Social Media: Uniting and Disseminating Info in the Digital Age - Essay Sample

Introduction

The use of social media has become a common trend, as more users flock to the sites for socialization. Moreover, social media platforms are becoming a suitable tool for conducting businesses. Never the less, both sides constitute the effectiveness of using social media as a tool of uniting and disseminating information. According to Sujarwoto et al. (2019), social media has gained new popularity and image in the last decade, with the advancement in hardware technology, which is pushing forth to support popular platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, among other platforms. Social media proliferation has also been pushed by peer pressure, emanating from the uncontrolled use of the cites, which is slapping hard the users of the platforms, as psychologists dive deeper into understanding the devastating effects emanating from the use of social media platforms. While the core value of social media is geared towards fostering the right connection with people, research from numerous sources, elucidates a real interrelationship, between the use of social media and the negative mental health influence, to its user. Thus, the essay seeks to support the debate strongly that Social media use tends to negatively influence mental health by offering insights from other studies on the topic.

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The Role of Social Media in Negatively Influencing Mental Health

Humans are social beings, as companionship helps to thrive in life, which has played a vital role in our mental health and happiness. Social media offers an avenue to share our joy, provide comfort, ease anxiety, and stress, to reduce depression. However, on the flip side of social media rests a dark episode of cyberbullying, depression, anxiety, and a great feeling of suicide.

Cyberbullying

In today’s world, cyberbullying has taken a different twist, which has reshaped the entire approach to the matter. While the US records the number of active users in social media, the nation has also recorded the highest number of cyberbullying, which has affected a higher number of victims, especially those using the social media platforms.

The targeting of cyberbully victims is becoming more accessible (Odgers & Jensen, 2020). Targets can be easily sampled and monitored on their internet behaviors, which helps the offender to collect a sufficient amount of data, before launching the attacks. While many victims on social media have become less aware of the increased social media threats and cyberbullying, they are becoming an easy target for many offenders. Thus, affecting the victim’s psychology.

About less than 17% report on cyberbullying in social media makes its way to the officials’ desk, while other victims are forced to endure the long depressive experience that not only lowers their self-esteem but usher in the thoughts of suicide. Victims of cyberbullying are subjected to an array of offensive comments, which can leave lasting emotional scars, as different social media platforms such as twitter, become the host sport of spreading rumors, abuse and lies.

Depression

Nearly 85% of the images viewed in 2015 on social media were deemed to be manipulated to help attract the viewers (Odgers & Jensen 2020). However, the reality behind the manipulation of the photos and videos contains a strong interrelationship between the manipulated images and the mental state of the viewers. The manipulation of photographs tends to give an inadequacy about your life or appearance. Therefore, most of the users are forced to live up to the standards they are portraying in social media. However, while the struggle continues to live up to these standards, most of the users who are trying to emulate the fake lifestyle, are faced with an array of mental challenges, as they are forced to meet these demands. While social media remains so unforgiving, the viewers who were presented with the inadequacy about your life expect you to fit the lifestyle, which further subjects the user to sink in depression and stress.

Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)

Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is a universal concept that affects the mental capacity of many online users, as it exacerbates the feeling that others are having a better life than what you have. Even though the fear of missing out has been there far longer than social media sites such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, social media seems to have mastered the concept of exacerbating fear of missing out. The notion that you are missing out on certain things, which can impact your mental health, lower your self-esteem, as well as triggering anxiety, which increases depression. While the exacerbation on social media increases, this leads to excessive use of social media, which results in addiction. Never the less, people tend to take even more significant risks in using social media even while driving, which can lead to worse mental and physical damages in case of accidents.

Mental Destruction

Excessive use of social media is a common trend, especially with the level of interconnection experienced across the globe. Therefore, social media may be more problematic, which may even force you to neglect face-to-face relationships and also destruct you from school and work. Thus spending more time on social media has a direct impact on school and work, which may trigger a negative metal development, and lack of concentration. Never the less, these ushers in the concept of comfort, which limits the opportunity of the user making an extra mile when they are faced with any challenge.

A face-to-face conversation is one of the stages of mental development that has proved to be more productive, especially in the human spiritual development cycle. People learn from one another about their skills and ideas, which promotes active communication sessions. Never the less, excessive social media use, tends to limit the chances of engaging in a real talk, where one has to offer their thoughts, without refining them or researching them. Therefore, it becomes cumbersome for many users to mage effective communication during face-to-face communication. Thus, the limitation of face-to-face conversation and logical speech making indicates a direct negative relationship on mental health influenced by social media use (Scott et al., 2019).

Having time to self-reflect becomes a powerful arsenal, which provides mental health. According to Odgers and Jensen (2020), psychological development requires self-reflection to understand the inner part of your mental consciousness. However, the addition of social media slowly reduces the opportunity for self-reflection, which later affects the mental health and chances of developing a concept of knowing how the conscious mind works to relieve stress and depression.

Conclusion

While the use of social media use tends to be one of the most common and popular aspects of socialization, there is far much mental devastation that has been hidden by the impressive image of social media use. Never the less, little research to establish long-term consequences of social media users have not fully been implemented to offer a comprehensive report. However, there have been numerous research on the topic, which are showing a direct mental health interference caused by the increased use of social media. In the bottom line, Social media use tends to influence mental health negatively.

References

Odgers, C. L., & Jensen, M. R. (2020). Annual Research Review: Adolescent mental health in the digital age: facts, fears, and future directions. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 61(3), 336-348.doi: 10.1111/jcpp.13219

Scott, H., Biello, S. M., & Woods, H. C. (2019). Identifying drivers for bedtime social media use despite sleep costs: the adolescent perspective. Sleep Health, 5(6), 539-545.doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2019.07.006

Sujarwoto, S., Tampubolon, G., & Pierewan, A. C. (2019). A tool to help or harm? Online social media use and adult mental health in Indonesia. International journal of mental health and addiction, 17(4), 1076-1093.doi.10.1007/s11469-019-00069-2