Social Media’s Impact on the Lives of Teenagers and Young Adults

Almost everyone in the world has a device that they take everywhere they go. These little things we carry may be destroying society as we know it. The things we use to contact people are causing so many problems in today's age. Most teens are using these 24/7, and it is causing our family time to be taken away, addiction, cyberbullying, and lack of socialization. There have been countless suicides of young teenagers today. Most of this leads back to one thing, cyberbullying. About 1.2 million kids a year drop out of school or skip class due to cyberbullying/ bullying. It is a huge problem in today's school. Their parentals not checking what they say on their devices and just simply not caring. It gives the child free range of what they can say or do to anyone, no matter what age. We hear cases of young pre-teens and teens around the ages of 12-16 commiting suicide due to the words of others and how they impact their lives. 5.4 million kids are harassed or bullied online.

If you do not commit suicide it usually results in severe depression or anxiety. They usually get social anxiety and they think they have to say the right things and be the right way for them not to be bullied. People get bullied for the way they the way they dress, how heavy or skinny they are, their eye and hair color, and if they wear makeup or not. Therefore people try to change themselves to fit in with everyone else. It can also cause stress, not just stress with school, but stress about changing ourselves to be fit in and be like others. All the stress and pain often leads kids to alcohol and drug abuse. Which leads them to a life in jail, and then their whole lives have been wasted, because of some hurtful and crucial words that the popular girls said in middle school and high school. Instead of drug and alcohol abuse others may question their self-value. They question their worth in life, and if they belong or even should be on the Earth. Teens think that their physical appearance is all they have and not personality or any other factors. If they don't have friends at school, they result to online friends.

Teenagers don't know the dangers of talking to someone they don't know on their devices. Online friends lead to kidnapping if they go to see them in real life. How parents try to prevent it is by trying to enhance their privacy settings, but the kids just find a way around it, just to talk to someone they don't even know. There are only 10% of kids who meet their online friends and 75% of those kids are kidnapped. They aren't usually talking to real kids their age, they are talking to child predators. Not in all cases though, some actually have real internet friends who are actually who they say they are. They talk to these people on social media. Social media is being used for all the wrong reasons, instead of posting pictures and talking to friends, they upload mean things, and manipulate people into sending them things that they should not do. The so called popular kids pressure the not so popular kids into thinking they have to have all of these social media apps, and they will be cool enough to hang out with them and be friends. They also make them think they have to be the perfect person, when in reality no one at school not even the popular kids are as perfect as they think they are.

Today's society makes young women think that they have to have big breasts, a big bottom, have a certain eye color, expensive name brand clothing, they have to be skinny, have to be popular, and have to wear makeup to look decent enough to leave their house. When none of this is true, and girls should just be themselves, but the media is so convincing, that they get plastic surgery, contacts, rack up enough money to buy good clothes, starve themselves, and try to fit in, to be good enough for everyone. Everyone makes it look like their lives are picture perfect, when no one posts their bad days. Their feed has to be pleasing to the eye, instead of the true lives they live, only the good moments never the cruel days that everyone goes through. They do this to win the popularity contest of life. Posting non-stop just refreshing your feed will lead to addiction, which is a big problem for today's age.

Cite this page