likes, comments, and followers/subscribers. No matter whether their minds are prepared for such exposure or not, social media exposes them to the best and the worst about this world, which might turn them into rebels. They start valuing their online friends more than their offline lives and go to unimaginable extents to keep them entertained.

So, parents and elders need to pay attention to their children and limit their social media use so that they can learn to form real relationships and values.

• Weighing the pros and cons

Another way in which you can present your social media essay is by comparing the positive and negative aspects associated with it. In such essays, the conclusion is better left open for the readers to decide their own take on social media.

One cannot argue that social media has taken the world by storm by allowing like-minded individuals to connect and share their experiences with the world. You can use these platforms to make new friends and discover the ones who have lost touch. You can talk to everyone on your friend list and share your content on these channels to become a part of the creators' community. There is no dearth for talent on social media and its admirers.

On the other hand, if you use social media sites for long stretches of time in one go, you run the risk of addiction. Gradually, a social media addict starts to build a cocoon for themselves, which they find hard to step out of. This leads to a disconnect between you and the family you already have and love. One might feel too confined yet comfortable in their space that they have no urge left to step out, pushing them towards social seclusion, or worse – depression.

When you flip the coin again, you will discover that social media has become an incredible platform for small businesses to grow and earn good profits . The grass-root companies do not have to invest much for advertising and promotion or even own an establishment. All they have to do is to create a grassroots marketing strategy for themselves, and their brand will start selling in no time!

In the end, social media is a game-changer on the World Wide Web. It allows people to connect with the virtual world with the risk of disconnecting with the real world. Then again, businesses are doing well on these platforms. There are indeed two sides to social media, one positive and another negative, and it is up to you which one you lean towards more.

• Argumentative social media essay

A challenging but equally exciting type of essay on social media you should know about is an argumentative essay. It is often written when you are tasked with altering the point of view of the reader, which is of a completely opposite belief. Here is a sample for your better understanding.

Social networks have an uncertain future with the string impression they leave on users, especially the younger generations. Parents panic with the first mention of social media sites by their children and learning about their presence on these platforms because they are afraid of cyberbullying. They do not want their children to get cat-fished by some stranger on Reddit when they are not around.

Moreover, social media platforms are the reason why several individuals are losing their confidential data every day to corporate houses. These businesses are using the information to bug users with ads about stuff they do not want to buy.

If such instances carry on, the day is not far when the government will start to keep checks on the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other channels. Massive surveillance will be imposed on these sites to prevent malicious minds from harming innocent teenagers physically or by hacking into their systems. So, before you get a chance to ask " have I been hacked ", know that someone is taking care of it.

Having an attractive topic for your social media essay does not mean using poetic words in it. You should have an issue relevant to the current scenario. In the process of selecting a fascinating topic, do not forget to keep it within the extents of your knowledge. If it becomes too complicated for you to write about, you will be stuck when coming up with arguments and ideas.

The perfect topic would be the one which offers good potential for research and is interesting for the readers too. Even if you present profound arguments about such topics, they should be in a logical, comprehensible, and readable format for people to understand easily.

Writing a social media essay is no cakewalk, whether you are a high-school student or university student. All you need to do is, structuralize it properly, be clear with the ideas and arguments you are planning to present, pick the tone of your essay, and began writing. Do not forget to top your essay up with a catchy topic so that your entire hard work doesn't fall flat.

Published on Sep 03 2020

Gintaras is an experienced marketing professional who is always eager to explore the most up-to-date issues in data marketing. Having worked as an SEO manager at several companies, he's a valuable addition to the Whatagraph writers' pool.

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Social Media: Negative and Positive Impacts

It is evident that social media has negative and positive impacts on the lives of many people. MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and other social media networks have brought changes to the communication industry. This can be attributed to advanced technology and innovation. Equally, many people are conducting research with an aim of contributing to social media. In my opinion, social media is part of the human life in the 21st century.

In fact, it has reached a point where people cannot do without social media. However, social media has two contradicting perspectives. One of the perspectives views social media as an aspect that has made life easy as compared to the last century. On the other hand, some people view social media as an aspect that has made more harm than good to society. Thus, this paper seeks to bring out the two aspects in a clear manner.

Social media has enabled people to get connected regardless of the distance between them. For instance, social media has facilitated communication between people in different continents. It has been determined to be the best and cheapest way of communication.

Unlike the use of cellphones, there is an opportunity for video conferencing. Research shows that the only cost incurred encompasses internet services. Once a person is connected to a reliable internet service provider, they can communicate with their friends, peers, family members and other people in any part of the world.

Social media has enabled many people to get connected in many parts of the world. Equally, remarkable business operations have been accomplished through social media. In the same way, social media has enabled people that had lost contact to reunite.

Besides, people need not travel because they can use video conferencing to communicate via social media. Thus, travel costs and the burden associated with traveling have been eliminated by the use of social media.

Equally, social media is used in marketing and advertising activities. This presents customers and consumers an opportunity to make a choice of products that they need. Additionally, social media has seen to it that there is proper dissemination of information of consumer products. Thus, it has seen the proliferation of business activities across the globe.

On the other hand, some people view social media as a bad thing. In fact, some people have associated social media with negative aspects. For instance, they claim that social media makes people lazy. Before social media was invented, people travelled so that they would meet with other people. In most cases, people would walk to the place where they agreed to meet.

Equally, after meeting, some people would decide to take a walk. This made them active and made their bodies healthy. However, the introduction of social media brought about many changes. People became lazy because they would communicate at the comfort of their beds and couches.

Further, this made them have poor health. In fact, most users of social media do not travel or even go for walks. Hence, the body does not burn the extra calories resulting in excess weight gain and the associated medical conditions.

Also, some schools of thoughts say that social media has isolated people rather than connecting them. In my opinion, this is true. For instance, people do not physically meet with their relatives, neighbors, friends, and even peers.

Social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Skype detach people instead of connecting them. People spend most of their time chatting over the social media at the expense of physical meeting. This underpins isolation and personal contact is lost.

There are other times that people misunderstand each other. Research shows that some of them find solace in the use of social media. People whose relationships are not working tend to run to the social media for help. Social media has become a channel of airing their views and sentiments. They are consoled and encouraged on the social media by other social media users.

Equally, some seek fame on the social media. Likewise, some people upload photos of magnificent places and even outfits that they love with the main aim of seeking attention. True to that, they get attention from friends and other users of social media.

However, this does not solve their problems. In fact, the situation worsens. After going offline, they find themselves in the same situation. Thus, they are not even ready to reconcile with their loved ones. Besides, social media has facilitated infidelity and other social evils encompassing marriages. It has facilitated cheating that has led to sour relationships among lovers and couples.

Others social evils that have been associated with social media include sharing of illegal or unethical content. For instance, some users of social media share pornographic material on the internet. Similarly, drug and child trafficking have been associated with social media. Communication relating to the above unethical practices has been achieved through the use of social media networks owing to their security aspects.

In summary, social media is an invention that has made communication and dissemination of information easy. However, it has been associated with negative aspect and social evils. Therefore, people have the responsibility of doing the right thing or ethical things when using the social media.

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IvyPanda. (2023, November 23). Social Media: Negative and Positive Impacts. https://ivypanda.com/essays/social-media-4/

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1. IvyPanda . "Social Media: Negative and Positive Impacts." November 23, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/social-media-4/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Social Media: Negative and Positive Impacts." November 23, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/social-media-4/.

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64% of Americans say social media have a mostly negative effect on the way things are going in the U.S. today

About two-thirds of Americans (64%) say social media have a mostly negative effect on the way things are going in the country today, according to a Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults conducted July 13-19, 2020. Just one-in-ten Americans say social media sites have a mostly positive effect on the way things are going, and one-quarter say these platforms have a neither positive nor negative effect.

Those who have a negative view of the impact of social media mention, in particular, misinformation and the hate and harassment they see on social media. They also have concerns about users believing everything they see or read – or not being sure about what to believe. Additionally, they bemoan social media’s role in fomenting partisanship and polarization, the creation of echo chambers, and the perception that these platforms oppose President Donald Trump and conservatives.

This is part of a series of posts on Americans’ experiences with and attitudes about the role of social media in politics today. Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand how Americans think about the impact of social media on the way things are currently going in the country. To explore this, we surveyed 10,211 U.S. adults from July 13 to 19, 2020. Everyone who took part is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology .

Here are the questions used for this report, along with responses, and its methodology.

The public’s views on the positive and negative effect of social media vary widely by political affiliation and ideology. Across parties, larger shares describe social media’s impact as mostly negative rather than mostly positive, but this belief is particularly widespread among Republicans.

Roughly half of Democrats and independents who lean toward the Democratic Party (53%) say social media have a largely negative effect on the way things are going in the country today, compared with 78% of Republicans and leaners who say the same. Democrats are about three times as likely as Republicans to say these sites have a mostly positive impact (14% vs. 5%) and twice as likely to say social media have neither a positive nor negative effect (32% vs. 16%).

Among Democrats, there are no differences in these views along ideological lines. Republicans, however, are slightly more divided by ideology. Conservative Republicans are more likely than moderate to liberal Republicans to say social media have a mostly negative effect (83% vs. 70%). Conversely, moderate to liberal Republicans are more likely than their conservative counterparts to say social media have a mostly positive (8% vs. 4%) or neutral impact (21% vs. 13%).

Younger adults are more likely to say social media have a positive impact on the way things are going in the country and are less likely to believe social media sites have a negative impact compared with older Americans. For instance, 15% of those ages 18 to 29 say social media have a mostly positive effect on the way things are going in the country today, while just 8% of those over age 30 say the same. Americans 18 to 29 are also less likely than those 30 and older to say social media have a mostly negative impact (54% vs. 67%).

However, views among younger adults vary widely by partisanship. For example, 43% of Democrats ages 18 to 29 say social media have a mostly negative effect on the way things are going, compared with about three-quarters (76%) of Republicans in the same age group. In addition, these youngest Democrats are more likely than their Republican counterparts to say social media platforms have a mostly positive (20% vs. 6%) or neither a positive nor negative effect (35% vs. 18%) on the way things are going in the country today. This partisan division persists among those 30 and older, but most of the gaps are smaller than those seen within the younger cohort.

Views on the negative impact of social media vary only slightly between social media users (63%) and non-users (69%), with non-users being slightly more likely to say these sites have a negative impact. However, among social media users, those who say some or a lot of what they see on social media is related to politics are more likely than those who say a little or none of what they see on these sites is related to politics to think social media platforms have a mostly negative effect on the way things are going in the country today (65% vs. 50%).

Past Pew Research Center studies have drawn attention to the complicated relationships Americans have with social media. In 2019, a Center survey found that 72% of U.S. adults reported using at least one social media site. And while these platforms have been used for political and social activism and engagement , they also raise concerns among portions of the population. Some think political ads on these sites are unacceptable, and many object to the way social media platforms have been weaponized to spread made-up news and engender online harassment . At the same time, a share of users credit something they saw on social media with changing their views about a political or social issue. And growing shares of Americans who use these sites also report feeling worn out by political posts and discussions on social media.

Those who say social media have negative impact cite concerns about misinformation, hate, censorship; those who see positive impact cite being informed

When asked to elaborate on the main reason why they think social media have a mostly negative effect on the way things are going in this country today, roughly three-in-ten (28%) respondents who hold that view mention the spreading of misinformation and made-up news. Smaller shares reference examples of hate, harassment, conflict and extremism (16%) as a main reason, and 11% mention a perceived lack of critical thinking skills among many users – voicing concern about people who use these sites believing everything they see or read or being unsure about what to believe.

In written responses that mention misinformation or made-up news, a portion of adults often include references to the spread, speed and amount of false information available on these platforms. (Responses are lightly edited for spelling, style and readability.) For example:

“They allow for the rampant spread of misinformation.” –Man, 36

“False information is spread at lightning speed – and false information never seems to go away.” –Woman, 71

“Social media is rampant with misinformation both about the coronavirus and political and social issues, and the social media organizations do not do enough to combat this.” –Woman, 26

“Too much misinformation and lies are promoted from unsubstantiated sources that lead people to disregard vetted and expert information.” –Woman, 64

People’s responses that centered around hate, harassment, conflict or extremism in some way often mention concerns that social media contributes to incivility online tied to anonymity, the spreading of hate-filled ideas or conspiracies, or the incitement of violence.

“People say incendiary, stupid and thoughtless things online with the perception of anonymity that they would never say to someone else in person.” –Man, 53

“Promotes hate and extreme views and in some cases violence.” –Man, 69

“People don’t respect others’ opinions. They take it personally and try to fight with the other group. You can’t share your own thoughts on controversial topics without fearing someone will try to hurt you or your family.” –Woman, 65

“Social media is where people go to say some of the most hateful things they can imagine.” –Man, 46

About one-in-ten responses talk about how people on social media can be easily confused and believe everything they see or read or are not sure about what to believe.

“People believe everything they see and don’t verify its accuracy.” –Man, 75

“Many people can’t distinguish between real and fake news and information and share it without doing proper research …” –Man, 32

“You don’t know what’s fake or real.” –Man, 49

“It is hard to discern truth.” –Woman, 80

“People cannot distinguish fact from opinion, nor can they critically evaluate sources. They tend to believe everything they read, and when they see contradictory information (particularly propaganda), they shut down and don’t appear to trust any information.” –Man, 42

Smaller shares complain that the platforms censor content or allow material that is biased (9%), too negative (7%) or too steeped in partisanship and division (6%).

“Social media is censoring views that are different than theirs. There is no longer freedom of speech.” –Woman, 42

“It creates more divide between people with different viewpoints.” –Man, 37

“Focus is on negativity and encouraging angry behavior rather than doing something to help people and make the world better.” –Woman, 66

Far fewer Americans – 10% – say they believe social media has a mostly positive effect on the way things are going in the country today. When those who hold these positive views were asked about the main reason why they thought this, one-quarter say these sites help people stay informed and aware (25%) and about one-in-ten say they allow for communication, connection and community-building (12%).

“We are now aware of what’s happening around the world due to the social media outlet.” –Woman, 28

“It brings awareness to important issues that affect all Americans.” –Man, 60

“It brings people together; folks can see that there are others who share the same/similar experience, which is really important, especially when so many of us are isolated.” –Woman, 36

“Helps people stay connected and share experiences. I also get advice and recommendations via social media.” –Man, 32

“It keeps people connected who might feel lonely and alone if there did not have social media …” – Man, 65

Smaller shares tout social media as a place where marginalized people and groups have a voice (8%) and as a venue for activism and social movements (7%).

“Spreading activism and info and inspiring participation in Black Lives Matter.” –Woman, 31

“It gives average people an opportunity to voice and share their opinions.” –Man, 67

“Visibility – it has democratized access and provided platforms for voices who have been and continue to be oppressed.” –Woman, 27

Note: This is part of a series of blog posts leading up to the 2020 presidential election that explores the role of social media in politics today. Here are the questions used for this report, along with responses, and its methodology.

Other posts in this series:

• 23% of users in U.S. say social media led them to change views on an issue; some cite Black Lives Matter
• 54% of Americans say social media companies shouldn’t allow any political ads
• 55% of U.S. social media users say they are ‘worn out’ by political posts and discussions
• Americans think social media can help build movements, but can also be a distraction
• Misinformation
• Misinformation Online
• National Conditions
• Political Discourse
• Politics Online
• Social Media

Brooke Auxier is a former research associate focusing on internet and technology at Pew Research Center .

Majorities in most countries surveyed say social media is good for democracy

­most americans favor restrictions on false information, violent content online, as ai spreads, experts predict the best and worst changes in digital life by 2035, social media seen as mostly good for democracy across many nations, but u.s. is a major outlier, the role of alternative social media in the news and information environment, most popular.

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• Tween and teen health

Teens and social media use: What's the impact?

Social media is a term for internet sites and apps that you can use to share content you've created. Social media also lets you respond to content that others post. That can include pictures, text, reactions or comments on posts by others, and links to information.

Online sharing within social media sites helps many people stay in touch with friends or connect with new ones. And that may be more important for teenagers than other age groups. Friendships help teens feel supported and play a role in forming their identities. So, it's only natural to wonder how social media use might affect teens.

Social media is a big part of daily life for lots of teenagers.

How big? A 2022 survey of 13- to 17-year-olds offers a clue. Based on about 1,300 responses, the survey found that 35% of teens use at least one of five social media platforms more than several times a day. The five social media platforms are: YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.

Social media doesn't affect all teens the same way. Use of social media is linked with healthy and unhealthy effects on mental health. These effects vary from one teenager to another. Social media effects on mental health depend on things such as:

• What a teen sees and does online.
• The amount of time spent online.
• Psychological factors, such as maturity level and any preexisting mental health conditions.
• Personal life circumstances, including cultural, social and economic factors.

Here are the general pros and cons of teen social media use, along with tips for parents.

Healthy social media

Social media lets teens create online identities, chat with others and build social networks. These networks can provide teens with support from other people who have hobbies or experiences in common. This type of support especially may help teens who:

• Lack social support offline or are lonely.
• Are going through a stressful time.
• Belong to groups that often get marginalized, such as racial minorities, the LGBTQ community and those who are differently abled.
• Have long-term medical conditions.

Sometimes, social media platforms help teens:

• Express themselves.
• Connect with other teens locally and across long distances.
• Learn how other teens cope with challenging life situations and mental health conditions.
• View or take part in moderated chat forums that encourage talking openly about topics such as mental health.
• Ask for help or seek healthcare for symptoms of mental health conditions.

These healthy effects of social media can help teens in general. They also may help teens who are prone to depression stay connected to others. And social media that's humorous or distracting may help a struggling teen cope with a challenging day.

Unhealthy social media

Social media use may have negative effects on some teens. It might:

• Distract from homework, exercise and family activities.
• Disrupt sleep.
• Lead to information that is biased or not correct.
• Become a means to spread rumors or share too much personal information.
• Lead some teens to form views about other people's lives or bodies that aren't realistic.
• Expose some teens to online predators, who might try to exploit or extort them.
• Expose some teens to cyberbullying, which can raise the risk of mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression.

What's more, certain content related to risk-taking, and negative posts or interactions on social media, have been linked with self-harm and rarely, death.

The risks of social media use are linked with various factors. One may be how much time teens spend on these platforms.

In a study focusing on 12- to 15-year-olds in the United States, spending three hours a day using social media was linked to a higher risk of mental health concerns. That study was based on data collected in 2013 and 2014 from more than 6,500 participants.

Another study looked at data on more than 12,000 teens in England between the ages of 13 to 16. The researchers found that using social media more than three times a day predicted poor mental health and well-being in teens.

But not all research has found a link between time spent on social media and mental health risks in teens.

How teens use social media also might determine its impact. For instance, viewing certain types of content may raise some teens' mental health risks. This could include content that depicts:

• Illegal acts.
• Self-harm or harm to other people.
• Encouragement of habits tied to eating disorders, such as purging or restrictive eating.

These types of content may be even more risky for teens who already have a mental health condition. Being exposed to discrimination, hate or cyberbullying on social media also can raise the risk of anxiety or depression.

What teens share about themselves on social media also matters.

With the teenage brain, it's common to make a choice before thinking it through. So, teens might post something when they're angry or upset, and regret it later. That's known as stress posting.

Teens who post content also are at risk of sharing sexual photos or highly personal stories. This can lead to teens being bullied, harassed or even blackmailed.

Protecting your teen

You can take steps to help your teens use social media responsibly and limit some of the possible negative effects.

Use these tips:

Set rules and limits as needed. This helps prevent social media from getting in the way of activities, sleep, meals or homework.

For example, you could make a rule about not using social media until homework is done. Or you could set a daily time limit for social media use.

You also could choose to keep social media off-limits during certain times. These times might include during family meals and an hour before bed.

Set an example by following these rules yourself. And let your teen know what the consequences will be if your rules aren't followed.

• Manage any challenging behaviors. If your teen's social media use starts to challenge your rules or your sense of what's appropriate, talk with your teen about it. You also could connect with parents of your teen's friends or take a look at your teen's internet history.
• Turn on privacy settings. This can help keep your teen from sharing personal information or data that your teen didn't mean to share. Each of your teen's social media accounts likely has privacy setting that can be changed.

Monitor your teen's accounts. The American Psychological Association recommends you regularly review your child's social media use during the early teen years.

One way to monitor is to follow or "friend" your child's social accounts. As your teen gets older, you can choose to monitor your teen's social media less. Your teen's maturity level can help guide your decision.

Have regular talks with your teen about social media. These talks give you chances to ask how social media has been making your teen feel. Encourage your teen to let you know if something online worries or bothers your teen.

Regular talks offer you chances to give your child advice about social media too. For example, you can teach your teen to question whether content is accurate. You also can explain that social media is full of images about beauty and lifestyle that are not realistic.

• Be a role model for your teen. You might want to tell your child about your own social media habits. That can help you set a good example and keep your regular talks from being one-sided.

Explain what's not OK. Remind your teen that it's hurtful to gossip, spread rumors, bully or harm someone's reputation — online or otherwise.

Also remind your teen not to share personal information with strangers online. This includes people's addresses, telephone numbers, passwords, and bank or credit card numbers.

• Encourage face-to-face contact with friends. This is even more important for teens prone to social anxiety.

Talk to your child's healthcare professional if you think your teen has symptoms of anxiety, depression or other mental health concerns related to social media use. Also talk with your child's care professional if your teen has any of the following symptoms:

• Uses social media even when wanting to stop.
• Uses it so much that school, sleep, activities or relationships suffer.
• Often spends more time on social platforms than you intended.
• Lies in order to use social media.

Your teen might be referred to a mental healthcare professional who can help.

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• Hagan JF, et al., eds. Promoting the healthy and safe use of social media. In: Bright Futures: Guidelines for Health Supervision of Infants, Children, and Adolescents. 4th ed. https://publications.aap.org/pediatriccare. American Academy of Pediatrics; 2017. Accessed Oct. 3, 2023.
• Social media can help connect: Research-based tips from pediatricians for families. Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health. https://www.aap.org/en/patient-care/media-and-children/center-of-excellence-on-social-media-and-youth-mental-health/. Accessed Oct. 3, 2023.
• Health advisory on social media use in adolescence. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/topics/social-media-internet/health-advisory-adolescent-social-media-use. Accessed Oct. 3, 2023.
• Social media and teens. American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. https://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Facts_for_Families/FFF-Guide/Social-Media-and-Teens-100.aspx. Accessed Oct. 3, 2023.
• Social media and youth mental health: The U.S. surgeon general's advisory. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/priorities/youth-mental-health/social-media/index.html. Accessed Oct. 3, 2023.
• Teens, social media and technology 2022. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social-media-and-technology-2022/. Accessed Oct. 3, 2023.
• Popat A, et al. Exploring adolescents' perspectives on social media and mental health and well-being — A qualitative literature review. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 2023; doi:10.1177/13591045221092884.
• Valkenburg PM, et al. Social media use and its impact on adolescent mental health: An umbrella review of the evidence. Current Opinion in Psychology. 2022; doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.08.017.
• Berger MN, et al. Social media use and health and well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth: Systematic Review. Journal of Medical Internet Research. 2022; doi:10.2196/38449.
• Self-Harm. Pediatric Patient Education. https://publications.aap.org/patiented. Accessed Oct. 3, 2023.
• Liu M, et al. Time spent on social media and risk of depression in adolescents: A dose-response meta-analysis. 2022; doi:10.3390/ijerph19095164.
• Coyne SM, et al. Does time spent using social media impact mental health? An eight year longitudinal study. Computers in Human Behavior. 2020; doi:10.1016/j.chb.2019.106160.
• Viner RM, et al. Roles of cyberbullying, sleep, and physical activity in mediating the effects of social media use on mental health and wellbeing among young people in England: A secondary analysis of longitudinal data. The Lancet. Child & Adolescent Health. 2019; doi:10.1016/S2352-4642(19)30186-5.
• Riehm KE, et al. Associations between time spent using social media and internalizing and externalizing problems among US youth. JAMA Psychiatry. 2019; doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2019.2325.
• Hoge E, et al. Digital media, anxiety, and depression in children. Pediatrics. 2017; doi:10.1542/peds.2016-1758G.
• How to help kids navigate friendships and peer relationships. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/topics/parenting/navigating-friendships. Accessed Oct. 24, 2023.
• Hoecker JL (expert opinion). Mayo Clinic. Oct. 31, 2023.
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Essay on Social Media for School Students and Children

500+ words essay on social media.

Social media is a tool that is becoming quite popular these days because of its user-friendly features. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and more are giving people a chance to connect with each other across distances. In other words, the whole world is at our fingertips all thanks to social media. The youth is especially one of the most dominant users of social media. All this makes you wonder that something so powerful and with such a massive reach cannot be all good. Like how there are always two sides to a coin, the same goes for social media. Subsequently, different people have different opinions on this debatable topic. So, in this essay on Social Media, we will see the advantages and disadvantages of social media.

Advantages of Social Media

When we look at the positive aspect of social media, we find numerous advantages. The most important being a great device for education . All the information one requires is just a click away. Students can educate themselves on various topics using social media.

Moreover, live lectures are now possible because of social media. You can attend a lecture happening in America while sitting in India.

Furthermore, as more and more people are distancing themselves from newspapers, they are depending on social media for news. You are always updated on the latest happenings of the world through it. A person becomes more socially aware of the issues of the world.

In addition, it strengthens bonds with your loved ones. Distance is not a barrier anymore because of social media. For instance, you can easily communicate with your friends and relatives overseas.

Most importantly, it also provides a great platform for young budding artists to showcase their talent for free. You can get great opportunities for employment through social media too.

Another advantage definitely benefits companies who wish to promote their brands. Social media has become a hub for advertising and offers you great opportunities for connecting with the customer.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Disadvantages of Social Media

Despite having such unique advantages, social media is considered to be one of the most harmful elements of society. If the use of social media is not monitored, it can lead to grave consequences.

Thus, the sharing on social media especially by children must be monitored at all times. Next up is the addition of social media which is quite common amongst the youth.

This addiction hampers with the academic performance of a student as they waste their time on social media instead of studying. Social media also creates communal rifts. Fake news is spread with the use of it, which poisons the mind of peace-loving citizens.

In short, surely social media has both advantages and disadvantages. But, it all depends on the user at the end. The youth must particularly create a balance between their academic performances, physical activities, and social media. Excess use of anything is harmful and the same thing applies to social media. Therefore, we must strive to live a satisfying life with the right balance.

FAQs on Social Media

Q.1 Is social media beneficial? If yes, then how?

A.1 Social media is quite beneficial. Social Media offers information, news, educational material, a platform for talented youth and brands.

Q.2 What is a disadvantage of Social Media?

A.2 Social media invades your privacy. It makes you addicted and causes health problems. It also results in cyberbullying and scams as well as communal hatred.

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Social Media Addiction Linked to Cyberbullying

This essay about cyberbullying and social media explores the dynamics of online harassment facilitated through digital platforms. It discusses how the design of social media allows for anonymous and pervasive bullying behavior, which can have severe psychological impacts on victims. The essay highlights the 24/7 nature of cyberbullying, where victims can be targeted at any time and feel perpetually unsafe. To combat cyberbullying, it suggests a combined approach involving platform regulation, educational initiatives on digital citizenship, and legal frameworks that penalize harmful online behaviors. The essay concludes by emphasizing the need for a collective effort among technology companies, educators, and legal authorities to create safer online environments while preserving the positive aspects of social media. This multifaceted strategy aims to minimize the risks of cyberbullying and ensure a supportive digital space for all users.

How it works

In recent years, social media has transformed into a central fixture of daily life, not just as a tool for socialization and information, but also as a platform where certain negative behaviors flourish, most notably cyberbullying. This essay explores the complex relationship between cyberbullying and social media, shedding light on the nature of this modern problem and the multifaceted approach required to address it.

Cyberbullying involves the use of electronic communication to bully a person, typically by sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature.

Social media platforms, with their widespread use and often minimally regulated environments, provide an expansive arena for such behaviors. Unlike traditional bullying, cyberbullying allows the perpetrator to hide behind a screen, often anonymized, which can lead to more extreme behavior due to a perceived detachment from the consequences of their actions.

The very architecture of social media platforms can inadvertently foster cyberbullying. The ease of creating fake profiles or anonymously posting harmful content enables individuals to engage in bullying without the immediate risk of being identified. Moreover, the viral nature of social media content means that hurtful messages or images can be disseminated widely and quickly, amplifying the impact on the victim exponentially. This can lead to severe psychological effects for the recipient, including long-term anxiety, depression, and other emotional distress.

One particularly troubling aspect of cyberbullying on social media is its 24/7 nature. Victims can be reached at any time, and unlike traditional schoolyard bullying, the digital realm provides no physical refuge for those targeted. The relentless nature of this interaction can make it seem inescapable, contributing to a feeling of being perpetually unsafe and watched.

Addressing the issue of cyberbullying on social media requires a combination of technological, educational, and legal responses. Platform developers and administrators play a crucial role; they must ensure that their services are not easy conduits for harassment. This involves creating robust mechanisms to report and block abusive content and users. Furthermore, social media companies are increasingly held accountable for the content on their platforms, pushing them towards proactive involvement in monitoring and managing interactions.

Education also plays a vital role in combating cyberbullyin. Schools, parents, and community organizations can equip children and teenagers with the skills needed to navigate social media responsibly. This includes education on digital citizenship, which emphasizes the ethical and respectful use of technology, and programs that foster empathy and awareness about the consequences of online actions.

Legally, many jurisdictions are starting to catch up with the realities of cyberbullying, enacting laws that target and penalize such behaviors. These laws are essential in providing a framework for prosecution but also in setting a societal norm that cyberbullying is a serious offence, not to be dismissed merely as children being children.

Despite the challenges presented by cyberbullying, social media remains a powerful tool for positive interaction and community building. The task ahead is not to dismantle these digital platforms, but to improve them, fostering environments that discourage harmful behaviors and encourage positive, supportive interaction. As technology evolves, so too must our strategies for dealing with the issues it brings to the fore. This requires continuous dialogue among tech companies, users, and regulatory bodies to ensure that social media can be a safe space for all users.

In conclusion, while cyberbullying is a significant and growing issue linked to the rise of social media, it is not an insurmountable problem. Through a combination of informed policy-making, robust educational programs, and responsible platform management, society can tame the negative impacts of social media while preserving and enhancing its many benefits. This proactive and comprehensive approach can ensure that the digital world is welcoming and safe for everyone.

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PapersOwl.com. (2024). Social Media Addiction Linked To Cyberbullying . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/social-media-addiction-linked-to-cyberbullying/ [Accessed: 3-May-2024]

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Social-media break has huge impact on young women's body image, study finds

Psychology prof says online exposure to idealized images creates 'infinite' opportunities for comparison.

There's a large and growing body of evidence pointing to potentially negative impacts of social media on mental health, from its addictive nature to disruptions in sleep patterns to effects on body image. Now, a new study coming out of York University's Faculty of Health found young women who took a social media break for as little as one week had a significant boost in self-esteem and body image -- particularly those most vulnerable to thin-ideal internalization.

"The statistician inside me was excited -- we don't often see effect sizes this large in my area of psychology research because human behaviour is complicated and there's lots of variability," says Psychology Professor Jennifer Mills, co-author of the paper. "We hope this study can be used to help protect young people and influence social media companies to give users more agency in how they interact with these platforms."

The paper, out this week in the journal Body Image , is thought to be the first to look specifically at social-media breaks and body image. Mills, whose lab has been on the forefront of this kind of research, collaborated on the paper with graduate researcher Lindsay Samson and undergraduate Olivia Smith, both students at York. They expected that there might be recruitment challenges, but it turns out there was enthusiasm for taking a social media pause among the 66 first-year female undergraduates who participated. Half were instructed to continue their social media as per usual, while the other half were given instructions to refrain from Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok and other social media use for one week. They conducted baseline surveys before the experiment, and tested the participants again after the week was over.

"There's natural variability in how people feel about their bodies and about themselves in general, so we took that into account statistically, and even after that there were still significant differences between the groups after one week," says Mills, who is also the director of clinical training for the graduate psychology program.

The differences in the social media landscape are remarkable compared to when Mills started researching eating disorders and the effects of media, like magazines aimed at women.

"Back then, you could only spend so many minutes or hours looking at fashion and beauty magazines and they only came out once a month. There was a finite amount of content that you would be exposed to. With social media it's infinite. It's always new and novel, which triggers our brain's reward system that makes us want more and more of something."

Mills says the improvements found in this study might be explained both by women spending far less time engaging in behaviours known to have a detrimental effect, such as comparisons with others, but they may have also replaced social media with healthier behaviours.

"If we're spending more time in real life, socializing with friends, getting sleep, getting outdoors, getting exercise, there could be secondary behaviours that fill the void left by social media. Future research will try to disentangle that."

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Story Source:

Materials provided by York University . Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

• Olivia E. Smith, Jennifer S. Mills, Lindsay Samson. Out of the loop: Taking a one-week break from social media leads to better self-esteem and body image among young women . Body Image , 2024; 49: 101715 DOI: 10.1016/j.bodyim.2024.101715

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Sex offender asks Norway’s Supreme Court to declare social media access is a human right

By MARK LEWIS Associated Press

STAVANGER, Norway (AP) — A convicted sex offender is asking the Norwegian Supreme Court to declare social media access is a human right. The case before the court Thursday involves a man who molested a minor and used the Snapchat messaging app to connect with young boys. The unnamed offender was sentenced last year to 13 months in prison and banned from using Snapchat for two years. His lawyers argue that depriving him of his account is unlawful under the European Convention on Human Rights. The case turns on how vital social media has become for freedom of expression, even though the court must decide the case through laws that predate such sites.

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Poll: Biden and Trump supporters sharply divided by the media they consume

Supporters of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are sharply divided across all sorts of lines, including the sources they rely on to get their news, new data from the NBC News poll shows.

Biden is the clear choice of voters who consume newspapers and national network news, while Trump does best among voters who don’t follow political news at all. 

The stark differences help highlight the strategies both candidates are using as they seek another term in the White House — and shed some light on why the presidential race appears relatively stable.

The poll looked at various forms of traditional media (newspapers, national network news and cable news), as well as digital media (social media, digital websites and YouTube/Google). Among registered voters, 54% described themselves as primarily traditional news consumers, while 40% described themselves as primarily digital media consumers. 

Biden holds an 11-point lead among traditional news consumers in a head-to-head presidential ballot test, with 52% support among that group to Trump’s 41%. But it’s basically a jump ball among digital media consumers, with Trump at 47% and Biden at 44%. 

And Trump has a major lead among those who don’t follow political news — 53% back him, and 27% back Biden. 

“It’s almost comic. If you’re one of the remaining Americans who say you read a newspaper to get news, you are voting for Biden by 49 points,” said Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted the poll alongside Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt.

The trends also extend to other questions in the poll. There's a significant difference in how traditional news consumers view Biden, while digital news consumers are far more in line with registered voters overall.

More primarily traditional news consumers have positive views of Biden (48%) than negative ones (44%). Among primarily digital news consumers, 35% view Biden positively, and 54% view him negatively. Vice President Kamala Harris' positive ratings show a similar divide, while Trump is viewed similarly by news consumers of both stripes.

And although the sample size is small, those who don't follow political news feel more positively about Trump and independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and more negatively about Biden.

Trump’s lead among those not following political news caught Horwitt’s eye amid Trump's trial on charges related to allegations he paid hush money to quash news of an alleged affair from coming out during the heat of his 2016 presidential campaign and as he faces legal jeopardy in other cases that consistently make news. 

“These are voters who have tuned out information, by and large, and they know who they are supporting, and they aren’t moving,” Horwitt said. 

“That’s why it’s hard to move this race based on actual news. They aren’t seeing it, and they don’t care,” he continued.

Third-party candidates also do well with this chunk of the electorate — a quarter of the 15% who say they don’t follow political news choose one of the other candidates in a five-way ballot test that includes Kennedy, Jill Stein and Cornel West. Third-party supporters also make up similar shares of those who say they get their news primarily from social media and from websites.

But voting behavior among those groups suggests that Biden's stronger showing with those traditional media consumers puts him ahead with a more reliable voting bloc.

Of those polled who could be matched to the voter file, 59% of those who voted in both 2020 and 2022 primarily consume traditional media, 40% primarily consume digital media, and just 9% don't follow political news. (The percentages add up to more than 100% because some people chose media platforms across multiple categories.)

Those who voted less frequently were more likely to say they don’t follow political news: 19% of those who voted in the last presidential election but not in 2022 and 27% who voted in neither of the last two elections say they don't follow political news.

The NBC News poll of 1,000 registered voters nationwide — 891 contacted via cellphone — was conducted April 12-16, and it has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Ben Kamisar is a deputy political editor in NBC's Political Unit. 

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Gypsy-Rose Blanchard Says Media Attention After Prison Release Had 'Negative Effect on My Mental Health'

Blanchard was released from prison in December 2023, and is now detailing her decision to step back from (and eventually return to) social media

JC Olivera/WireImage

Gypsy-Rose Blanchard is giving viewers insight into her relationship with social media.

The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard subject, 32, shared a behind-the-scenes look at her life now after her December 2023   release from prison  during the An Evening with Lifetime: Conversations On Controversies FYC event panel on Wednesday, May 1.

Speaking with moderator Janine Rubenstein of PEOPLE, Blanchard explained the "media storm" that came her way following her eight years in prison.

"I'm very much an introvert. And so coming out and this media storm hit me, and I was... At first, I really, really was touched by the positivity that people were showing me," Blanchard said at the panel, which took place at The Grove in Los Angeles. "And then as social media began and how it always does, it turned negative. It started to have a negative effect on my mental health."

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Blanchard — who has since made headlines for separating from her now-former husband Ryan Scott Anderson, reuniting with her ex-fiancé Ken Urker and opening up about cosmetic surgery — added at the event that she ended up taking "a step back" from the internet.

"But I just recently got back into it with having learned don't read comments," she said. "So I mean, I'm just trying to live my life in the best way that I can."

"And like I said, that's going to include missteps, but I learned from them," Blanchard continued.

The Munchausen by proxy  victim ultimately decided to delete her social media accounts after expressing "regret" on TikTok, which a source told PEOPLE at the time "was at the advisement of her parole officer, so she won’t get in trouble and go back to jail." She apologized to fans for a "lack of accountability in my interviews."

Blanchard served eight years of a 10-year sentence for conspiring to murder her mother, 48-year-old Dee Dee Blanchard, with her then-boyfriend  Nicholas Godejohn . Godejohn carried out the murder before being convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

"Let my actions match my words. And we'll go from there," Blanchard said when she decided to leave social media.

"I definitely have a good support system," she continued. "And I think I'm just now starting to get around to listening to my inner self instead of all the noise that's been on social media. So with that being said, thank you so much for watching and hearing me out."

Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up for PEOPLE's free True Crime newsletter for breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases. 

This week, Blanchard made her official return to the TikTok platform when she showed off her  recent rhinoplasty and a new blonde hair transformation. She also uploaded another clip, soundtracked by  Sabrina Carpenter ’s single “Espresso," where she showed off some casual beach attire. Carpenter herself co-signed the look, commenting “you served ♥️.”

Elsewhere at Wednesday's panel, Blanchard described the "biggest lesson" that she's learned since being released from prison: "To take your time."

"Because I think too often, I get also excited about my newfound freedom, and so I think I rush to do things, I want to cram it all in, so I'm just learning to take my time," she said, before adding that she's "doing very well."

"These last four months has been met with challenges and ups and downs, but that's life, right? So I'm just enjoying it ," Blanchard continued.

Gypsy Rose: Life After Lock Up  premieres June 3 on Lifetime.

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Justin Trudeau Is No Match for a Polarized World

By Stephen Marche

Mr. Marche is the author, most recently, of “The Next Civil War.”

Political careers often end in failure — a cliché that exists because it too often happens to be true. Justin Trudeau, one of the world’s great progressive leaders, may be heading toward that moment. In a recent interview he acknowledged that every day he considers leaving his “crazy job” as Canada’s prime minister. Increasingly, the question is not if he will leave but how soon and how deep his failure will be when he goes.

At stake is something that matters more than one politician’s career: Canada’s contemporary liberal and multicultural society, which just happens to be the legacy of the prime minister’s father and predecessor, Pierre Trudeau. When you fly into Montreal, you land in Trudeau airport, and that’s because of Pierre, not Justin.

The threat to that liberal tradition is not all Justin Trudeau’s fault, of course. The right-wing tide overwhelming global politics has come late but with pent-up vigor to Canada. For several years now, polls have shown Mr. Trudeau’s Liberals at lows from which no Canadian political party has ever recovered in elections. In a recent by-election, in a key suburban district of the Greater Toronto Area, the Conservative Party beat the Liberals by a lopsided 57 percent to 22 percent, a swing of nine percentage points to the Conservatives.

But polls and by-elections can be poor predictors of election viability. A better indicator is the flummoxed figure of Mr. Trudeau himself, who seems increasingly out of touch in the new world of division and extremism.

Part of Mr. Trudeau’s problem is simple exhaustion, both his own and Canadian voters’. He has been in government for almost eight and a half years. During that time, he has been one of the most effective progressive leaders in the world. His government cut Canada’s child poverty in half. He legalized marijuana, ending roughly 100 years of nonsense. He made large strides in reconciliation with Indigenous Canadians. He renegotiated NAFTA with a lunatic American president. He handled Covid better than most. You don’t have to squint too hard to recognize that he is one of the most competent and transformative prime ministers this country has ever produced.

But an era has passed since the start of that halcyon time, when Mr. Trudeau stood in front of his first cabinet and, when asked why it was half female, answered, “Because it’s 2015.” Now a new generation has emerged, for which the liberal technocratic order his government represents has failed to offer a path to a stable, prosperous future and the identity politics he once embodied have withered into vacuous schism. The growing anti-Liberal Party sentiment of young people is the biggest threat to his electability.

His opponents are well aware of Mr. Trudeau’s unpopularity with young voters and have focused Conservative attacks on an issue especially important to that cohort: the housing crisis. The soaring real estate market, in which tiny homes in Toronto and Vancouver now regularly cost more than properties in Paris or New York, has been exacerbated by the Trudeau government bringing in over a million immigrants last year without having built the necessary infrastructure to support the communities receiving them.

For decades, Canada has been the only country in the world where the more patriotic citizens are, the more they support immigration. Liberal mishandling of immigration’s impact may well end this blessed state. The housing crisis is the epitome of Mr. Trudeau’s failure: It feels good — it feels righteous — to support immigration. Isn’t that the whole idea behind multiculturalism? But without the proper hardheadedness, without being frank about difficult realities, righteousness quickly sours.

The first evidence of the prime minister’s weakness in the face of Canada’s growing polarization was the government response to the so-called Freedom Convoy in 2022, in which anti-vaccine demonstrators held Ottawa hostage for a month. His government decided to take a bureaucratic approach to the disruption, dithering while the truckers entrenched themselves in the city, then using the Emergencies Act to seize several of their bank accounts. A January federal decision found that Mr. Trudeau’s invocation of the act was “not justified.”

Other countries took much simpler approaches to their civil unrest in the aftermath of Covid restrictions. The French used tear gas. The moment a convoy set out from Los Angeles headed for Washington, in imitation of the Canadian convoy, the Biden administration called out the National Guard. Other countries know: There is a time for brute force.

The same fear of confrontation — which, to be fair to Mr. Trudeau, afflicts the entirety of Canadian culture and politics — motivated new online harms legislation, which he proposed in February in an attempt to regulate or at least somewhat contain the internet and social media, from revenge pornography and child sexual abuse material to hate speech. It is, unfortunately, an absurd document that seeks to impose virtue by fiat.

The maximum penalty for promoting genocide — a form of speech crime — is life imprisonment, meaning harsh punishments can be meted out for the vaguest and most subjective of definitions. Equally troubling is the measure that if a Canadian citizen “fears on reasonable grounds” that a hate crime will be committed, the individual can apply for an order that another person be subjected to court-mandated conditions on what that person may say.

No less a figure than Margaret Atwood described the proposed law as “Orwellian.” “It’s Lettres de Cachet all over again,” she wrote on X , referring to the king’s ability in prerevolutionary France to imprison without trial. The spirit behind the new law is the very worst of Canada: Be nice, or else. And it will do nothing to contain the disinformation wave that’s swelling.

But more than any other event, it is the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas that has exposed Mr. Trudeau’s inability to fight for liberal values. Since that day, the Canadian Jewish community has been subject to violence not seen since the 1930s. A synagogue has been firebombed , a Jewish school shot at , a Jewish hospital targeted by an antisemitic mob, a Jewish-owned bookstore vandalized , a Jewish neighborhood disrupted , a Jewish grocery store lit on fire . A mob outside a Holocaust Museum in Montreal chanted , “Death to the Jews.” Mr. Trudeau’s response has been pleas for everyone to just get along. “This needs to stop,” he said , referring to the lobbing of a Molotov cocktail at a synagogue. “This is not who we are as Canadians.”

This litany of failures is all the more significant because of Mr. Trudeau’s name. At a moment of crisis for Canadian multiculturalism, he makes a poor contrast with his father. Pierre Trudeau was not just another Canadian politician; he passed the Charter of Rights and Freedoms while establishing Canada’s Constitution as its own and not subject to the British Parliament. He made no-fault divorce and homosexuality legal. He instituted the official policy of multiculturalism, which made it a matter of law that Canadian citizens were encouraged to practice their religions and maintain their identities.

Pierre Trudeau might have been the most important architect of the liberal Canada, but he was also tough as hell. He famously invoked the War Measures Act against separatist terrorists in 1970, suspending civil liberties and bringing in the military. When asked by journalists how far he was willing to go, he said, “Just watch me.” Pierre Trudeau knew that the liberal order demands forceful and practical — and occasionally ugly — defense.

His son now seems to believe that telling people to be nice to one another will do. This weakness not only threatens the multicultural society his father founded; it threatens progressive values around the world. For many, Canada seemed a lone candle alight for the values of pluralism and liberalism as they have been extinguished elsewhere in the world.

Justin Trudeau does not have to call an election until 2025. He won elections against the odds before. But time is not on his side. It’s not Pierre Trudeau’s world anymore. It doesn’t much look like Justin Trudeau’s, either.

Stephen Marche is the author, most recently, of “The Next Civil War.”

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An earlier version of this article misstated the name of an act that Pierre Trudeau invoked in 1970. It is the War Measures Act, not the Emergency War Measures Act.

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