The Harm of Social Media

The mental health of teenagers in the United States is rapidly declining

and has turned into a crisis that we must talk about

right now.

Teenagers are spending close to seven hours every single day

on social media applications and platforms like Instagram, Tiktok, Twitter.

You name it?

Hi, I'm Johnny Kidd. I'm a first year student here at Lehigh University.

And today

I'm gonna be talking about the negative impacts that

social media has on the mental health of teenagers.

I'm gonna break this down into three main components.

Social media can harm the mental health slash well-being of teens in three ways.

So first is uh social comparison um

and how teens compare themselves unrealistic standards.

Uh Number two is how teens are becoming introduced to sexualized content.

Um and you know, being exposed to sexual objectification

and finally see uh teens um are having their sleep patterns

in sleep cyc cycles

being severely disrupted.

So let's dive into that first point.

Um and how teens are comparing themselves to

other people on social media,

teenagers are constantly comparing their bodies living situation and

social situation to unrealistic standards on the internet,

on someone's Instagram page, for example,

that page and collection of posts

tends to be the highlight reel of someone's life or the best moments.

Um,

rarely do we see the truth in reality and the ugly

of someone's life uh displayed on their social media platform.

It's just simple. People are gonna post pictures where they look the best

when they're at the coolest places

when they seem to be doing the coolest things.

Uh, no one's gonna post a picture where they look awful and

it's just how things work. It's not gonna happen.

Young teens who are already insecure about

their identity are constantly comparing their bodies,

possessions

and personalities to standards that are

better than theirs or completely unattainable

in my essay.

Uh I mentioned

the idea of social comparison theory.

Social uh comparison theory

basically talks about how um we all need to take this action. Um

And it's a ne necessary step

into developing our personalities and that's

social comparison. Um

We need to

compare ourselves to other people

um and stack ourselves up to other people's standards

in order to figure out and develop our personality,

figure out who we are.

Uh This is really challenging for an already insecure and fragile generation

who is comparing themselves to celebrities

and influencers

who have better standards.

Um And, and who are better looking, more athletic, have more money.

Um All of these things that

aren't helping to compare ourselves to.

So the next, um you know,

a kind of a piece of that that I'm gonna talk about a little bit more

is how teenagers are comparing uh their bodies to images online.

So, here

I have two images uh on the left

is the natural um image of a girl

uh on a beach

in a bikini. And on the right is the same image uh edited uh and curated.

So, as you can see

um a couple of differences, you know, this woman's waist has been

uh you know, fiddled down and become slimmer, her uh lower body cellulite and

um you know, rules have been smoothened out

her, you know, waist has been created, you know,

has been shaped and curved a little bit more.

And we can also notice that

the image on the right, which we can see is fake,

obviously comparing these two together.

Um It's hard to decipher what a fake image looks like.

Um And that's a huge problem in itself.

Um

It's become a huge problem recently due to the societal norm to edit

crop or touch up images.

Um I don't know the exact percentage, but I believe that

more than 50% of all images that people are posting of themselves are, are,

are touched up.

People are constantly making their teeth look whiter,

their hair look better, their uh waist, waist look thinner.

People feel as if their bodies are not good enough naturally.

So they need to edit their bodies to make them look better.

Uh This is a huge problem because it's a double edged sword.

People feel as if they're not good enough naturally um as who they are.

And additionally, people are comparing themselves to images unknowing

that they're edited and fake as we can see right here.

It's, it's pretty hard to decipher that this,

this picture is fake and it's been edited

and that's the reality of people every single day.

Um We're unknowing of fake images and

we're still comparing ourselves to these images.

Um The next danger of social media that I'm gonna talk about

is the presence of sexualized content

and the risk of becoming introduced to it at such a young age.

In an article written by B N C women's health,

they emphasized that social media makes adolescent

girls more vulnerable to mental health issues.

Adolescent girls appear more vulnerable to experiencing mental

health difficulties from social media use than boys.

The presence of sexualized images online is thought to

contribute through increasing body dissatisfaction among adolescent girls,

sexual objectification through images may reinforce to adolescent

girls that their value is based on their appearance

on an application like tiktok, for example,

um specifically teenage girls and young women are

gaining millions of followers and you know,

a huge platform and and in large followings for showing off their

bodies and making jokes about their bodies in a sexual manner.

Although these people are

successful statistically.

Um and you know,

meaning how many followers are gaining and the likes they're getting as well as,

you know,

they're successful financially making money off

the brand they've created for themselves.

Um These creators are creating,

creating an extremely toxic social media environment

and they're exposing younger Children to sexual things.

Um This behavior makes young women believe that

their worth is equivalent to their bodies.

Uh and misleads men to think it's ok to rate someone's body

and or to treat them like an object.

Uh teenage boys are dealing with the, you know,

the effects of some sexualized images as well.

Um The presence of sexualized images are rewiring the brains of young men

interviewing women as sexual objects and nothing

more than their sexual body parts.

Finally, my last point,

this right here

sleep,

we all need it.

So a

part of sleep that I'm gonna talk about is this chemical compound right here.

Uh This

compound is Melatonin.

I'm sure we all know what Melatonin is.

Um But if you don't,

I'm gonna tell you,

Melatonin is the natural chemical that the brain releases

to the rest of the body in order to fall asleep.

Uh Melatonin is crucial to the body

in order to start the circadian rhythm, uh which is a fancy word for your sleep cycle.

Um and it's crucial to help your body enter

a state to be prepared for rest.

Uh If Melatonin was impacted,

you know, wouldn't you think that would change our sleep and our quality of sleep?

Believe it or not, you'd be right.

The next thing I'm gonna be talking about is blue light.

Um and specifically the problem with it and Melatonin.

So blue light, what is it?

Blue light is simply the light that comes

off of all of our devices, whether laptops, tablets,

uh the cell phones that we're in bed with,

um blue light is really bad for us.

Uh So blue light actually suppresses the melatonin chemical in our brains

and makes it harder for us to fall asleep and stay asleep.

An article written by the CDC states that blue light

has the strongest impact exposure to blue light and white light

which contains blue light during this sensitive period can make

it difficult for you to fall asleep and stay asleep.

Um A really easy solution to this problem

is just throwing on the um

is navigating settings and throwing on night shift.

Um night shift just eliminates all blue light on your device

um that you're not,

you know, the way you're not soaking up all that blue light

killing off, you know, melatonin and decreasing the quality of your sleep.

So the second chemical compound that I'm gonna talk about that kind of plays into

the uh topic of sleep is this,

this chemical is dopamine,

uh dopamine um is,

is largely used and understood by

social media platforms.

Certain apps like tiktok are engineered to grab a hold of your dopamine.

Um And, and, and it does this by,

you know, putting out things on your feed that you're attracted to

and entertained by.

So, before I really get into that,

you know, what is dopamine? Dopamine is the natural, feel good chemical.

Um your brain releases it when you're feeling intense emotion of, you know,

happiness, excitement.

Um

and also dopamine is simply released when you're stim stimulated.

Um A as you can imagine, social media

is a very um stimulated

um thing on our phones. Obviously, it's, it's calculated to be stimulated.

Um So therefore, we're tria

triggering

and releasing uh loads, loads of dopamine,

releasing dopamine is not a problem in itself.

However, dopamine and and Melatonin do not work well together.

Melatonin is attempting to slow your heart rate down and

prepare you for rest while dopamine does the exact opposite.

Um

As I just said before, uh

social media apps are targeted

to uh you know,

to pick out what you're entertained by and what stimulates you.

Um As, as we all know on social media apps, there is the feature of the for you page,

you know, what does the for you page do?

The four U page gathers up all the things that you're interested in uh interested in,

entertained by stimulated by and it all puts it on your feet.

Um Why do they do this?

Because social media apps,

um the goal is to stimulate us because when we're stimulated,

um we stay locked in and we stay we stay engaged, you know, think about on, you know,

uh you know, media like Netflix, for example,

if you're watching a series of television,

television shows immediately it pops up and it says uh next episode

and before you can do anything, um

you know, it, it's, it's moving on to the next episode.

You know, the goal of,

you know, media, you know,

media companies and specifically social media companies

is to um

you know, appeal to our

uh dopamine.

Um get us engaged and keep us engaged.

Uh If you scroll through social media before bed,

you will release combative dopamine,

that will only make it harder for you to sleep.

Uh Like I said before, dopamine and Melatonin, they don't mix.

Um and you know, dopamine, if one goes up,

then your Melatonin will go down and you will have um

you know, a harder time falling asleep.

Uh Additionally, the context

uh and content on social media can be stimulating and engaging,

making it difficult for you to touch, detach yourself from the phone,

uh leaving us scrolling for hours and losing sleep.

Um

So to have a a healthy relationship with our phones, um and social media,

teenagers should navigate settings and turn on screen time uh as well as monitor,

monitor the time

they spend on their phones,

screen time looks like this.

Um So,

you know, teenagers can use screen time in a couple of ways,

you know, first they can monitor individual apps.

So if there's a certain app that they're concerned about the overuse or, you know,

too much time they're putting into it.

Um, you can set specific time constraints for specific apps.

Um, and, and then, you know, also the installation of, uh,

screen time also allows you to just analyze your overall, uh, screen time habits.

Um, and our,

that's it. Thank you.

The Harm of Social Media

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