Cell phones, oh God. They have said that AI was going to take over the world one day, but too late – your smart phone already has! You can’t walk down a single street without 4 out of 5 people staring at their phone screen. Is there anything bad with being able to talk to people at any time of the day? What’s wrong with searching Google for the best restaurants near you? Let’s find out.
Honestly, smartphones are the greatest thing ever invented. Really. Thank you Steve Jobs for your wonderful contribution. Even your 3 year old cousin has one already, they are freaking wonderful! No seriously, these computers in our pockets can empower us to do pretty much anything in this day-and-age. Research for school, write a blog (WOO!), check your bank account; it’s magnificent. It’s impossible to deny the benefits of having smartphones within our grasp.
So what’s the problem?
Social media. The end. Thank you for reading my new blog, hope to see you back next time!
Seriously though. Social media is most of the problem. If you haven’t watched the Netflix film Social Dilemma, I highly recommend doing that right after you finish up this blog. Listen, I’m not going to sit here and rant about conspiracies and that Mark Zuckerberg is an alien. I’m going to present to you how catastrophic social media is to our society, and it’s spiraling out of control.
For teenagers growing up in society now (considered Gen Z), have lived their entire life with social media, basically. They will never know a world without Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok.
My first argument is that the amount of data and information that these corporate giants can collect from all of our underaged individuals should make your skin crawl. With algorithms and complex coding, these social media sites are able to track and monitor search history, time spent viewing posts, and so many other nuggets of information that you might not even realize.
With all of this information, they can generate a file of each individual, which allows them to sell and market the information to any business. See, it used to be that products were marketed to sell to us through television commercials and newspaper ads. Now, WE as people are being marketed to sell our information to the businesses and companies! It’s the inverse, and when did this flip happen? Most of us never have taken the time to notice.
Another scary thing is the effect that social media inevitably has had on this younger generation. Many studies and reports have came out showing drastic increases in suicide, especially in teenage girls, ever since 2007. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that Myspace and Facebook begin to get popular in these early years. Plenty of other social media came to rise later on like Vine, Instagram, TikTok, and plenty more.
In general, the effects that social media may have on young teenagers’ developing minds is frightening. Likes and comments are injected as dopamine through the form of notifications. If you aren’t aware, dopamine is a chemical within our brain that is known as the “pleasure” chemical. When you get a spike in dopamine chemicals, typically something has triggered your brain to feel happiness. Since the brilliant engineers behind social media giants took this into account with their design, they realized they can supply fake dopamine hits through notifications and psychological tricks.
When all you have ever known is the smart phone and Instagram since you were a kid, this becomes your lived reality. You can’t have a universe without social media and a phone to compare to, because you’ve never seen it. That’s a thought.
Cyberbullying. A word that hopefully everyone hates (unless you are one). For a young teenager, a few harsh comments or bullying can flip their entire world upside down. This isn’t even taking into account any of their lived experiences or at-home situations. Some children simply have a difficult life, especially at home with potential parental issues. When you combine the two, easily it could lead down a bad path that they can’t come back from without help.
I’d like to insert some valuable resources for suicide here. I believe that mental health is insanely important, and it’s very often left untreated in this country and in many others. Here are some resources if you know anyone who needs help today:
- Suicide Prevention Lifeline, call 1-800-273-8255
- American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, text TALK to 741741
There are people waiting to help today. Everyone deserves the gift of life.
All in all, I’m not trying to say social media (and any specific platform) is terrible. Although, they can play a huge part in the development of society and it impacts kids and teenagers the most. Unfortunately, I feel like there are many cons around this discussion, and even Facebook’s own designers have admitted to working with psychologists to write their code in a way that sucks in the human brain. More clicks, more profit, Facebook wins. All of the social medias have these kinds of dopamine hit or attraction to them that can continue to bring you back to them.
At the bear minimum, I am asking that every help play their part. Educate yourself and understand what these social media platforms are capable of doing. Bring the kids and teenagers into these discussions, and limit their use so that they will not end up in a fantasy of chasing likes on a digital freaking picture for the rest of their life.
No Place Like Gone 