Nowadays, when you picture a teenager, an image of a moody, exhausted young adult glued to the screen of their phone immediately pops into your head. But how much of that stereotype is due to the teens themselves, and how much is because of why they are glued to that little screen in their hand in the first place? That ‘why’ is social media. From the moment it first appeared, the topic of social media has been heavily disputed. Some believe that it helps teenagers to build connections, make new friends, and be connected to the world. However, there are also many consequences to social media that need to be taken into account. Social media is extremely detrimental to teen’s mental health, their futures, and opens them up to a lot of the dangers of the internet, including privacy violations and cyberbullying.

The first reason why social media is harmful to teens is that it can be extremely destructive to their mental health. As the adolescent brain is still developing, it is far more susceptible to the effects of social media. Starting something so addictive at such a young age can be exceedingly harmful to teen’s health. For instance, according to the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine,  “Suicide rates have trippled among youth aged 10 to 14. Suicide is now the second leading cause of death in individuals from 10 to 24 years old. This extreme rise in suicide rates directly correlates with the rise in social media over the past years. 70% of teens nowadays use social media.” (Biernesser, 2019) As stated, these suicide rates are relevant to social media because social media made those teens feel hopeless, alone, and less than. Like they were drowning under the weight of what society expected them to look like, to act like, and to think like. It gave them unrealistic expectations for themselves and the lives they should be leading. And when they didn’t measure up, because no one ever could, they began to think they never would. That was when their tragically short lives came to an abrupt end. And it didn’t end with happy memories of childhood and caring friends. It ended feeling like they would never be good enough for themselves or anyone else. They would look back on their lives and feel like everything fell short of this imaginary bar that kept growing higher every time they fell short. To illustrate, the Washington Post reported on the story of a young girl using social media who was driven to suicide because of the way it made her feel. Her father stated that, “My daughter was driven to suicide by social media. It’s time for Facebook to stop monetizing misery. Alone in her room, my 14-year-old daughter Molly connected to the Internet one last time — including logging on to Instagram, where she’d been pushed into a rabbit hole of depressive content — and then took her own life.” (Russel, 2021) This illustrates exactly how teens aren’t ready for the burden of social media. It incites feelings of depression and anxiety. It gives these teenagers doubts that they aren’t good enough, that they will never be good enough. And what may start out as a small dose of self doubt can quickly grow into something far more extreme. When they see these pictures of people who are so happy and so beautiful and so loved, even if it’s not real, they start to see faults with themselves and their own life. They feel like they aren’t as happy, or as beautiful, or as loved. And soon, they feel like they aren’t any of those at all. Then they begin to wonder to themselves, what’s the point in living when my life will never be as good as theirs? How many more of these teens need to die before we can wake up and realize that social media is a real problem for these kids? For example, according to the Association for Psychological Science, 97% of the participants in their study indicated that they used social media, and 47% of those teens had anxiety. They stated that, “In several studies, teenage and young adult users who spend the most time on Instagram, Facebook and other platforms were shown to have a substantially (from 13 to 66 percent) higher rate of reported depression than those who spent the least time.” (Miller, 2017) By 2015, 92% of all teens and young adults own a smartphone. These statistics have only grown since. Teen depression is not something to joke about. They feel this crushing hopelessness, like nothing has ever gone right, and it never will. They feel so alone, looking up at these people on social media that they’ve put on top of pedestals, untouchable. It's like they’re stuck in the middle of an ocean, no land in sight, and no end to the storm of hate thrown at them. When they get onto social media, they are judged for their every breath and blink, right down to the roots of their hair. That sort of pressure can be stifling and overwhelming, especially to teens. Social media is like a ladder with no top and where the rungs are constantly shifting. If they fall off that ladder, who will be there to catch them?

The second reason social media is harmful to teens is the effect that it can have on their futures, or the lack of them. For example, according to Britannica, students who use social media have an average GPA of 3.06 while non-users have an average GPA of 3.82. Students who use social media while studying scored 20% lower on tests. (Beland, 2015) That is a huge difference that can mean a lot to your future. When teens use social media they fall into its trap of endless hours spent staring at a screen like Alice down the rabbit hole. For instance, the American Journal of Family Therapy found that, “teens’ GPAs dropped a full grade after 4 hours on average a day on social media.” (Pressman, 2014) To students in high school and beyond, your GPA can mean a lot. It can mean the difference between getting into your dream college or not. It can also mean the difference between getting into the honor societies and clubs that you want to. When your grades and school performance go down, everything in your life is impacted. Including your future. What you learn in school will help you for the rest of your life. Even if you won’t use the information from certain classes in the future, it’s about the work habits you build that you can use for the rest of your life. Take, for example, the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO). They stated that for college applications, “11% of the respondents have denied admission based on online posts.” (Smith, 2021) The college that you get into can determine the course of the rest of your life. To be denied based on things that social media influenced you to do is easily avoided by not using social media and keeping things like this from happening. Social media also influences you to do some dangerous things that may not have the best impact on the rest of your life. For example, there is a recent trend going around on TikTok, known by many names, a couple of which are the Pass Out Game and the Choking Game. It actually existed several decades ago, before social media was a thing. It wasn’t the most obscure thing for teenagers to do the game, but it certainly wasn’t extremely common. Now that social media exists, this dangerous game has had the potential to spread much quicker and much farther. The Pass Out Game can have severe consequences on these teenagers’ futures. Including terminating their futures. The reasons and ways to play these games vary, but one thing they all have in common is that they are highly dangerous. Some users of social media encourage and dare each other to hyperventilate or choke themselves until they pass-out. This can cause brain and bodily damage, harming kids for the rest of their lives. And social media has been the main instigator of this. According to the Center for Disease Control, back in 2008 “At least 82 youth have died as a result of playing what has been called ‘the choking game,’...The choking game involves intentionally trying to choke oneself or another in an effort to obtain a brief euphoric state or ‘high.’” (Hayes, 2018)  If 82 people died back in 2008 without social media, just imagine how many people will be affected now that social media exists and is so common for teens, An example of someone this happened to hits rather close to home in Aurora, Colorado. Today stated that, “According to a GoFundMe message shared by his family, Joshua Haileyesus was discovered unconscious on March 22 after attempting the challenge. His twin brother found him and attempted to resuscitate him…Joshua was intubated and on life support for 19 days before he died on Saturday.” (Breen, 2021)  Joshua was only 12 years old when he died because of social media and what it influenced him to do. This shows exactly how dangerous social media can be for teenagers when their brains have not yet fully developed, and they can be extremely impressionable. Teenagers do not yet have the capability to stop and truly ask themselves if what they’re about to do is a good idea. Social media preys on that vulnerability and can make teens do a lot of things that can harm them.

The third reason that social media is harmful to teens is that it can violate privacy and can open teens up to cyberbullying. For example, according to TechCrunch, “Facebook is paying teens and adults up to $20 in gift cards per month to install a Research VPN with Root network access to spy on all their mobile app activity, web browsing, and even encrypted communications.” Facebook admitted that 18% of the people they were spying on were teens.” (Constine, 2019) When you’re on these platforms, you have no privacy. These companies are monitoring your every move. They know everything about you, and they can use that against you. Using social media opens you up to this danger of being preyed upon. To illustrate, according to Customer Communications Management, Apps like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram listen to your conversations to have more targeted ads to entice you. Believe it or not, for the most part, these are things that we agree to when we hit allow or agree on the user agreements. They are also allowed to record all transactions when you say things like “Hey Siri” or “Okay Google.” Essentially, nothing you say or do near your social media platforms is ever private, both on and off of them. We’ve all had those moments when you realize that someone is listening in on your conversation. Those feelings of betrayal and hurt are awful, and that’s when it is someone you know. Imagine having complete strangers listening in on your conversation so that they can prey upon your desires and needs like vultures to a feast. But wait - you don’t have to imagine, because if you are using social media, this could be happening to you right now. Social media is ripping away our privacy. Cyberbullying is also a real problem that teens these days are facing because of social media. For example, according to the Pew Research Center “59% of US teens have experienced some form of cyberbullying.” (Anderson, 2018) That is over half of the teens in the United States that are on social media and being bullied. There are 42 million teenagers in the United states right now. Over 21 million of them are being cyberbullied. Over 21 million teenagers are being told that they aren’t good enough, aren’t pretty enough, aren’t smart enough. Being put down because of things they cannot or will not control. Feeling like they are smaller, and smaller and smaller, until they can’t find themselves at all, lost among these fields of hate. To illustrate these effects, according to Enough-Is-Enough, “Young people (10-16 years) who accessed or shared sexual content or images of cyberbullying or violence had up to a 50% higher risk for thoughts of suicide...There has been a 70% increase in the amount of bullying/hate speech among teens and children in the month since the Covid lockdown began.” (Sumner, 2021) The Covid lockdown caused teens to be on social media more often than ever, and therefore heavily increased the amount of cyberbullying and hate circulating on it. Being isolated can be harmful enough to your mental health without all of the bullying and hate speech being thrown at you constantly. Imagine how these teenagers feel. Already so alone, they are being isolated on social media as well. That wouldn’t make anyone feel good, but when you’re so young and you look up to these people, it can be crushing. We can stop this when we stop teenagers from using social media. It’s hurting them. It’s hurting us. How many more people need to get hurt before we realize how damaging this is to them? When someone is bullied, they can feel so hurt that they feel entitled to bully others. In their minds, if someone did it to them, why shouldn’t they do it to someone else? And therein begins a cycle where the bullied become the bullies. On and on it goes. No one ever wins, but everyone loses something. Their self esteem, their kindness, their identity. Everything.

Still, some critics believe that social media is helpful to teens' social lives. They believe it helps them make friends and have a support system with them at all times. However, according to a study from PennState, “peer aggression occurred at higher rates between friends, and friends-of-friends, than between those not closely tied. One of the students who reported being the victim of a friend noted, ‘Sometimes your own friends bully you. I don’t understand why, why my friends do this to me.’” (Felmlee, 2021) Maybe social media does help you make friends, but are those real friends? Can you ever truly be friends with someone when all you see of them is what they choose to show you through a screen? The answer, in most cases, is no. People often lie about their identities and their activities online. That is part of what makes social media so dangerous - not knowing who your real friends are, and who is just a mask for someone to hide behind. When people think of a true friend, they think of people that are trustworthy, loyal, and would never hurt them. It is so much easier for people to be cruel and a bully online where they don’t have to see how much it hurts someone. Being a bully online takes nothing more than a few clicks of your fingers. And when you know someone, you also know all the right ways to hurt them the most. These so-called friends can hide behind their screens and never see the ramifications of their actions. In real life, making a friend requires you to cultivate a relationship with a person. Online, all it takes is a click of a button to send a friend request. And if they accept, you are suddenly privy to all of the day to day activities that they post on social media for you to see. That is not what being a true friend is about. Some people disagree, saying that social media can help teenagers be involved in the world. Nonetheless, when you put someone out into the world, especially a teenager, they are vulnerable. Vulnerable to being preyed upon, and vulnerable to getting hurt. They can get spied on, they can get bullied, and they can be influenced to do things that are not healthy for them. Especially through misinformation on social media platforms. For example, according to MIT Sloan, “falsehoods are 70% more likely to be retweeted on Twitter than the truth, and reach their first 1,500 people six times faster.” (Brown, 2018) Teenagers being thrust onto social media and ‘into the real world’ aren’t truly learning about the real world. They are receiving false information, and then they begin to spread that false information to others. This can lead to them growing up believing lies and falsehoods that leave them utterly unprepared for the real world.

In conclusion, social media makes teenagers feel like they will never be good enough, takes away the bright futures ahead of them, and takes away their privacy so they always feel like someone is out to get them. So why do we still use it? Why do we let ourselves, when we know all the harmful things it does to us? Some people say that it helps you make friends and be supported, but there is nothing friendly or supportive about influencing you to do things that could harm you. You can choose whether or not to use social media at a young age. You can make the right choice. And the next time you see someone being influenced by social media, remind them of what it can do to them. Help them not be sucked into that when you know just how much it can hurt them and others. Help them make the right choice, too.