Social Media's Affect on Mental Health
In today’s society, the number of teens with depression is steadily growing and has gotten to the point where it presents as normal. The severity of this mental illness is often dismissed without understanding how bad the effects are. There must be a reason for the spike, so what is it? In my experience, depression can cause so much fatigue that it is hard to make it through the day. During the time in which I felt depressed, I had spent hours scrolling through social media. Coincidence? I don’t think so. A large portion of the issue is addiction. Studies have shown that Social media causes the dopamine signals in your brain to increase, but as soon as you leave the app they stop. With this tool always being at our fingertips, social media feels impossible to avoid. Activities such as sports and social events start to feel difficult and less rewarding, leading you to go back to what is easy; your phone.
Common symptoms of depression include lack of focus, restlessness, fatigue, worsened sleeping patterns, and loss of enjoyment in activities that you used to enjoy. These aren’t all the symptoms but they are the ones that link back to social media. There are many reasons that social media would cause a lack of sleep, one of which is fear of missing out. Not only are people constantly seeing what other people are doing through social media, even when someone wants to put their phone down they start to think, “What if someone texts me and I’m not able to reply?” Because it is so normal for people to be on their phones 24/7, it has also become normal to respond within minutes. So much overthinking arises from this. You might think someone is mad at you if they don’t respond quickly or vice versa. On top of depression, lack of focus might be the next biggest side effect. The app TikTok might be the most addicting app out there. Ninety percent of TikTok's 689 million users use this app on a daily basis. The videos are endless, and not a single one is longer than 60 seconds. After adjusting to this form of entertainment, it becomes hard to focus on simple things that move at a slower pace. It makes watching a movie turn into a hassle, and doing homework becomes impossible. It circles back to fear of missing out because almost every teenager has the app. Lots of jokes come to light through the platform, so when you don’t have access to the jokes, it is very easy to feel left out.
The thought of deleting TikTok has crossed my mind on several occasions. I recognize the damage it is doing to my quality of life, so I started by putting a time limit on the app. Every instance where I ran out of time, I found myself putting in the password to get more. At one point, I would have preferred scrolling through TikTok all day over going on vacation. At various times I have told myself that if everyone else would delete TikTok, I would do it too. But, this excuse has just allowed me to continue using it despite the negative impacts.
Regardless of the negative aspects of social media, it can be an amazing tool for things like connecting people, starting a business, or spreading news, but it does far more harm than good. While it is used for entertainment, it causes a large number of teens to miss out on actual life. Instead of going out with friends or participating in sports, they get sucked into a fake reality. With the incessant use of social media, it is no wonder many teens are left feeling depressed and drained while accomplishing nothing.
By Violet Kottke