To what extent is social media detrimental to an adolescent’s well being?

Introduction

Latest result from Smart Insights (2018) indicated that global social media users have

increased up to 13 percents this year and now is staying at a solid 3.196 billion users worldwide

which is more than 40% of world population. Adolescents are also involved and have a big part

in this since their lives are revolved around their phones and technology.. [Reach Out, 2017].

They also showed that adolescents aged 15-17 spend over 2 hours of internet per day and 91% of

them use internet for social networking. However, they also manifested that 73% of adolescents

age 15-17 use internet for formal education activities. With this in mind, this report sets out to

explore how detrimental or harmful social media is to adolescent’s well being. Issues will be

explored within global, national and also my personal perspective. After researching for my

home country: Vietnam through Saigoneer, I found that 48% of Vietnamese use social media

daily.

Issues

There are many issues to choose from when looking at how detrimental social media is to

adolescent’s well being, but I have chosen how social media impacts mental health, social

interaction and how it impacts academically. After my initial research I feel that these are the

most essential ones.

Mental Health

First issue will be mental health. Excessive exposure of social media is slowly but surely

affecting teen’s well being, and how they feel in general. Hence, leads to many problems like

depression and anxiety since receiving constant updates from friends or family showcasing how

“perfect” their life is can cause feelings of imperfection. This causes them to become anxious,
stressed or even depressed as they worry that their life isn’t as intriguing. Also, When surveyed,

40% of Facebook users admitted that they usually post things to improve their image, which is

very stressed out because you have to decide the perfect one to post [Huffpost]. Not just anxiety

and depression, social media usage linked to suicide is really high too, it experiences 4,600 lives

lost each year in the age group of 10-24. This problem is caused by a lot of teen being bullied

over the internet and experience negative things about them.[TheStar, 2017]. Social media

addiction is also a big problem since there are over 50% of teenagers admitted that they are

addicted and have to go on social media constantly. [NewPort Academy, 2017].

In a small country like Vietnam, the problem of teenagers being depressed happens really

often too. For instance, a teenager from Ha Noi recently got hospitalized due to Facebook

addiction, she was smashing things surround her when her parents banned her from using

Facebook, they had to sedate her to get her to the hospital according to Vnexpress.

In my opinion, social media is a big factor of the impact of our mental health, because

social media is the main cause of depression in adolescents, number of adolescents committing

suicide due to cyberbullying is high and the addiction to social media is also concerning since

there are 50% of adolescents are really addicted. In the other hand, it helps teens to enjoy more

when they get in contact with their friends online, learn about news on social media. [Power Of

Positivity]. If we stop using social media, it will help us to feel happier since we don’t have to

prove anyone how good we are in general. Also, we will be happier if we don’t use it because

social media posts usually are very uninspiring. By doing this, it will also create less chance of

us experiencing cyberbullying. [Guardian]

Social Interaction
 As what I mentioned in my personal perspective in issue 1, it leads to my second issue

about social interaction and whether it’s detrimental to an adolescent’s well being or not. As a

research on PCWorld shown that users aged between 15 and 19 spend at least three hours per

day on average using social media platforms. We could say that social media helps us to interact

with friends online easier and faster. But it doesn’t help the fact that it diminishes our social

interaction, social skills and our real world communication. According to Explore Lifestyle,

people spend over 10 billion minutes everyday on Facebook which is a really big problem

because people nowadays prefer chatting over talking face-to-face to reduce the awkwardness

between them and their surroundings. According to DailyMail, they stated that using a phone for

social media can attract our attentions and makes us ignoring what’s going on around us which

affects our relationships between parents and loved ones.

In Vietnam, There is 81% of 18-29 years old using social media daily to interact with

friends and reading news from friends according to Saigoneer. This is a big problem since 81%

is a high number and that is 4 out of 5 people using social media instead of interacting face-to-

face. This problem will lead to the lack of social interaction in the development of Vietnamese

teen’s behaviour.

In the other hand, it’s also an advantage since it helps to contact friends easier for meet

ups during the weekend. Also, it helps them to connect with new friends around the world based

on their passion and likes. It can help them to learn about new cultures and people according to

LiveStrong. As I could see, LiveStrong is a very reliable source with many perspectives to

support my research, they also stated reasonable evidence to the con side as good as the pro.

For me, social media brings our friendly society far away. Nowadays, our daily routine is

consisted of internet and just internet, less social meet up or even interaction. Amount of teens
abusing social medias to avoid talking to normal people just so they don’t feel awkward have

increased surprisingly as shown in my global perspective. This could be bad for me in many

ways as I sometimes also prefer roaming and communicating via social media rather than talking

face to face.

The way that you could do to solve this is to limit yourself from using social media,

create a plan for yourself or someone you know for instance attending to an outside activity to

diminish the amount of time you use social media. Or you could make it a treat of 10 minutes

after you finish a task or homework and the best way is to find a new hobby such as playing

sports or music. But most importantly, interact more with friends and family to improve social

skills.(Bustle 2016).

Impact Academically

For my last and final issue is how social media impact teenagers academically. Teenagers

nowadays can be distracted from a lot of things such as playing games, playing sports or hanging

out with friends rather than doing their homework. Recently, a new distraction got evolved and

that is social media. According to Eastside Online, as social media keeps getting more popular,

there is a higher amount of student from all over the globe spending more time communicating

online instead of doing school works. They also stated that, teenagers nowadays often do their

work at the last minutes, and during those time they would spend on procrastinations such as

texting friends and scrolling through newsfeed. They indicated that there are schools that blocked

social media application because the likeness of students messing around during class rather than

working on their tasks and paying attentions.

In a result of this, PBS showed that students who use social media score below average at

school. The owner of this study, Albert Posso stated that students who use social media often
tend to obtain lower scores in math, reading, and science than students who never or sometimes

use social media. And the more students use social media is the less score they will obtain. Two-

third of teachers were sure that homeworks have less quality due to students rushing it so they

have time to spend online [Creative Education]. They also stated that, the issue is behavioural

not technological.

In Vietnam,surprisingly there are a lot of people find social media useful. For example,

73% think that social media help them to find the information in which they are interested easier.

Not just that 72% think the network is very easy to use and 71% think that there are many

opportunities in this network to help their studies and catching up purposes(SHS WEB study).

The usage of social media impacts study of adolescents a lot since it distracts them from

doing work and concentrating. Also, sometimes it helps due to the wide information on the social

media related to the topic they study. Not just that, according to LCIBS, they stated that social

media has gained credibility over the years as a trusted source of information where students can

go on and get helps. For instance, they can get in touch with experts through social media and

learn about the topics that they need. They can also use social media for researching such as

collecting data on the majority of people on a particular topic or they can learn from institutions

via facebook and youtube about their issues. In additional, they can write blogs or Tweet in order

to develop writing, reading and essential thinking skills. They can increase their social and

political awareness by watching the news, and searching for political information such as

documents [The Hays Daily News, 2018]. Not just helping academically, they can also build

their own brand through social media to promote their business and make some extra money.

LCIBS and Hays Daily News are reliable sources since they stated about different perspectives,

the contents are also up to date and they state some initial study to help readers understand better.
 If teenagers change the way they use social media and use it wisely then the amounts of

low score they get will decrease. Also, their works at school could also improve as they don’t

rush to finish it at the last minute. In additional, teenagers should use social media to contact

with friends for studies or to ask question when they need [Phys]. According to MHeducation,

they stated that social media can help them to find professors use social media to give advices

and they can also use hashtag to learn more about the topic they want for example

#BIOFINALS101.

In my opinion, social medias sometimes help me a lot and sometimes impacts my study

and life in general. I usually get distracted while studying when notifications pop up on my

screen which is very tempted sometimes. But social medias also help me to collect data of people

over the world, it helps me to learn more about other’s cultures and improve my political

awareness.

Conclusion

In conclusion, my perspectives on social media has changed a lot since I researched more

about it. For my first issue about mental health, there isn’t always negative impacts, there is also

a way for us to be happier since we get to contact new people, learn about the news rather than

stressing out. While researching for my second issue, I learned that social media helps us to

connect with new friends around the globe, to get to know more about their cultures and their

people easier and it doesn’t require a lot of time and money. And the last one is impacting

academically which was a two sided issue because there are a lot of disadvantages and

advantages which was very hard to decide if it benefits or not. In the future, social media will be

a bigger part in our society as it grows larger and wider. Governments and parents around the

globe should find solutions to the negative sides of social media since it’s creating a lot of
troubles such as suiciding, teenagers isolate themselves and the addictions of social media

impacting their educations.