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Shaan Patel

Mrs. Hickerson

Advanced English II - 7th Hour

16 April 2024

Social Media

Feeling her face go red, Sarah, a 15 year old girl, reads over a social media post revealing

a very embarrassing piece of personal information. The post was posted by an account named

Anonymous623 which had been cyberbullying her for 3 months now. Sarah is just one of 10

million teens that have been cyberbullied online. Cyberbullying is not the only thing that is awful

about social media; there are other things that can show that social media has crossed the line

such as social media addiction and stress. Social media has gone too far because it is addictive,

causes a lot of stress, and allows for cyberbullying.

Social media is very addictive which is very bad for a person’s mental and social health.

An article by Ashish Bhatt helps give a good perceptive of the effects of social media addiction

on mental health, “Social media addiction is a behavioral addiction that is characterized as being

overly concerned about social media, driven by an uncontrollable urge to log on to or use social

media, and devoting so much time and effort to social media that it impairs other important life

areas”. As seen from this article, social media addiction greatly affects other areas of life such as

personal relationships. Being on social media for long periods of time will cause one to be

separated from people that they love, like their family, and this is especially true for teens

because they are usually the age group that spends the most amount of time on social media and

are most likely to become addicted. If teens lose connections with their family, it is harder for
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them to get guidance on important issues and can cause them to fall into bad habits. On top of

that, social media addiction can also affect academic performance; spending too much time on

social media reduces the amount of time teens have to study for their classes which can result in

lower grades. In addition, a book by Bradley Steffens states, “The number of people addicted to

social media worldwide is staggering, according to researchers at the University of Michigan,

Flint (UMF). They found that 6 percent of the world’s social media users–about 210 million

people–are addicted to social networking”. The statistics from this passage are astonishing

because the number of people addicted to social media is about ⅔ of the U.S. population. As

concluded from the previous section, social media addiction is detrimental to a person’s life and

the amount of people addicted worldwide shows a staggering amount of people whose careers

and lives may be negatively affected by social media addiction. In all, social media has crossed

its limits because it has become very addictive and is bad for the user's mental health.

Social media causes a lot of stress when people use it too much and causes negative

effects on mental health. An example of this can be seen from this article, “Through specific

features such as permanence and quantifiability, social media use is thought to amplify

self-presentation-related social expectations … representing a source of type 2 digital stress”

(Winstone). Social media is the cause of a lot of digital stress because of the constant pressure

that people face to present themselves in a manner which is expected by the people that see their

posts. This pressure is one of the main reasons that social media users have stress and the

chances of one feeling it increase the more they use social media because they are under pressure

for longer periods of time. Moreover, HelpGuide.org, a site that helps people deal with

addictions, states, “Multiple studies have found a strong link between heavy social media and an

increased risk for depression, stress, anxiety, loneliness, self-harm, and even suicidal thoughts”
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(Robinson). From this, one can see that excessive social media usage causes a lot of negative

effects on mental health, including stress. These effects are very dangerous and can easily ruin a

person’s life no matter what stage they are in. Social media is creating a lot of stress for its users

instead of taking it away and this stress negatively affects a person’s mental health.

Social media also does not take necessary action against cyberbullying. According to a

survey by Pew Research Center, “Nearly half of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 (46%) report ever

experiencing at least one of six cyberbullying behaviors asked about in a Pew Research Center

survey conducted April 14-May 4, 2022” (Vogels). This statistic shows that an incredibly high

number of people, especially teens, are being cyberbullied online. This large number means that

social networking platforms are not taking the necessary action against cyberbullying. Most

schools have strict laws against bullying because they know how it can negatively affect

someone’s mental health and their education, and social media platforms should have a similar

responsibility because when users are using their platform, it is their responsibility that the users

are protected. Teens are not the only ones being cyberbullied, “41% of American adults reported

being harassed online, ranging from offensive name-calling (31%) to stalking (11%)...75% of

adults who have been cyberbullied indicated the harassment happened on social media”

(ProCon.org). From this, it is clear that adults are also being harassed and bullied online. This is

important to understand because it truly proves that social media is not doing anything about

cyberbullying because the adults that have been cyberbullied have probably been bullied by

other adults since teens are less likely to pick on adults if they do not know them. This shows

that adults who are more mature and less impulsive than teens are sending mean messages and

bullying other people. From all this evidence it is obvious that cyberbullying is a major problem
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because it is happening to both teens and adults but social media companies have not taken

effective action against it.

While some people will say that social media helps people connect with friends and

family (ProCon.org), it actually causes depression and loneliness. This can be seen in this article

by Kaiser Permanente, “Researchers found that people turn to social media more when they’re

feeling lonely. But, surprisingly, people felt worse after spending time on social media. It didn’t

help them feel less isolated. It actually made them feel lonelier. This was due to social

comparison — or the act of comparing yourself to others”. Social media has the opposite effect

of what people expect from it. It does help people connect with friends and family but it also

causes depression and loneliness if, for example, when someone sees a picture of their friend

doing something very entertaining on their vacation and that makes them compare their life to

their friend’s which makes them feel sad. Furthermore, an article by ProCon.org states, “Social

media users frequently collect in echo chambers, which are generally figurative but sometimes

literal places where similarities among people greatly outnumber differences…Echo chambers

allow misinformation to flourish because users are less likely to fact-check a post by someone

with whom they identify and want to agree”. This information tells us that if a user is connected

well to their friends and family through social media, when one of them posts a post on social

media which has incorrect information, they are more likely to believe it. This means that even if

social media connects one with friends, it means that they are more likely to get misinformation

which can easily manipulate them. To sum it up, social media connects people with friends and

family but the results of that can lead to depression, loneliness, and the intake of misinformation.

Social media has crossed its limits because it causes addiction, stress, and permits

cyberbullying. Social media addiction can be seen in a large number of social media users and
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has negative consequences. Some people go on social media to relieve stress but it actually has

the opposite effect and causes the user more stress instead of taking it away. Social media is

where most cyberbullies are and where most cyberbullying happens. From addiction to

cyberbullying, social media offers more problems than it does solutions.

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Works Cited

Bhatt, Ashish. “Social Media Addiction.” Addiction Center, 3 Mar. 2024,

www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/social-media-addiction/
Kaiser Permanente. “Does Social Media Make You Feel Lonely?”. Kaiser Permanente, January
12, 2023,
healthy.kaiserpermanente.org/health-wellness/healtharticle.have-healthier-relation
ship-with-soci
al-media#:~:text=Researchers%20found%20that%20the%20more,leads%20to%20lower
%20self%2Desteem.&text=Passive%20scrolling%20takes%20away%20the,person%2Dt
o%2Dperson%20interaction
ProCon.org, "Social Networking." ProCon.org. 18 Nov. 2022,
socialnetworking.procon.org
Robinson, Lawrence. “Social Media and Mental Health.” HelpGuide.Org, 5 Feb.
2024,
www.helpguide.org/articles/mental-health/social-media-and-mental-health.htm#:~:t
ext=However%2C%20multiple%20studies%20have%20found,about%20your%20lif
e%20or%20appearance

Steffens, Bradley. Social Media Addiction. ReferencePoint Press, 2020. EBSCOhost,

research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=f82ce762-74bf-306b-9cac-6e4ad9c628

a3.

Vogels, Emily A. “Teens and Cyberbullying 2022.” Pew Research Center: Internet,
Science & Tech, Pew Research Center, 15 Dec. 2022,
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/12/15/teens-and-cyberbullying-2022/
Winstone, Lizzy, et al. “Types of Social Media Use and Digital Stress in Early
Adolescence.” Journal of Early Adolescence, vol. 43, no. 3, Mar. 2023, pp.
294–319. EBSCOhost,
research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=2113e8b2-5a91-346c-b737-9c626a3e4492