social media do more harm than good argumentative essay

Social Media Brings More Harm Than Good Essay

Does the social media bring more harm than good to you? “Social media is the collective of online communications channels dedicated to community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration” (Rouse,2016). There are many forms of social media ranging from websites, forums, blogs and many more. Although social media has been beneficial for us regardless of our age, it has brought about many consequences as well. Some people argue that social media is good for us because it has allowed us to widen our social circles. (Wallace)2014 said that “in the survey of more than 1,000 13- to 17-year-olds about how they view their digital lives, 28% said social networking made them feel more outgoing versus 5% who said it made them feel less so; and 29% said it made them feel less shy versus the 3% who said it made them feel more introverted.” To me, this is the case in our current generation. Nowadays, if we were to …show more content…

For instance, In Singapore, “those aged between 16 and 30 - spend an average of one day a week, or 3.4 hours per day, on their mobile phones, according to a study conducted by global research consultancy TNS.” (Lee ,2015). This shows that many people are being hooked to the social media. They just cannot seem to move away from it as they will tend to have a withdrawal symptoms after a short while. It is so bad to the extent that; social media has become a need in our lives. It feels as though something is missing in our lives without social media. Social media has become a priority over anything else. We will spend more time using social media instead of interacting with families and friends. This addiction could cause families and friendships to be broken due to the lack of interaction. When we are addicted to social media, we will tend to keep to ourselves and not talk to anybody which makes us antisocial. Therefore, social media is more harmful for us as it leads to an

Loneliness In David Ludden's Does Using Social Media Make You Lonely

To further convince the reader, Ludden uses a study referenced in a journal by the credible Duke University psychologist, Jenna Clark. The study addresses college students and how the more Facebook friends that freshman had, the less socially adjusted they felt, whereas with seniors, the more Facebook friends they had, the more socially adjusted they felt (Ludden). This was due to a majority of the freshmans' friends being friends from high school or back home, whereas most of the seniors' friends were friends that they had made in college, therefore they were more connected with them because they interacted with them both online and in person. This study makes it easier to understand how the effect that social media has on you fully depends on your use of it. It makes sense that one would feel isolated and less connected to their environment when they are spending their free time connecting with those who aren’t around them.

Why Is Social Media Good Or Bad

On most of these sites, users may establish informal bio profiles, keep in touch with friends and strangers, do research, share thoughts, music, photos, and more. Social media can harm us if used wrong but, on the alternative side we can use it to keep up with news, help young children and teenagers also, offer help to a few people in need. Social media can be good without a doubt but there are disadvantages to it as well. Around 41% of Americans stay-up-to-date with social media. 78.5% of conventional media journalists surveyed utilized web-based social networking to check for breaking news.

Persuasive Essay: Dangers Of Social Media

Dangers of Social Media Lots of people post on social media about their beliefs right? People post their oppian on the network everyday. Many people get in trouble because they forget that nothing goes away and anyone can look at it. Lots of people don't know that when they apply for a job their social media can be searched or checked.

Essay On Social Media Ruining Society

Thirty years ago, the concept of social media would have seemed impossible. A place where a person can show everyone they know what they are doing in two seconds from any city seems insane. Today, it is the daily ritual of the average teenager, including myself. I start my mornings looking at Instagram and end my nights looking at Snapchat. The middle of the day is for YouTube.

Negative Effects Of Social Media Essay

I. INTRODUCTION Social Networking Sites (SNSs) are online platforms that users use to create Personal profiles, associates with companion and fuss in different parts. Social networking sites exhibits individual profile and facilitates with various other activities such as sharing information with each other. Social networking sites grab million of people in the globe who are united these websites into their daily life style. Social networking sites will become famous all over the world.

Argumentative Impact Of Social Media On Society

As indicated by different research studies in the field of online social networks, it has been uncovered that these sites are impacting the societies in both positive and negative ways. So the “Impacts of social media on humanity” is a hot topic for discussion. Different people have different views about the impact of social media. Some people say that social media have played a beneficial role toward the progress of humanity and some people say that a deterrent role has been played by the social media towards the progress of humanity. Social media has more deterrent impact on progress of humanity.

Persuasive Essay On Social Media

So many people are on one network online, social media has essentially become a second world. That being said, social media should not be encouraged to the public. At first use, social media does not seem dangerous, but it is. These sites diminish its user’s privacy to the point that it is accepted (Anderson 1). Not only do social networks hurt us, but users use it in a way for emotional self-harm.

How Social Media Affects Relationships Essay

Social Media: Affects Relationships As technology progresses more and more, there have been great changes that have made our lives more easy and efficient. There are many advantages that technology has brought upon us, one in particular is the Internet. The Internet has allowed people to be connected quickly to information and be updated to the issues and happenings around us, but the social networks that have been invented to allow long distance connection have been resulting in negative outcomes for society and our generation. Social media gets in the way of building actual relationships, makes people become inauthentic about their lives and lowers their self-esteem, and has become a dangerous and threatening nature. During these days, it seems as if nobody can live without checking their social media accounts, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

Does Social Media Positive Impact On Society

Does social media have a positive impact on society Social media, a form of electronic communication channel which is useful for sharing information, pictures, personal texts, ideas, is one of the most popular technologies today. However, in recent years, the question of whether social media is a positive or negative trend has been raised. Although some people argue that social media has a negative impact on society, I believe that social media is beneficial for society in a number of ways. Firstly, social media makes communication a lot easier than before. In the past, most people used phones and letters for communicating with others; they were not an effective way of communication because they were time consuming and not instant.

Argumentative Essay On Social Media Advantages And Disadvantages

Imagine that 20 years ago the only way to stay in touch with a person was to mail a letter. In a modern world with the invention of social media, people can converse with someone using the internet and get a response within seconds. Although in the course of time all generations have started to take advantage of the novations that social media has brought about, teenagers and young adults are the most active users of these networks. According to numerous research studies in the area of online social networks, it has been shown that such sites are impacting the lives of the youth significantly. Understandably, there are a lot of different opinions about its positive and negative influence.

Causes And Effects Of Social Media Addiction

BODY 1. One of the effects for social networking addiction is spending too much time to online. People will use a lot of time in social network such as they will always post status and photo in Facebook and instagram, stalking others people status and so on. 1. Spending too much of time to social networking will cause people especially students poor in academic.

Essay On Impact Of Social Media On Students

With the internet being invented and undoubtedly taking huge precedence in our lives, there is inevitably going to be a way for people to waste their time on the internet. That time waster, also known as social media, is one of the most beneficial and also one of the worst things that has entered the lives of people as a result of the internet. People everywhere use social media. They use it to feel connected to people who are far away, to promote their businesses, and for a plethora of other reasons. Social media has begun to be increasing used in school, the workplace, and also just in peoples own homes.

Said “shannon Poppito, a phychologist at baylor medical university in Dallas”states that when people spend more time in social media, they break off the relationship from real life end up feeling less connected with them selves. According to myself as an example of anti-social make us not confident when showing ourselves in front of others and cause confidence to decline. This is because social media users become lazy to learn to communicate real , just share and interect in the virtual world. For example when someone is in the cafe opening social media sites they often forget the time.

Essay On Effects Of Social Media On Students

Chapter 1 Background of the Study Introduction In the contemporary world, most people use social media for news, entertainment, to seek information and to be updated every day. Nowadays, the use of social media has greatly changed how people interact with other people. Today, most people only consider the benefits that the social media brought to the people without thinking about the possible negative implications of using it.

Disadvantages Of Social Media Essay

Thus, social media just offer limited meeting. Psychologist, Aric Sigman says, “The use of social networking sites as opposed to face-to-face interaction could lead to major health problems.” He also claimed in the British Journal: The Biologist, “Spending too much time online could lead to social isolation, loneliness a negative outlook. These types of psychological symptoms could eventually lead to more serious health concerns, such as heart disease, cancer and

More about Social Media Brings More Harm Than Good Essay

Does Social Media Do More Harm Than Good for Society?

Social media has both positive and negative effects on society. But is it doing more harm than good?

Media has always had the power to influence our society, but it wasn't until the social media boom that we saw it on this scale and magnitude. While it has the potential for good, social media has been also been harmful to society because of how we use it.

Here's how social media is harming our mental health, self-image, communication skills, and society at large—potentially causing more harm than good overall.

Social Media Can Lead to Depression, Anxiety, and Loneliness

The uncontrollable urge to share everyday life with others on social media is starting to have long-term effects. Studies have shown that increased use of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok is leading to depression, anxiety, and loneliness.

The COVID-19 pandemic not only pushed more people to the platforms but also caused people to spend unusual amounts of time cruising their feeds. According to Statista , as of 2022, people spend an average of 147 minutes on social media daily. That's more than two hours.

More importantly, science has found that social media can make you sad . Social media platforms have become aware of how to manipulate your brain's reward response to increase engagement and time spent on apps. When you receive positive feedback on a post you made or a picture you uploaded, it releases endorphins. This is what keeps people on the platforms for hours. But it can also lead to increased feelings of anxiety, depression, and loneliness.

Casinos use the same types of tactics to get people to spend more time, and money, on their business. Giving out small wins to keep people coming back but never being able to fulfill their needs. If everyone had a full understanding of this concept, it could lead to healthier social media habits. Problem is, not very many people know how to create a healthy balance.

Communication on Social Media Has a Dark Side

While not everyone on the internet has a hard time communicating in real life, there is still a good portion of introverts who have an easier time talking online. Social media makes it easier for those people to connect with others and learn social cues that could have been missed. This can be especially helpful for people who live in smaller towns and have a deep desire to broaden their horizons.

While you can't exactly remain anonymous on social media without creating a fake profile, you can create a whole new persona. This can help people who have a hard time socializing to break out of their shells.

Where social media has gotten into trouble is when these personas get pulled to the dark side. According to Help Guide , about 10 percent of teens report being bullied on social media, and even more claim they have been the recipient of offensive remarks. Being on the receiving end can lead to lower self-esteem and self-image.

It's also hard to express clear and concise communication when only using a keyboard. Language gets lost in translation without more communication clues to give context, like body language. What could have been intended as an innocent remark could be taken personally. This could lead to an argument that could have been avoided if it had been made in person.

Communication on social media still has some maturing to do before it becomes a force for good.

Social Media's Divisive Effect

At no other time in the history of the world has it been easier to connect with someone from around the world as it is today. Social media has had a large part in getting more people in contact with each other. These connections have fostered a whole world of communities that wouldn't have existed without the invention of the internet and social media. To be fair, social media has some positive effects on society .

But at the same time, the ease of finding like-minded people through social media has shown to be just as dangerous as it has been positive. Since its inception, the public has become increasingly aware of just what types of groups were forming in the dark corners of social media. Groups that would threaten the well-being of others were allowed to assemble online.

The 2016 election was controversial for the use of foreign interference through Facebook ads to swing the opinions of the public. The continued disparity between political opinions is a big reason why Americans feel social media is doing more harm than good these days.

The power of social media to influence entire nations has come under the microscope with recent events and other forms of media, like movies. Documentaries like The Social Dilemma have shown exactly what kind of manipulation social media is capable of.

Our dependence on social media is causing large consequences on how we live our lives. Although, the same could potentially be said about any form of media. The only difference is the scale that social media operates on and the instantaneous effect of that power. As a result, we face a dilemma of disinformation, social division spurred by bad-faith actors, and massive influence campaigns driven by social media.

Self-Image Suffers Due to Social Media

We have all gone through periods of comparing ourselves to others, whether it be in school or work. Social media has taken that concept to a whole other level by putting the haves and the have-nots front and center. What started as an honest way to connect with like-minded communities and friends has become a way to sell and buy happiness. Social media has, essentially, turned into a marketing platform.

Facebook, Instagram, and even LinkedIn have all drastically reduced the organic reach of posts with algorithmic timelines. This means fewer and fewer people get to see what you post unless you want to pay for advertising. Only a handful of people, known as influencers, have a massive audience.

And many of them have financial reasons for their posts. They sell products by filling their social feeds with good experiences and amazing places. This leads to a majority of people on the platform trying to make their lives seem just as good. That, in turn, can lead to severe loneliness and pressure from always comparing your life to others without knowing the context behind the pictures.

The Future of Social Media in Society

Social media, in and of itself, is not bad or harmful to society. What makes it harmful is how we use it and how we feel about ourselves while using it.

Right now, that pendulum is swinging in the wrong direction, but all it takes is enough people choosing to use it for the right reasons.

Argumentative Essay Writing

Argumentative Essay About Social Media

Crafting a Winning Argumentative Essay on Social Media

Published on: Feb 27, 2023

Last updated on: Jan 31, 2024

Argumentative Essay- Explained

Before writing an argumentative essay about social media, it's important to understand what makes up a good argumentative essay.

An argumentative essay is an article that presents both sides of an issue or debate in order to reach a conclusion.

It requires you to provide evidence and facts, present a point of view, and develop an argument.

When writing an argumentative essay on social media, you must present both sides of the issue or debate in a balanced manner.

You must also be sure to explain why one side has more credibility than the other.

This means that youâll need to do your research and make sure that your essay has facts and evidence to back up your claims.

Why Do We Write an Argumentative Essay About Social Media?

This type of essay can be difficult because it requires you to present both sides of the argument in a balanced and unbiased manner.

It also requires you to research facts that support either side of the argument and present them in a clear and logical manner.

By writing this essay, you can help readers understand why one point of view is more credible than another.

This can help them form their own opinions on the issue and become better informed on the topic.

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Steps to Write an Argumentative Essay About Social Media

Writing an argumentative essay about social media requires research, facts, and evidence.

Here are a few steps that can help you write a great argumentative essay:

Research To Collect Data and Material

The first step in writing an argumentative essay about social media is to do research and collect data .

This includes researching various sources such as books, articles, and websites that provide reliable information about the topic.

Take notes on what you read and highlight any points or quotes that you may want to include in your essay.

Pick an Engaging Title for an Argumentative Essay About Social Media

When it comes to writing a great argumentative essay about social media, one of the most important elements is having a great title.

A good title will draw readers in and encourage them to read your essay.

Make sure the title is catchy yet relevant to the main topic of your paper.

Form a Descriptive Outline

Once you have collected enough data and material, itâs time to start forming a descriptive outline of your essay.

This should include all the points you plan on discussing throughout the body paragraphs. Furthermore, it should include any conclusions that you may want to propose at the end of your paper.

By having a clear idea of what your paper will cover, it will be much easier to plan out each section before writing it out in full detail.

Check out this amazing blog on argumentative essay outline to craft perfect outlines.

Write an Introduction of an Argumentative Essay About Social Media

Your introduction should be engaging and introduce readers to the main topic of your paper.

Here, you can also state which side of the argument you are taking (if applicable) so readers know where you stand from the beginning.

Write Connect The Body Paragraphs Of Your Essay

In each body paragraph, provide evidence or facts that prove why your opinion is correct.

Each paragraph should introduce a new point or idea related back to your main argument.

Make sure each point flows naturally into one another without jumping around too much from one point/idea to another.

Write A Compelling Conclusion

Finally, write a compelling conclusion that wraps up all points made throughout the body paragraphs.

Make sure not only summarize what was already said. Also, provide insight into why these topics are still relevant today and how they affect us today going forward!

Examples of Argumentative Essay About Social Media

When writing an argumentative essay about social media, it can be helpful to look at examples.

Here is a sample argumentative essay written by our expert writers. Check it out for more inspiration.

By reading these sample essays, you can gain a better understanding of how to write your own essay and what elements are important to include.

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Check our extensive blog on argumentative essay examples to ace your next essay!

Argumentative Essay About Social Media Topics

If youâre looking for topics to write about in your argumentative essay about social media, take a look at the list below for some ideas:

The Impact of Social Media on Human Interaction
How Can We Limit Social Media Use?
Is Social Media Harmful/Beneficial to Mental Health?
Social Media and Its Effect on the Education System
Is Social Media Really a Positive Influence on Young People?
The Impact of Social Media on Privacy
How Has Social Media Changed Society in Recent Years?
Should We Censor Content Posted on Social Media Platforms like Twitter and Facebook?
Does Social Media Make Us Feel More Alone?
Are Social Media Users Becoming Increasingly Narcissistic?
Should We Rely on Social Media for News Sources?
Is Social Media a Tool of Surveillance?

Check our comprehensive blog on argumentative essay topics to get more topic ideas!

The platform that you use to communicate with others can be a great tool or it can do more harm than good. It all depends on how you use it and what your intentions are.

You can find social media argumentative essay examples all over the internet, but not every one of them is going to be a winner.

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How Harmful Is Social Media?

By Gideon Lewis-Kraus

In April, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt published an essay in The Atlantic in which he sought to explain, as the piece’s title had it, “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.” Anyone familiar with Haidt’s work in the past half decade could have anticipated his answer: social media. Although Haidt concedes that political polarization and factional enmity long predate the rise of the platforms, and that there are plenty of other factors involved, he believes that the tools of virality—Facebook’s Like and Share buttons, Twitter’s Retweet function—have algorithmically and irrevocably corroded public life. He has determined that a great historical discontinuity can be dated with some precision to the period between 2010 and 2014, when these features became widely available on phones.

“What changed in the 2010s?” Haidt asks, reminding his audience that a former Twitter developer had once compared the Retweet button to the provision of a four-year-old with a loaded weapon. “A mean tweet doesn’t kill anyone; it is an attempt to shame or punish someone publicly while broadcasting one’s own virtue, brilliance, or tribal loyalties. It’s more a dart than a bullet, causing pain but no fatalities. Even so, from 2009 to 2012, Facebook and Twitter passed out roughly a billion dart guns globally. We’ve been shooting one another ever since.” While the right has thrived on conspiracy-mongering and misinformation, the left has turned punitive: “When everyone was issued a dart gun in the early 2010s, many left-leaning institutions began shooting themselves in the brain. And, unfortunately, those were the brains that inform, instruct, and entertain most of the country.” Haidt’s prevailing metaphor of thoroughgoing fragmentation is the story of the Tower of Babel: the rise of social media has “unwittingly dissolved the mortar of trust, belief in institutions, and shared stories that had held a large and diverse secular democracy together.”

These are, needless to say, common concerns. Chief among Haidt’s worries is that use of social media has left us particularly vulnerable to confirmation bias, or the propensity to fix upon evidence that shores up our prior beliefs. Haidt acknowledges that the extant literature on social media’s effects is large and complex, and that there is something in it for everyone. On January 6, 2021, he was on the phone with Chris Bail, a sociologist at Duke and the author of the recent book “ Breaking the Social Media Prism ,” when Bail urged him to turn on the television. Two weeks later, Haidt wrote to Bail, expressing his frustration at the way Facebook officials consistently cited the same handful of studies in their defense. He suggested that the two of them collaborate on a comprehensive literature review that they could share, as a Google Doc, with other researchers. (Haidt had experimented with such a model before.) Bail was cautious. He told me, “What I said to him was, ‘Well, you know, I’m not sure the research is going to bear out your version of the story,’ and he said, ‘Why don’t we see?’ ”

Bail emphasized that he is not a “platform-basher.” He added, “In my book, my main take is, Yes, the platforms play a role, but we are greatly exaggerating what it’s possible for them to do—how much they could change things no matter who’s at the helm at these companies—and we’re profoundly underestimating the human element, the motivation of users.” He found Haidt’s idea of a Google Doc appealing, in the way that it would produce a kind of living document that existed “somewhere between scholarship and public writing.” Haidt was eager for a forum to test his ideas. “I decided that if I was going to be writing about this—what changed in the universe, around 2014, when things got weird on campus and elsewhere—once again, I’d better be confident I’m right,” he said. “I can’t just go off my feelings and my readings of the biased literature. We all suffer from confirmation bias, and the only cure is other people who don’t share your own.”

Haidt and Bail, along with a research assistant, populated the document over the course of several weeks last year, and in November they invited about two dozen scholars to contribute. Haidt told me, of the difficulties of social-scientific methodology, “When you first approach a question, you don’t even know what it is. ‘Is social media destroying democracy, yes or no?’ That’s not a good question. You can’t answer that question. So what can you ask and answer?” As the document took on a life of its own, tractable rubrics emerged—Does social media make people angrier or more affectively polarized? Does it create political echo chambers? Does it increase the probability of violence? Does it enable foreign governments to increase political dysfunction in the United States and other democracies? Haidt continued, “It’s only after you break it up into lots of answerable questions that you see where the complexity lies.”

Haidt came away with the sense, on balance, that social media was in fact pretty bad. He was disappointed, but not surprised, that Facebook’s response to his article relied on the same three studies they’ve been reciting for years. “This is something you see with breakfast cereals,” he said, noting that a cereal company “might say, ‘Did you know we have twenty-five per cent more riboflavin than the leading brand?’ They’ll point to features where the evidence is in their favor, which distracts you from the over-all fact that your cereal tastes worse and is less healthy.”

After Haidt’s piece was published, the Google Doc—“Social Media and Political Dysfunction: A Collaborative Review”—was made available to the public . Comments piled up, and a new section was added, at the end, to include a miscellany of Twitter threads and Substack essays that appeared in response to Haidt’s interpretation of the evidence. Some colleagues and kibbitzers agreed with Haidt. But others, though they might have shared his basic intuition that something in our experience of social media was amiss, drew upon the same data set to reach less definitive conclusions, or even mildly contradictory ones. Even after the initial flurry of responses to Haidt’s article disappeared into social-media memory, the document, insofar as it captured the state of the social-media debate, remained a lively artifact.

Near the end of the collaborative project’s introduction, the authors warn, “We caution readers not to simply add up the number of studies on each side and declare one side the winner.” The document runs to more than a hundred and fifty pages, and for each question there are affirmative and dissenting studies, as well as some that indicate mixed results. According to one paper, “Political expressions on social media and the online forum were found to (a) reinforce the expressers’ partisan thought process and (b) harden their pre-existing political preferences,” but, according to another, which used data collected during the 2016 election, “Over the course of the campaign, we found media use and attitudes remained relatively stable. Our results also showed that Facebook news use was related to modest over-time spiral of depolarization. Furthermore, we found that people who use Facebook for news were more likely to view both pro- and counter-attitudinal news in each wave. Our results indicated that counter-attitudinal exposure increased over time, which resulted in depolarization.” If results like these seem incompatible, a perplexed reader is given recourse to a study that says, “Our findings indicate that political polarization on social media cannot be conceptualized as a unified phenomenon, as there are significant cross-platform differences.”

Interested in echo chambers? “Our results show that the aggregation of users in homophilic clusters dominate online interactions on Facebook and Twitter,” which seems convincing—except that, as another team has it, “We do not find evidence supporting a strong characterization of ‘echo chambers’ in which the majority of people’s sources of news are mutually exclusive and from opposite poles.” By the end of the file, the vaguely patronizing top-line recommendation against simple summation begins to make more sense. A document that originated as a bulwark against confirmation bias could, as it turned out, just as easily function as a kind of generative device to support anybody’s pet conviction. The only sane response, it seemed, was simply to throw one’s hands in the air.

When I spoke to some of the researchers whose work had been included, I found a combination of broad, visceral unease with the current situation—with the banefulness of harassment and trolling; with the opacity of the platforms; with, well, the widespread presentiment that of course social media is in many ways bad—and a contrastive sense that it might not be catastrophically bad in some of the specific ways that many of us have come to take for granted as true. This was not mere contrarianism, and there was no trace of gleeful mythbusting; the issue was important enough to get right. When I told Bail that the upshot seemed to me to be that exactly nothing was unambiguously clear, he suggested that there was at least some firm ground. He sounded a bit less apocalyptic than Haidt.

“A lot of the stories out there are just wrong,” he told me. “The political echo chamber has been massively overstated. Maybe it’s three to five per cent of people who are properly in an echo chamber.” Echo chambers, as hotboxes of confirmation bias, are counterproductive for democracy. But research indicates that most of us are actually exposed to a wider range of views on social media than we are in real life, where our social networks—in the original use of the term—are rarely heterogeneous. (Haidt told me that this was an issue on which the Google Doc changed his mind; he became convinced that echo chambers probably aren’t as widespread a problem as he’d once imagined.) And too much of a focus on our intuitions about social media’s echo-chamber effect could obscure the relevant counterfactual: a conservative might abandon Twitter only to watch more Fox News. “Stepping outside your echo chamber is supposed to make you moderate, but maybe it makes you more extreme,” Bail said. The research is inchoate and ongoing, and it’s difficult to say anything on the topic with absolute certainty. But this was, in part, Bail’s point: we ought to be less sure about the particular impacts of social media.

Bail went on, “The second story is foreign misinformation.” It’s not that misinformation doesn’t exist, or that it hasn’t had indirect effects, especially when it creates perverse incentives for the mainstream media to cover stories circulating online. Haidt also draws convincingly upon the work of Renée DiResta, the research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, to sketch out a potential future in which the work of shitposting has been outsourced to artificial intelligence, further polluting the informational environment. But, at least so far, very few Americans seem to suffer from consistent exposure to fake news—“probably less than two per cent of Twitter users, maybe fewer now, and for those who were it didn’t change their opinions,” Bail said. This was probably because the people likeliest to consume such spectacles were the sort of people primed to believe them in the first place. “In fact,” he said, “echo chambers might have done something to quarantine that misinformation.”

The final story that Bail wanted to discuss was the “proverbial rabbit hole, the path to algorithmic radicalization,” by which YouTube might serve a viewer increasingly extreme videos. There is some anecdotal evidence to suggest that this does happen, at least on occasion, and such anecdotes are alarming to hear. But a new working paper led by Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth, found that almost all extremist content is either consumed by subscribers to the relevant channels—a sign of actual demand rather than manipulation or preference falsification—or encountered via links from external sites. It’s easy to see why we might prefer if this were not the case: algorithmic radicalization is presumably a simpler problem to solve than the fact that there are people who deliberately seek out vile content. “These are the three stories—echo chambers, foreign influence campaigns, and radicalizing recommendation algorithms—but, when you look at the literature, they’ve all been overstated.” He thought that these findings were crucial for us to assimilate, if only to help us understand that our problems may lie beyond technocratic tinkering. He explained, “Part of my interest in getting this research out there is to demonstrate that everybody is waiting for an Elon Musk to ride in and save us with an algorithm”—or, presumably, the reverse—“and it’s just not going to happen.”

When I spoke with Nyhan, he told me much the same thing: “The most credible research is way out of line with the takes.” He noted, of extremist content and misinformation, that reliable research that “measures exposure to these things finds that the people consuming this content are small minorities who have extreme views already.” The problem with the bulk of the earlier research, Nyhan told me, is that it’s almost all correlational. “Many of these studies will find polarization on social media,” he said. “But that might just be the society we live in reflected on social media!” He hastened to add, “Not that this is untroubling, and none of this is to let these companies, which are exercising a lot of power with very little scrutiny, off the hook. But a lot of the criticisms of them are very poorly founded. . . . The expansion of Internet access coincides with fifteen other trends over time, and separating them is very difficult. The lack of good data is a huge problem insofar as it lets people project their own fears into this area.” He told me, “It’s hard to weigh in on the side of ‘We don’t know, the evidence is weak,’ because those points are always going to be drowned out in our discourse. But these arguments are systematically underprovided in the public domain.”

In his Atlantic article, Haidt leans on a working paper by two social scientists, Philipp Lorenz-Spreen and Lisa Oswald, who took on a comprehensive meta-analysis of about five hundred papers and concluded that “the large majority of reported associations between digital media use and trust appear to be detrimental for democracy.” Haidt writes, “The literature is complex—some studies show benefits, particularly in less developed democracies—but the review found that, on balance, social media amplifies political polarization; foments populism, especially right-wing populism; and is associated with the spread of misinformation.” Nyhan was less convinced that the meta-analysis supported such categorical verdicts, especially once you bracketed the kinds of correlational findings that might simply mirror social and political dynamics. He told me, “If you look at their summary of studies that allow for causal inferences—it’s very mixed.”

As for the studies Nyhan considered most methodologically sound, he pointed to a 2020 article called “The Welfare Effects of Social Media,” by Hunt Allcott, Luca Braghieri, Sarah Eichmeyer, and Matthew Gentzkow. For four weeks prior to the 2018 midterm elections, the authors randomly divided a group of volunteers into two cohorts—one that continued to use Facebook as usual, and another that was paid to deactivate their accounts for that period. They found that deactivation “(i) reduced online activity, while increasing offline activities such as watching TV alone and socializing with family and friends; (ii) reduced both factual news knowledge and political polarization; (iii) increased subjective well-being; and (iv) caused a large persistent reduction in post-experiment Facebook use.” But Gentzkow reminded me that his conclusions, including that Facebook may slightly increase polarization, had to be heavily qualified: “From other kinds of evidence, I think there’s reason to think social media is not the main driver of increasing polarization over the long haul in the United States.”

In the book “ Why We’re Polarized ,” for example, Ezra Klein invokes the work of such scholars as Lilliana Mason to argue that the roots of polarization might be found in, among other factors, the political realignment and nationalization that began in the sixties, and were then sacralized, on the right, by the rise of talk radio and cable news. These dynamics have served to flatten our political identities, weakening our ability or inclination to find compromise. Insofar as some forms of social media encourage the hardening of connections between our identities and a narrow set of opinions, we might increasingly self-select into mutually incomprehensible and hostile groups; Haidt plausibly suggests that these processes are accelerated by the coalescence of social-media tribes around figures of fearful online charisma. “Social media might be more of an amplifier of other things going on rather than a major driver independently,” Gentzkow argued. “I think it takes some gymnastics to tell a story where it’s all primarily driven by social media, especially when you’re looking at different countries, and across different groups.”

Another study, led by Nejla Asimovic and Joshua Tucker, replicated Gentzkow’s approach in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and they found almost precisely the opposite results: the people who stayed on Facebook were, by the end of the study, more positively disposed to their historic out-groups. The authors’ interpretation was that ethnic groups have so little contact in Bosnia that, for some people, social media is essentially the only place where they can form positive images of one another. “To have a replication and have the signs flip like that, it’s pretty stunning,” Bail told me. “It’s a different conversation in every part of the world.”

Nyhan argued that, at least in wealthy Western countries, we might be too heavily discounting the degree to which platforms have responded to criticism: “Everyone is still operating under the view that algorithms simply maximize engagement in a short-term way” with minimal attention to potential externalities. “That might’ve been true when Zuckerberg had seven people working for him, but there are a lot of considerations that go into these rankings now.” He added, “There’s some evidence that, with reverse-chronological feeds”—streams of unwashed content, which some critics argue are less manipulative than algorithmic curation—“people get exposed to more low-quality content, so it’s another case where a very simple notion of ‘algorithms are bad’ doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. It doesn’t mean they’re good, it’s just that we don’t know.”

Bail told me that, over all, he was less confident than Haidt that the available evidence lines up clearly against the platforms. “Maybe there’s a slight majority of studies that say that social media is a net negative, at least in the West, and maybe it’s doing some good in the rest of the world.” But, he noted, “Jon will say that science has this expectation of rigor that can’t keep up with the need in the real world—that even if we don’t have the definitive study that creates the historical counterfactual that Facebook is largely responsible for polarization in the U.S., there’s still a lot pointing in that direction, and I think that’s a fair point.” He paused. “It can’t all be randomized control trials.”

Haidt comes across in conversation as searching and sincere, and, during our exchange, he paused several times to suggest that I include a quote from John Stuart Mill on the importance of good-faith debate to moral progress. In that spirit, I asked him what he thought of the argument, elaborated by some of Haidt’s critics, that the problems he described are fundamentally political, social, and economic, and that to blame social media is to search for lost keys under the streetlamp, where the light is better. He agreed that this was the steelman opponent: there were predecessors for cancel culture in de Tocqueville, and anxiety about new media that went back to the time of the printing press. “This is a perfectly reasonable hypothesis, and it’s absolutely up to the prosecution—people like me—to argue that, no, this time it’s different. But it’s a civil case! The evidential standard is not ‘beyond a reasonable doubt,’ as in a criminal case. It’s just a preponderance of the evidence.”

The way scholars weigh the testimony is subject to their disciplinary orientations. Economists and political scientists tend to believe that you can’t even begin to talk about causal dynamics without a randomized controlled trial, whereas sociologists and psychologists are more comfortable drawing inferences on a correlational basis. Haidt believes that conditions are too dire to take the hardheaded, no-reasonable-doubt view. “The preponderance of the evidence is what we use in public health. If there’s an epidemic—when COVID started, suppose all the scientists had said, ‘No, we gotta be so certain before you do anything’? We have to think about what’s actually happening, what’s likeliest to pay off.” He continued, “We have the largest epidemic ever of teen mental health, and there is no other explanation,” he said. “It is a raging public-health epidemic, and the kids themselves say Instagram did it, and we have some evidence, so is it appropriate to say, ‘Nah, you haven’t proven it’?”

This was his attitude across the board. He argued that social media seemed to aggrandize inflammatory posts and to be correlated with a rise in violence; even if only small groups were exposed to fake news, such beliefs might still proliferate in ways that were hard to measure. “In the post-Babel era, what matters is not the average but the dynamics, the contagion, the exponential amplification,” he said. “Small things can grow very quickly, so arguments that Russian disinformation didn’t matter are like COVID arguments that people coming in from China didn’t have contact with a lot of people.” Given the transformative effects of social media, Haidt insisted, it was important to act now, even in the absence of dispositive evidence. “Academic debates play out over decades and are often never resolved, whereas the social-media environment changes year by year,” he said. “We don’t have the luxury of waiting around five or ten years for literature reviews.”

Haidt could be accused of question-begging—of assuming the existence of a crisis that the research might or might not ultimately underwrite. Still, the gap between the two sides in this case might not be quite as wide as Haidt thinks. Skeptics of his strongest claims are not saying that there’s no there there. Just because the average YouTube user is unlikely to be led to Stormfront videos, Nyhan told me, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t worry that some people are watching Stormfront videos; just because echo chambers and foreign misinformation seem to have had effects only at the margins, Gentzkow said, doesn’t mean they’re entirely irrelevant. “There are many questions here where the thing we as researchers are interested in is how social media affects the average person,” Gentzkow told me. “There’s a different set of questions where all you need is a small number of people to change—questions about ethnic violence in Bangladesh or Sri Lanka, people on YouTube mobilized to do mass shootings. Much of the evidence broadly makes me skeptical that the average effects are as big as the public discussion thinks they are, but I also think there are cases where a small number of people with very extreme views are able to find each other and connect and act.” He added, “That’s where many of the things I’d be most concerned about lie.”

The same might be said about any phenomenon where the base rate is very low but the stakes are very high, such as teen suicide. “It’s another case where those rare edge cases in terms of total social harm may be enormous. You don’t need many teen-age kids to decide to kill themselves or have serious mental-health outcomes in order for the social harm to be really big.” He added, “Almost none of this work is able to get at those edge-case effects, and we have to be careful that if we do establish that the average effect of something is zero, or small, that it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be worried about it—because we might be missing those extremes.” Jaime Settle, a scholar of political behavior at the College of William & Mary and the author of the book “ Frenemies: How Social Media Polarizes America ,” noted that Haidt is “farther along the spectrum of what most academics who study this stuff are going to say we have strong evidence for.” But she understood his impulse: “We do have serious problems, and I’m glad Jon wrote the piece, and down the road I wouldn’t be surprised if we got a fuller handle on the role of social media in all of this—there are definitely ways in which social media has changed our politics for the worse.”

It’s tempting to sidestep the question of diagnosis entirely, and to evaluate Haidt’s essay not on the basis of predictive accuracy—whether social media will lead to the destruction of American democracy—but as a set of proposals for what we might do better. If he is wrong, how much damage are his prescriptions likely to do? Haidt, to his great credit, does not indulge in any wishful thinking, and if his diagnosis is largely technological his prescriptions are sociopolitical. Two of his three major suggestions seem useful and have nothing to do with social media: he thinks that we should end closed primaries and that children should be given wide latitude for unsupervised play. His recommendations for social-media reform are, for the most part, uncontroversial: he believes that preteens shouldn’t be on Instagram and that platforms should share their data with outside researchers—proposals that are both likely to be beneficial and not very costly.

It remains possible, however, that the true costs of social-media anxieties are harder to tabulate. Gentzkow told me that, for the period between 2016 and 2020, the direct effects of misinformation were difficult to discern. “But it might have had a much larger effect because we got so worried about it—a broader impact on trust,” he said. “Even if not that many people were exposed, the narrative that the world is full of fake news, and you can’t trust anything, and other people are being misled about it—well, that might have had a bigger impact than the content itself.” Nyhan had a similar reaction. “There are genuine questions that are really important, but there’s a kind of opportunity cost that is missed here. There’s so much focus on sweeping claims that aren’t actionable, or unfounded claims we can contradict with data, that are crowding out the harms we can demonstrate, and the things we can test, that could make social media better.” He added, “We’re years into this, and we’re still having an uninformed conversation about social media. It’s totally wild.”

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Does social media impact mental health? What we really know

Over the last 20 years, social media has risen from relative obscurity to become a fully accepted and integrated part of everyday life. However, despite social media’s ubiquity, the research on how it affects mental health remains inconclusive.

So far, most research investigating the effects of social media on mental health has focused on the potential negative aspects.

For instance, a 2019 study involving 6,595 teenagers from the United States concludes that those who spend more than 3 hours per day on social media may have a higher risk of mental health problems than those who do not.

But the degree to which social media actually harms mental health is debatable. A recent review, available as a preprint , found that most studies investigating the link between social media and mental health demonstrate “weak” or “inconsistent” associations.

Another review found that while there may be a small negative association between social media use and mental health, the link is complex and depends on exactly how researchers define mental health and social media use.

Meanwhile, other research suggests that social media may even benefit mental health, especially for people belonging to LGBTQIA+ communities and those living with mental health conditions.

These conflicting findings make it challenging to navigate the research investigating the effects of social media on mental health and how best to use social media. With this in mind, Medical News Today sought the input of seven psychology experts at the intersection of social media and mental health.

‘We simply don’t know about cause and effect’

“One promising area of research is the role of online peer networks, where it appears that connecting online with others who share similar mental health challenges can offer important benefits for feeling less alone, learning coping skills, and being able to offer/receive emotional or informational support from others,” Dr. John Naslund, Ph.D. , an instructor in global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School, told MNT.

Dr. Niklas Johannes , a postdoctoral researcher in the Adolescent Well-Being in the Digital Age program at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, agreed that social media might be linked to some mental health benefits. However, he added that more research is necessary to confirm the direction in which this connection lies.

“There’s a lot of research out there that suggests social media are a useful tool to stay connected to others. In fact, those who use social media more also report feeling more social support. However, all of this comes with a huge caveat: We simply don’t know about cause and effect. It’s just as plausible that heavy social media users make more friends or that those with a lot of friends use more social media. It’s also plausible that both are true,” he explained.

Other research suggests that “how” a person uses social media rather than “how much” may have a stronger association with mental health outcomes.

“There is evidence that routine social media use in the general population is positively associated with mental health and social well-being, as long as one is not ’emotionally invested’ in the media, in which case the outcomes are negative,” Dan-Mircea Mirea , a doctoral candidate in psychology at Princeton University, and project coordinator at Mental Health for Romania, told MNT.

Dr. Gonneke Stevens , associate professor of social and behavioral sciences at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, agreed that “emotional investment” in social media use may be more indicative of mental health outcomes than how much a person uses it.

“[O]ur research suggests that not so much the intense use of social media, but social media use problems — that is, addiction-like symptoms such as feeling bad when social media use is restricted, loss of control over and preoccupation with social media, and conflicts with others because of the social media use — are associated with mental health problems.” – Dr. Gonneke Stevens

“Indeed, we found that social media use problems predicted increases in mental health problems 1 year later — this was true for both depressive symptoms and ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder] symptoms,” she added.

Social media and mental health risk factors

“For children and teens, I think the most compelling evidence is the research regarding cyberbullying on social media,” said Dr. Kya Barounis , a senior mental health researcher at the University of California, San Diego. “Cyberbullying is associated with symptoms of depression and suicidality. It may be a particular problem for youth who identify as sexual or gender minorities.”

Dr. Barounis also noted that social media use could displace other behaviors, such as sleep and exercise, which are “important for maintaining good mental health.” Researchers study this process through what is known as “ displacement theory .”

To give an example, she said: “If a youth is staying up late each night on social media and not getting enough sleep, the lack of sleep can lead to feelings of irritability or depressed mood the next day.”

She cautioned, however, that this does not mean that social media use causes mental health conditions, noting that the relationship between chronic sleep problems and clinical depression in youth is complicated.

Dr. Naslund agreed that social media can perpetuate “targeted hate from others” or cyberbullying, which can have a negative effect.

He added that although research related to social media and mental health is generally mixed, “exposure to hateful content online — such as viewing or being targeted by derogatory content targeting race, ethnicity, or gender — is associated with poorer mental health and feelings of distress.”

Questionable data

Beyond the risk of cyberbullying and exposure to hate content, others say that it is important to interpret with caution any studies related to more generalized social media use because they are often based on unreliable data.

“There are multiple observational studies that find that social media use is negatively associated with mental health,” said Mirea.

“However,” he added, “there are also studies looking at similar datasets, or sometimes the same dataset with different methods, that find no effect. One study found only small negative associations between mental health and using digital/electronic technologies, including social media — about as large as regularly eating potatoes!”

“It seems that the conclusions are very much affected by how researchers analyze their data, which makes it hard to draw a concrete conclusion about to what extent social media has negative effects on mental health. A plausible explanation for these unclear findings is that social media use affects some people more and others less.” – Dan-Mircea Mirea

To give an example of how difficult it can be to interpret studies on the mental health effects of social media, Dr. Craig Sewall , a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pittsburgh, told MNT :

“The strongest evidence indicating that social media can have negative effects on mental health — that I am aware of — comes from a randomized experiment that examined the impact of Facebook deactivation on well-being among a large sample of U.S. adults. This study found that, overall, the group that deactivated their Facebook account experienced increased levels of subjective well-being compared with the group that did not.”

“However, there are a couple of important limitations to this study. First, the ‘treatment effect’ — that is, the effect of deactivating Facebook — was very small. Second, the sample of participants was older, so it’s not clear how these results would apply to younger people,” Dr. Sewall noted.

“And, finally, it’s unclear whether the effects observed for deactivating Facebook would be consistent across other social media platforms, as there are many differences between Facebook and TikTok, for example.”

Best to look at the different aspects of social media separately

For some people, it is also difficult to establish whether social media has positive or negative effects on mental health because it is unclear to which platform or platforms the terms “social media” refer.

Dr. Jacob T. Fisher , assistant professor at the Institute of Communications Research and the College of Media at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, told MNT :

“I just don’t really know that we have compelling evidence for ‘social media,’ in a general sense, having adverse effects on mental health. ‘Social media,’ as a descriptor, covers a vast range of platforms and services, each of which is very different from one another, enabling and incentivizing very different sorts of behaviors. To add to this, both social media platforms and how people use social media have changed drastically over the years.”

“In this sense,” he said, “trying to define the ‘effect [of] social media on well-being’ is a lot like trying to determine the ‘effect of food on health’ — the question is so broad so as to be essentially unanswerable.”

“In my opinion,” Dr. Fisher added, “a better approach would be to break apart the different features and design decisions that comprise social media platforms — how information is presented, how the algorithm amplifies or suppresses content, the behavioral engineering involved in how a platform solicits (or even demands) our attention — and start to investigate the influence of those things on well-being.”

“A central issue here is that social media platforms refuse to share data that can begin to answer these questions with researchers like my colleagues and me,” he explained.

Caution when interpreting research

“There are two completely different stories being told about the effects of social media on well-being,” said Dr. Sewall. “In the popular media — where the vast majority of people get their information on this subject — the story is often some version of ‘social media is bad, especially for younger people.'”

Yet, he cautioned, “[t]he evidence cited in these popular media pieces is often cherry-picked, oversimplified, and overinterpreted — giving the impression to readers that social media causes harm to well-being.”

“On the other hand, in the scientific literature — which has a much smaller, niche readership — the story is much more complicated . The fundamental complexity of the issue combined with a litany of methodological issues and contradictory findings make it difficult, if not impossible, to conclude anything with confidence,” Dr. Sewall added.

“If anything, our best evidence to date suggests that social media does not have a meaningful impact on well-being. However, this story — that it’s very complicated, and there’s a lot we don’t know — does not generate many clicks,” he explained.

Dr. Barounis added that much research on the topic is based on people having symptoms of mental health issues, as opposed to receiving a formal diagnosis. “It’s really important to distinguish between symptoms of mental health problems versus a diagnosis of a mental health problem,” he explained. “One can have a few symptoms without having a full diagnosis. So far, a lot of researchers have examined the relationship between social media use and symptoms of depression or anxiety (as measured on a survey) in typically developing youth.”

“It is a mistake to interpret a positive relationship in these studies’ results as evidence that social media use causes youth to meet all of the criteria for a diagnosis of clinical anxiety or depression. Also, there is a measurement issue. Self-reports of time spent on social media may not be very accurate,” she explained.

To help navigate through exaggerated claims and confusing literature, Mirea recommended four points to bear in mind when looking into the link between social media and mental health:

Follow trustworthy sources (academic journals or trusted outlets ) : You shouldn’t have to play the detective every time you see a scientific claim. Fortunately, if your sources are reputable, most of the work is being done for you.
Avoid clickbait-sounding headlines: Good reporting would never trade accuracy for the prospect of attracting your attention. Also, be cautious if an article uses words that a scientist (especially one in the social or clinical sciences) would never use — such as that something is “a fact” or that they “proved” something.
Be wary of ideological content [and] your own biases: Ask yourself: “Do I want this to be true, or the opposite?” If so, then be extra careful when assessing the information.
Ask an expert friend, if you have one: If you’re in doubt about the scientific aspects of a claim and you’re not sure how to assess it, think of someone you know that might be able to help (such as someone that majored in that field in college — e.g., biosciences for COVID-19 studies or psychology for mental health studies).

Social media use for better mental health

Dr. Barounis recommended that parents or caregivers of children and adolescents “talk with their children about cyberbullying and take steps to address it if it is occurring.”

She further explained: “Parents can also monitor their child’s use to see if it is displacing healthier behaviors, like sleep and exercise. Simple steps, like limiting use before bedtime and charging mobile devices outside the bedroom, can help prevent social media use from disrupting sleep.”

“In terms of the pandemic, parents should remind youth that a lot of their friends and followers on social media may be feeling slightly anxious or depressed during these uncertain times. Youth can support these friends and followers by refraining from posting content that could be misinterpreted in a negative way (i.e., a joking comment in reaction to someone’s post that might come across as mean-spirited) or content that could increase anxiety.” – Dr. Kya Barounis

Due to a lack of consensus on whether and how social media relates to mental health, some experts say that it is difficult to make specific recommendations.

“Unfortunately, the scientific evidence isn’t strong enough to make specific recommendations,” said Dr. Johannes. “I’d advise, just like with any other activity, to observe what’s good for the user. If I feel like I’m comparing myself with others and it isn’t good for me, then take more breaks and maybe focus on different functions of social media. If I feel lonely and know that going on social media makes me feel connected, go for it. It’s rather obvious advice, I’m afraid.”

For others, using social media with an intention clearly in mind is key to avoiding getting swept up in any of its potentially harmful effects — from wasting time to damaging mental well-being.

“I’d suggest that the best way for people to use social media is to use it intentionally ,” said Dr. Fisher. “Like lots of big businesses, social media platforms frequently incentivize mindlessness on the part of their users because it makes it easier for them to make money (both from showing you advertisements and collecting more data about you).”

“Curate who you follow, how much time you spend on the platform(s), etc., and do your best to cultivate a healthy relationship with the platforms you use,” he added.

“Something that is becoming clear from recent studies is that the effects of social media, or certain aspects of social media use, can differ significantly from person to person,” said Dr. Sewall. “So, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach.”

“However, in general, I’d say the best way to use social media is to make sure you are getting out of it what you are intending. That is, if you are intending to use social media as a way to stay connected with others, or as a form of entertainment, or whatever, try to be mindful about whether the way you are using social media in that instance is helping you meet that intention,” he concluded.

Anxiety / Stress
IT / Internet / E-mail

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Social Media Does More Harm Than Good Argumentative Essay

Social media has become a defining facet of modern life, shaping our interactions, perceptions, and decision-making processes. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram were initially designed to foster global connections, creating a virtual space for conversation, collaboration, and cultural exchange. However, the question arises: does social media do more harm than good? This essay will delve into the multiple layers of social media’s impact, presenting an argumentative discourse on how its pervasive influence may be causing more harm than we realize.

Table of Contents

The Dark Side of Social Media: An Argumentative Essay

Social media: a double-edged sword.

In the fast-paced digital age, social media has emerged as a prominent communication platform. While it has undoubtedly brought people closer, it has also sparked numerous debates regarding its influence on society. One such pressing issue is the argument that social media does more harm than good.

The Addictive Nature of Social Media

Social media, with its constant notifications, has an addictive pull that can consume a significant portion of our daily lives. This addiction often results in individuals spending less time on interpersonal relationships, thereby leading to a breakdown in communication. Face-to-face conversations are replaced by virtual interactions, which may not offer the same emotional depth and understanding.

The Detrimental Impact on Communication Skills and Livelihood

The pervasiveness of social media has led to drastic changes in communication styles. The use of abbreviations and emojis encourages a form of shorthand that can impede proper language use and comprehension. This could potentially affect the way we communicate in formal settings like workplaces, leading to misunderstandings and even job loss.

A Breeding Ground for Hate and Insecurities

Social media platforms are often used for spreading hate or offensive content. Cyberbullying is rampant, causing emotional turmoil among users, particularly teenagers. These platforms can exacerbate feelings of insecurity, as users often compare their lives with the seemingly perfect lives portrayed by others.

The Erosion of Self-Esteem and Authenticity

Social media encourages users to create a ‘perfect’ version of their lives, often leading to in authenticity. This constant pursuit of perfection can significantly decrease self-esteem, as users may feel inadequate when comparing their reality to the embellished lives of others.

The Threat to Privacy

Finally, privacy issues are a significant concern in the realm of social media. Personal information can easily be accessed and misused, leading to potential harm. Additionally, constant exposure to others’ lives can lead to emotional self-harm, such as feelings of inadequacy and jealousy.

In conclusion, while social media can be a powerful tool for connection and information sharing, we need to be aware of the potential harm it can cause. As individuals, we must strive to use these platforms responsibly, ensuring we do not allow them to consume our lives, erode our self-esteem, or infringe upon our privacy.

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Social Media Brings More Harm Than Good Essay Example

In my opinion, social media can do tremendous damage to everyone involved. In today's society, social media is a big part of everyone's daily life, but it can be harmful, especially for the youth and those who are irresponsible with social media.

Social media is the primary means of cyberbullying, especially for teenagers. Social media is sold as an escape route, but victims of cyberbullying cannot avoid harassment.Teenagers who have access to social media regularly can be persistent with their bullying, this can lead to immense dangers for the victim as they can be subjected to this bullying daily . It can lead to serious issues such as depression, anorexia as well as the serious topic of self harming or even suicide.

Furthermore, social media is perceived to be a valuable form of communication and display of an individual's life, which is useful but many people choose to make their lives flashy on social media and only put their best foot forward. This can lead to a decrease in someone’s self-esteem as this flashy lifestyle isn't always one’s reality. This can generate one to feel as if their own life isn't good enough. This is especially prevalent in teenage girls as they may feel as if their body isn't good enough as they are fed through social media that they should look a certain way.

While it must be remembered that the younger audience is being exposed to considerably more than they were before. Youth are more likely to know about topics that aren't age appropriate as they have access to social media and the harsh topics that come with it. They are exposed to drinking , violence and many more harsh realities that they may not be ready for.

In conclusion, I agree that social media causes more harm than good. First of all, it can be damaging to one’s confidence. Additionally it creates access for cyberbullying. While others believe the advantages of social media outweigh the disadvantages , it is important to seek feedback from those harmed by social media.

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Social media has become an inescapable part of our lives, with billions of people around the world using platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to connect with each other, share news and opinion, and build online communities. While social media can be a powerful tool for communication and social networking, there is growing concern that it may be doing more harm than good for society.

One of the main arguments against social media is that it can be incredibly addictive, leading to a range of negative consequences for users. Studies have found that excessive social media use can contribute to feelings of loneliness, anxiety, and depression, as well as sleep problems and decreased productivity. Many people also fall victim to the “fear of missing out” (FOMO), feeling a constant pressure to check their notifications and stay up to date on the latest news and trends.

Another concern with social media is the potential for it to exacerbate social divisions and polarize society. Online echo chambers and filter bubbles can create an us vs. them mentality, making it harder for people to engage in constructive dialogue or find common ground. Social media algorithms also have a tendency to promote content that is sensational or controversial, incentivizing creators to generate clickbait and misleading information that can fuel political polarization and tribalism.

Social media has also been linked to a rise in cyberbullying and harassment, with many users feeling emboldened to engage in abusive behavior when they can hide behind the anonymity of a screen. This can have serious consequences for victims, ranging from emotional distress to reputational damage and even physical harm. Moreover, social media companies have faced criticism for their lax approach to moderating hate speech and harmful content, which can further amplify marginalized voices and contribute to online toxicity.

Despite these concerns, there are still many who argue that social media can have a positive impact on society, by providing a platform for activism, promoting public discourse, and facilitating social connections across geographic and cultural boundaries. Some studies have even found that social media can contribute to higher levels of civic engagement and political participation, particularly among young people.

Ultimately, the question of whether social media does more harm than good for society is a complex one, with no clear answer. While the risks and downsides of social media need to be taken seriously, it is also important to acknowledge the potential benefits and opportunities that it can offer. To ensure that social media works for rather than against society, further research, advocacy, and regulation is needed to address the negative effects while harnessing the positive potential of this powerful tool.

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Can Social Media Have A Structure That Does More Good Than Harm?

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Professor Zeynep Tufekci of the University of North Carolina about how social media impacts people's social connections and private lives.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

I had dinner with friends a few nights ago, and people were talking about quitting Facebook. Some of them already had. They were freaked out by the revelations that led to Mark Zuckerberg testifying in front of Congress this week - revelations that a political data company called Cambridge Analytica had gotten access to personal information - personal information of about 90 million of us. Well, I haven't quit Facebook. But I think a lot about what happens when I open the app - the good and bad about my complicated relationship with Facebook and social media in general.

Well, we're going to talk now with someone whose job it is to think about all this. Zeynep Tufekci is a techno sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Welcome to the program.

ZEYNEP TUFEKCI: Thank you for inviting me.

KELLY: Does the bad outweigh the good?

TUFEKCI: That's a tough question. I think in some ways, this particular business model - surveillance and targeted advertising this way - is not compatible with a healthy democracy. On the other hand, it's a great connectivity tool. So rather than does the good outweigh the bad, the question for me is, how do we make the good outweigh the bad? You know, how do we proceed so that - just like earlier technologies - we no longer have lead in paint. Our cars have seatbelts and emission controls and airbags, right? We need to put the safety and oversight to our digital tools so that they're not a surveillance machine.

KELLY: We'll stay with this point. If you're trying to design from scratch a social media app where the good would outweigh the bad, what would it look like?

TUFEKCI: It would absolutely be one that has the person using it as the customer. Right now, when I use Facebook, I'm being sold. My attention is being sold, and my data is being used to sell me to advertisers. That's just not healthy. If I was starting from scratch, I would make the app a small amount of money that is - we pay for phones. We pay for SIM cards. We pay for our Netflix. We pay for all sorts of things we purchase.

And a couple years ago, I wrote an op-ed for The New York Times where I looked at their SEC filings. And three years ago, it was about 20 cents per month to run the platform per person in the United States. That wasn't a lot of money. And if you consider the fact that ad technology is costing them a lot, it's quite plausible to have this level of connectivity that is affordable almost anywhere in the world. And you can subsidize a little bit, and you can have somewhat freer version. There's things you can do.

KELLY: So you're talking about designing a social media platform with a fundamentally different business model than the existing ones have.

TUFEKCI: Absolutely - because once it's infrastructure like this, you need to fix it rather than walk away. It's the same way you can't just walk away from dangerous roads. It needs to be safer. And that's the hopeful part. These technologies are really young. And what we've done is we've allowed this enormous data collection and this targeted advertising to be the main business model. So this should be a wakeup call that we shouldn't allow this to continue. And that we shouldn't feel bad about wanting to use it to connect with people. I mean, I think it's perfectly fine. A lot of people are feeling guilty that they're using Facebook, and my response is don't. It's a great product in many ways. We just want it to be safer, and we just want it to have the seatbelts.

KELLY: But you're sounding somewhat optimistic, though, that this technology...

TUFEKCI: I'm an optimistic.

KELLY: ...Is young enough and that there is room for this landscape to change quite a lot.

TUFEKCI: Absolutely. I'm an optimist because if we did bring some oversight, if we did sort of break up this kind of power, if we limited data retention - we limited the surveillance and all these things - I think there would be this enormous boon to innovation. There would be these new business models. It's such a young technology. For all the talk of innovation, Silicon Valley right now is a very boring place. Everybody's trying to get purchased by Facebook or Google. That is not an innovative landscape. And we've got two giant ad brokers basically determining the whole economy - digital economy. We should not be cynical. We should not be resigned. We should say wait a minute, this is not the only way to do this. Let's keep all the good, and let's get rid of as much of the bad as we possibly can.

KELLY: Dr. Tufekci, thank you.

TUFEKCI: Thank you.

KELLY: Zeynep Tufekci of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Science News

Social media harms teens’ mental health, mounting evidence shows. what now.

Understanding what is going on in teens’ minds is necessary for targeted policy suggestions

A teen scrolls through social media alone on her phone.

Most teens use social media, often for hours on end. Some social scientists are confident that such use is harming their mental health. Now they want to pinpoint what explains the link.

Carol Yepes/Getty Images

Increasing rigor

Concerns over the effects of social media use in children have been circulating for years, resulting in a massive body of scientific literature. But those mostly correlational studies could not show if teen social media use was harming mental health or if teens with mental health problems were using more social media.

Moreover, the findings from such studies were often inconclusive, or the effects on mental health so small as to be inconsequential. In one study that received considerable media attention, psychologists Amy Orben and Andrew Przybylski combined data from three surveys to see if they could find a link between technology use, including social media, and reduced well-being. The duo gauged the well-being of over 355,000 teenagers by focusing on questions around depression, suicidal thinking and self-esteem.

Digital technology use was associated with a slight decrease in adolescent well-being , Orben, now of the University of Cambridge, and Przybylski, of the University of Oxford, reported in 2019 in Nature Human Behaviour . But the duo downplayed that finding, noting that researchers have observed similar drops in adolescent well-being associated with drinking milk, going to the movies or eating potatoes.

Holes have begun to appear in that narrative thanks to newer, more rigorous studies.

In one longitudinal study, researchers — including Orben and Przybylski — used survey data on social media use and well-being from over 17,400 teens and young adults to look at how individuals’ responses to a question gauging life satisfaction changed between 2011 and 2018. And they dug into how the responses varied by gender, age and time spent on social media.

Social media use was associated with a drop in well-being among teens during certain developmental periods, chiefly puberty and young adulthood, the team reported in 2022 in Nature Communications . That translated to lower well-being scores around ages 11 to 13 for girls and ages 14 to 15 for boys. Both groups also reported a drop in well-being around age 19. Moreover, among the older teens, the team found evidence for the Goldilocks Hypothesis: the idea that both too much and too little time spent on social media can harm mental health.

“There’s hardly any effect if you look over everybody. But if you look at specific age groups, at particularly what [Orben] calls ‘windows of sensitivity’ … you see these clear effects,” says L.J. Shrum, a consumer psychologist at HEC Paris who was not involved with this research. His review of studies related to teen social media use and mental health is forthcoming in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research.

Cause and effect

That longitudinal study hints at causation, researchers say. But one of the clearest ways to pin down cause and effect is through natural or quasi-experiments. For these in-the-wild experiments, researchers must identify situations where the rollout of a societal “treatment” is staggered across space and time. They can then compare outcomes among members of the group who received the treatment to those still in the queue — the control group.

That was the approach Makarin and his team used in their study of Facebook. The researchers homed in on the staggered rollout of Facebook across 775 college campuses from 2004 to 2006. They combined that rollout data with student responses to the National College Health Assessment, a widely used survey of college students’ mental and physical health.

The team then sought to understand if those survey questions captured diagnosable mental health problems. Specifically, they had roughly 500 undergraduate students respond to questions both in the National College Health Assessment and in validated screening tools for depression and anxiety. They found that mental health scores on the assessment predicted scores on the screenings. That suggested that a drop in well-being on the college survey was a good proxy for a corresponding increase in diagnosable mental health disorders.

Compared with campuses that had not yet gained access to Facebook, college campuses with Facebook experienced a 2 percentage point increase in the number of students who met the diagnostic criteria for anxiety or depression, the team found.

When it comes to showing a causal link between social media use in teens and worse mental health, “that study really is the crown jewel right now,” says Cunningham, who was not involved in that research.

A need for nuance

The social media landscape today is vastly different than the landscape of 20 years ago. Facebook is now optimized for maximum addiction, Shrum says, and other newer platforms, such as Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok, have since copied and built on those features. Paired with the ubiquity of social media in general, the negative effects on mental health may well be larger now.

Moreover, social media research tends to focus on young adults — an easier cohort to study than minors. That needs to change, Cunningham says. “Most of us are worried about our high school kids and younger.”

And so, researchers must pivot accordingly. Crucially, simple comparisons of social media users and nonusers no longer make sense. As Orben and Przybylski’s 2022 work suggested, a teen not on social media might well feel worse than one who briefly logs on.

Researchers must also dig into why, and under what circumstances, social media use can harm mental health, Cunningham says. Explanations for this link abound. For instance, social media is thought to crowd out other activities or increase people’s likelihood of comparing themselves unfavorably with others. But big data studies, with their reliance on existing surveys and statistical analyses, cannot address those deeper questions. “These kinds of papers, there’s nothing you can really ask … to find these plausible mechanisms,” Cunningham says.

One ongoing effort to understand social media use from this more nuanced vantage point is the SMART Schools project out of the University of Birmingham in England. Pedagogical expert Victoria Goodyear and her team are comparing mental and physical health outcomes among children who attend schools that have restricted cell phone use to those attending schools without such a policy. The researchers described the protocol of that study of 30 schools and over 1,000 students in the July BMJ Open.

Goodyear and colleagues are also combining that natural experiment with qualitative research. They met with 36 five-person focus groups each consisting of all students, all parents or all educators at six of those schools. The team hopes to learn how students use their phones during the day, how usage practices make students feel, and what the various parties think of restrictions on cell phone use during the school day.

Talking to teens and those in their orbit is the best way to get at the mechanisms by which social media influences well-being — for better or worse, Goodyear says. Moving beyond big data to this more personal approach, however, takes considerable time and effort. “Social media has increased in pace and momentum very, very quickly,” she says. “And research takes a long time to catch up with that process.”

Until that catch-up occurs, though, researchers cannot dole out much advice. “What guidance could we provide to young people, parents and schools to help maintain the positives of social media use?” Goodyear asks. “There’s not concrete evidence yet.”

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Open access
Published: 06 July 2023

Pros & cons: impacts of social media on mental health

Ágnes Zsila 1 , 2 &
Marc Eric S. Reyes ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5280-1315 3

BMC Psychology volume 11 , Article number: 201 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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The use of social media significantly impacts mental health. It can enhance connection, increase self-esteem, and improve a sense of belonging. But it can also lead to tremendous stress, pressure to compare oneself to others, and increased sadness and isolation. Mindful use is essential to social media consumption.

Social media has become integral to our daily routines: we interact with family members and friends, accept invitations to public events, and join online communities to meet people who share similar preferences using these platforms. Social media has opened a new avenue for social experiences since the early 2000s, extending the possibilities for communication. According to recent research [ 1 ], people spend 2.3 h daily on social media. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat have become increasingly popular among youth in 2022, and one-third think they spend too much time on these platforms [ 2 ]. The considerable time people spend on social media worldwide has directed researchers’ attention toward the potential benefits and risks. Research shows excessive use is mainly associated with lower psychological well-being [ 3 ]. However, findings also suggest that the quality rather than the quantity of social media use can determine whether the experience will enhance or deteriorate the user’s mental health [ 4 ]. In this collection, we will explore the impact of social media use on mental health by providing comprehensive research perspectives on positive and negative effects.

Social media can provide opportunities to enhance the mental health of users by facilitating social connections and peer support [ 5 ]. Indeed, online communities can provide a space for discussions regarding health conditions, adverse life events, or everyday challenges, which may decrease the sense of stigmatization and increase belongingness and perceived emotional support. Mutual friendships, rewarding social interactions, and humor on social media also reduced stress during the COVID-19 pandemic [ 4 ].

On the other hand, several studies have pointed out the potentially detrimental effects of social media use on mental health. Concerns have been raised that social media may lead to body image dissatisfaction [ 6 ], increase the risk of addiction and cyberbullying involvement [ 5 ], contribute to phubbing behaviors [ 7 ], and negatively affects mood [ 8 ]. Excessive use has increased loneliness, fear of missing out, and decreased subjective well-being and life satisfaction [ 8 ]. Users at risk of social media addiction often report depressive symptoms and lower self-esteem [ 9 ].

Overall, findings regarding the impact of social media on mental health pointed out some essential resources for psychological well-being through rewarding online social interactions. However, there is a need to raise awareness about the possible risks associated with excessive use, which can negatively affect mental health and everyday functioning [ 9 ]. There is neither a negative nor positive consensus regarding the effects of social media on people. However, by teaching people social media literacy, we can maximize their chances of having balanced, safe, and meaningful experiences on these platforms [ 10 ].

We encourage researchers to submit their research articles and contribute to a more differentiated overview of the impact of social media on mental health. BMC Psychology welcomes submissions to its new collection, which promises to present the latest findings in the emerging field of social media research. We seek research papers using qualitative and quantitative methods, focusing on social media users’ positive and negative aspects. We believe this collection will provide a more comprehensive picture of social media’s positive and negative effects on users’ mental health.

Data Availability

Not applicable.

Statista. (2022). Time spent on social media [Chart]. Accessed June 14, 2023, from https://www.statista.com/chart/18983/time-spent-on-social-media/ .

Pew Research Center. (2023). Teens and social media: Key findings from Pew Research Center surveys. Retrieved June 14, 2023, from https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/24/teens-and-social-media-key-findings-from-pew-research-center-surveys/ .

Boer, M., Van Den Eijnden, R. J., Boniel-Nissim, M., Wong, S. L., Inchley, J. C.,Badura, P.,… Stevens, G. W. (2020). Adolescents’ intense and problematic social media use and their well-being in 29 countries. Journal of Adolescent Health , 66(6), S89-S99. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2020.02.011.

Marciano L, Ostroumova M, Schulz PJ, Camerini AL. Digital media use and adolescents’ mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Front Public Health. 2022;9:2208. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.641831 .

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Naslund JA, Bondre A, Torous J, Aschbrenner KA. Social media and mental health: benefits, risks, and opportunities for research and practice. J Technol Behav Sci. 2020;5:245–57. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41347-020-00094-8 .

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Harriger JA, Thompson JK, Tiggemann M. TikTok, TikTok, the time is now: future directions in social media and body image. Body Image. 2023;44:222–6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2021.12.005 .

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Chi LC, Tang TC, Tang E. The phubbing phenomenon: a cross-sectional study on the relationships among social media addiction, fear of missing out, personality traits, and phubbing behavior. Curr Psychol. 2022;41(2):1112–23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-0135-4 .

Valkenburg PM. Social media use and well-being: what we know and what we need to know. Curr Opin Psychol. 2022;45:101294. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2020.101294 .

Bányai F, Zsila Á, Király O, Maraz A, Elekes Z, Griffiths MD, Urbán R, Farkas J, Rigó P Jr, Demetrovics Z. Problematic social media use: results from a large-scale nationally representative adolescent sample. PLoS ONE. 2017;12(1):e0169839. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0169839 .

American Psychological Association. (2023). APA panel issues recommendations for adolescent social media use. Retrieved from https://apa-panel-issues-recommendations-for-adolescent-social-media-use-774560.html .

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Acknowledgements

Ágnes Zsila was supported by the ÚNKP-22-4 New National Excellence Program of the Ministry for Culture and Innovation from the source of the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund.

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Ágnes Zsila

Institute of Psychology, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

Department of Psychology, College of Science, University of Santo Tomas, Manila, 1008, Philippines

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AZ conceived and drafted the Editorial. MESR wrote the abstract and revised the Editorial. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Thesis Statements about Social Media: 21 Examples and Tips

by Judy Jeni
January 27, 2024

Writing Thesis Statements Based On Social Media

A thesis statement is a sentence in the introduction paragraph of an essay that captures the purpose of the essay. Using thesis statements about social media as an example, I will guide you on how to write them well.

It can appear anywhere in the first paragraph of the essay but it is mostly preferred when it ends the introduction paragraph. learning how to write a thesis statement for your essay will keep you focused.

A thesis statement can be more than one sentence only when the essay is on complex topics and there is a need to break the statement into two. This means, a good thesis statement structures an essay and tells the reader what an essay is all about.

A good social media thesis statement should be about a specific aspect of social media and not just a broad view of the topic.

The statement should be on the last sentence of the first paragraph and should tell the reader about your stand on the social media issue you are presenting or arguing in the essay.

Reading an essay without a thesis statement is like solving a puzzle. Readers will have to read the conclusion to at least grasp what the essay is all about. It is therefore advisable to craft a thesis immediately after researching an essay.

Throughout your entire writing, every point in every paragraph should connect to the thesis. In case it doesn’t then probably you have diverged from the main issue of the essay.

How to Write a Thesis Statement?

Writing a thesis statement is important when writing an essay on any topic, not just about social media. It is the key to holding your ideas and arguments together into just one sentence.

The following are tips on how to write a good thesis statement:

Start With a Question and Develop an Answer

If the question is not provided, come up with your own. Start by deciding the topic and what you would like to find out about it.

Secondly, after doing some initial research on the topic find the answers to the topic that will help and guide the process of researching and writing.

Consequently, if you write a thesis statement that does not provide information about your research topic, you need to construct it again.

Be Specific

The main idea of your essay should be specific. Therefore, the thesis statement of your essay should not be vague. When your thesis statement is too general, the essay will try to incorporate a lot of ideas that can contribute to the loss of focus on the main ideas.

Similarly, specific and narrow thesis statements help concentrate your focus on evidence that supports your essay. In like manner, a specific thesis statement tells the reader directly what to expect in the essay.

Make the Argument Clear

Usually, essays with less than one thousand words require the statement to be clearer. Remember, the length of a thesis statement should be a single sentence, which calls for clarity.

In these short essays, you do not have the freedom to write long paragraphs that provide more information on the topic of the essay.

Likewise, multiple arguments are not accommodated. This is why the thesis statement needs to be clear to inform the reader of what your essay is all about.

If you proofread your essay and notice that the thesis statement is contrary to the points you have focused on, then revise it and make sure that it incorporates the main idea of the essay. Alternatively, when the thesis statement is okay, you will have to rewrite the body of your essay.

Question your Assumptions

Before formulating a thesis statement, ask yourself the basis of the arguments presented in the thesis statement.

Assumptions are what your reader assumes to be true before accepting an argument. Before you start, it is important to be aware of the target audience of your essay.

Thinking about the ways your argument may not hold up to the people who do not subscribe to your viewpoint is crucial.

Alongside, revise the arguments that may not hold up with the people who do not subscribe to your viewpoint.

Take a Strong Stand

A thesis statement should put forward a unique perspective on what your essay is about. Avoid using observations as thesis statements.

In addition, true common facts should be avoided. Make sure that the stance you take can be supported with credible facts and valid reasons.

Equally, don’t provide a summary, make a valid argument. If the first response of the reader is “how” and “why” the thesis statement is too open-ended and not strong enough.

Make Your Thesis Statement Seen

The thesis statement should be what the reader reads at the end of the first paragraph before proceeding to the body of the essay. understanding how to write a thesis statement, leaves your objective summarized.

Positioning may sometimes vary depending on the length of the introduction that the essay requires. However, do not overthink the thesis statement. In addition, do not write it with a lot of clever twists.

Do not exaggerate the stage setting of your argument. Clever and exaggerated thesis statements are weak. Consequently, they are not clear and concise.

Good thesis statements should concentrate on one main idea. Mixing up ideas in a thesis statement makes it vague. Read on how to write an essay thesis as part of the steps to write good essays.

A reader may easily get confused about what the essay is all about if it focuses on a lot of ideas. When your ideas are related, the relation should come out more clearly.

21 Examples of Thesis Statements about Social Media

Recently, social media is growing rapidly. Ironically, its use in remote areas has remained relatively low.
Social media has revolutionized communication but it is evenly killing it by limiting face-to-face communication.
Identically, social media has helped make work easier. However,at the same time it is promoting laziness and irresponsibility in society today.
The widespread use of social media and its influence has increased desperation, anxiety, and pressure among young youths.
Social media has made learning easier but its addiction can lead to bad grades among university students.
As a matter of fact, social media is contributing to the downfall of mainstream media. Many advertisements and news are accessed on social media platforms today.
Social media is a major promoter of immorality in society today with many platforms allowing sharing of inappropriate content.
Significantly, social media promotes copycat syndrome that positively and negatively impacts the behavior adapted by different users.
In this affluent era, social media has made life easy but consequently affects productivity and physical strength.
The growth of social media and its ability to reach more people increases growth in today’s business world.
The freedom on social media platforms is working against society with the recent increase in hate speech and racism.
Lack of proper verification when signing up on social media platforms has increased the number of minors using social media exposing them to cyberbullying and inappropriate content.
The freedom of posting anything on social media has landed many in trouble making the need to be cautious before posting anything important.
The widespread use of social media has contributed to the rise of insecurity in urban centers
Magazines and journals have spearheaded the appreciation of all body types but social media has increased the rate of body shaming in America.
To stop abuse on Facebook and Twitter the owners of these social media platforms must track any abusive post and upload and ban the users from accessing the apps.
Social media benefits marketing by creating brand recognition, increasing sales, and measuring success with analytics by tracking data.
Social media connects people around the globe and fosters new relationships and the sharing of ideas that did not exist before its inception.
The increased use of social media has led to the creation of business opportunities for people through social networking, particularly as social media influencers.
Learning is convenient through social media as students can connect with education systems and learning groups that make learning convenient.
With most people spending most of their free time glued to social media, quality time with family reduces leading to distance relationships and reduced love and closeness.

The Unintended Consequences of Banning Social Media

Severely limiting teen access to social media might do more harm than good..

Posted February 20, 2023 | Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster

What Changes During Adolescence?
Find a therapist to support kids and teens
Severely limiting social media might have serious unintended consequences for teens.
State legislation limiting social media often doesn't take complexity or nuance into account.
Such legislation will likely have no measurable impact on improving youth mental health.
States should consider investing in widespread media literacy education instead of attempting to limit access.

I recently attended a mental health and social media symposium organized by Spencer Cox, the governor of my home state of Utah. Cox threw down the gauntlet :

"There is a compounding effect [of social media] that is impacting all of us and I am deeply worried about it. I know we have some social media companies in the room; we're glad you're here. We are putting you on notice. You have some options. You can fight, and that's fine. We're ready for the fight. Or you can join us and be part of the solution."

The message from several speakers at the conference was very clear:

Social media is harming our youth and is responsible for the increase of mental health struggles over the past decade. We should ban social media and every responsible parent agrees with us. Social media companies are greedy and knowingly did harm, comparable to the executives who perpetrated the opioid crisis.

Social media has become the ultimate scapegoat of our time. As large social media companies rake in billions, it is easy to cast them in the role of the villain. Adolescent anxiety and depression have risen over the past decade, and we want someone to blame.

As a result, states are suing social media companies for being responsible for mental health problems in their community. Legislators across the country are debating whether social media is responsible for the increase in mental health problems in youth.

In my state, there was a bill being introduced that was considering an outright ban on social media for anyone under the age of 18. The bill was softened slightly to require parent ID for any underage youth. Other states have introduced similar bills to significantly limit youth access to social media.

As a collective nation, we are at a fever pitch and out for blood. There is just one problem with this collective anger : It’s not supported by the research.

I am a social media scholar and have been studying the impact of media on children for twenty years. The collective research does not support banning social media and suggests it might harm some youth in the process.

Most serious social media scholars are left shaking our heads with the over-confident and definitive statements we hear from politicians and the press. The public discussion is dominated by some loud voices who are quick to point fingers but slow to consult the full body of research, which shows considerable nuance and complexity.

Can we just stop and take a breath for a minute? Consider that perhaps we might be going in the wrong direction.

The kids are struggling, but that doesn’t mean taking away social media will fix anything. Here are several reasons to believe that social media is not the cause of all our youth’s ills:

1. The link between social media and mental health is not as big as you think.

In fact, many studies show that it might even be negligible. For example, meta-analyses bringing together all the studies on this topic tend to bring back correlations of around .10, depending on the study, like the difference in height between a 15- and 16-year-old girl . This is really quite small considering the attention we have been giving this question.

Indeed, our research examined the time spent on social media, depression , and anxiety across the entire course of adolescence . We did not find a noticeable effect of social media on mental health when examined at the individual level. I was surprised, and it went against my hypothesis (gasp!). But I had to face the realization that this effect just isn’t as big as we thought it was.

The effects become larger (around .25, maybe comparable to the difference in height between a 15 and a 17-year-old girl) when we consider a teen who says they have “problems” with social media. Reducing problems around media (as opposed to the sheer time by banning social media) may be a more prudent way forward. (More on this below.)

2. The small and inconsistent findings might be about individual differences.

Some recent work out of the Netherlands suggests that the vast majority (92 percent) of adolescents have either a neutral or positive experience in terms of mental health after using social media. Using an assessment that measures how people feel in the moment, they were able to capture how adolescents felt while using social media. For the vast majority? They were just fine.

However, there is the question of that 8 percent struggle after being on social media. There are many explanations for why this might be the case. They could have had negative experiences online, such as being cyberbullied or excluded. They could be high on levels of rejection sensitivity , being fine-tuned to notice a social slight. They might have pre-existing body image concerns and spend their time on pro-anorexia sites . Or it might be something completely different. What the research suggests is that the vast majority of adolescents do quite well on social media, while a small minority do not.

3. Banning (or severely limiting) social media will likely hurt our most vulnerable adolescents. It might even be fatal.

When we think about depression and anxiety from a multifaceted lens, we recognize that some adolescents are much more vulnerable than others. These teens are often those who experience minority stress — unique stressors that occur in an adolescent’s environment as a result of their minority status.

This might include LGBTQ+ teens who might be the only “out” person at their school, who have to tolerate hearing gay slurs as they walk down the hallway. Or Black adolescents growing up in a predominantly white neighborhood who experience subtle (and often not so subtle) racism on a daily basis.

Research suggests that social media can provide a safe haven for these adolescents — a place where they can truly belong. Where they see others who are “like them.” Where they can find a real community that understands the stressors they go through each day.

Having a sense of belongingness is a huge protective factor against suicide . Thus, stripping away this sense of safety might have significant (and even deadly) unintended consequences for these youth that are already at risk.

Youth might also be turning to social media to cope with chaos and struggles in their lives. It might be that a teen has headphones on and is on social media to escape hearing his parents argue in the next room. Another might be getting support from online friends over something hard that happened at school. Yet another might struggle with social anxiety and experiences school as excruciating, yet has found online friends that make them feel like they can finally be themselves.

The experience of social media is extremely complex, and a complete ban will likely take away some truly positive coping skills for many.

4. Education , instead of fear , is likely the answer.

In our recent study , we found that time spent on social media had no effect on adolescent outcomes. However, body image was twice as good for teens who said they attended a school with a strong literacy program that helped them become healthy users of media. Depression, emotional problems, and conduct problems were also all reduced in such schools.

Instead of focusing so much on getting kids to put down their phones, instead of threatening to take phones away as a punishment , instead of overreacting as a country and banning a potentially useful tool that is a huge part of an adolescent’s social world, might we invest in education instead?

Imagine a world where every student had classes on digital literacy from an early age. Where they were taught not only how to use media but how to truly interpret it and to become critical thinkers of their media use. Imagine that adolescents utilized social media in ways that helped their mental health instead of hurting it. Where they had tools, and best practices to absolutely thrive in a digital environment.

Instead of being afraid and throwing out the baby with the bathwater, let’s step it up, America. Let’s invest in educating our youth at a national level, relying on balanced and accurate research to empower youth to truly take charge of their social media experiences for good.

Banning or severely limiting social media among adolescents is not the way forward and will have serious unintended consequences. It would be like letting a 16-year-old child drive without first having them take driver’s education. Instead of taking the keys away and randomly giving them back someday, can we please teach our kids to drive in this digital environment? It might just save a life.

A version of this post appears in the Salt Lake Tribune .

If you or someone you love is contemplating suicide, seek help immediately. For help 24/7, dial 988 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, or reach out to the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741. To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory .

Sarah M. Coyne, Ph.D., is a professor of human development in the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University. She researches media, aggression, gender, and child development.

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Just How Harmful Is Social Media? Our Experts Weigh-In.

A recent investigation by the Wall Street Journal revealed that Facebook was aware of mental health risks linked to the use of its Instagram app but kept those findings secret. Internal research by the social media giant found that Instagram worsened body image issues for one in three teenage girls, and all teenage users of the app linked it to experiences of anxiety and depression. It isn’t the first evidence of social media’s harms. Watchdog groups have identified Facebook and Instagram as avenues for cyberbullying , and reports have linked TikTok to dangerous and antisocial behavior, including a recent spate of school vandalism .

As social media has proliferated worldwide—Facebook has 2.85 billion users—so too have concerns over how the platforms are affecting individual and collective wellbeing. Social media is criticized for being addictive by design and for its role in the spread of misinformation on critical issues from vaccine safety to election integrity, as well as the rise of right-wing extremism. Social media companies, and many users, defend the platforms as avenues for promoting creativity and community-building. And some research has pushed back against the idea that social media raises the risk for depression in teens . So just how healthy or unhealthy is social media?

Two experts from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia Psychiatry share their insights into one crucial aspect of social media’s influence—its effect on the mental health of young people and adults. Deborah Glasofer , associate professor of psychology in psychiatry, conducts psychotherapy development research for adults with eating disorders and teaches about cognitive behavioral therapy. She is the co-author of the book Eating Disorders: What Everyone Needs to Know. Claude Mellins , Professor of medical psychology in the Departments of Psychiatry and Sociomedical Sciences, studies wellbeing among college and graduate students, among other topics, and serves as program director of CopeColumbia, a peer support program for Columbia faculty and staff whose mental health has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. She co-led the SHIFT research study to reduce sexual violence among undergraduates. Both use social media.

What do we know about the mental health risks of social media use?

Mellins : Facebook and Instagram and other social media platforms are important sources of socialization and relationship-building for many young people. Although there are important benefits, social media can also provide platforms for bullying and exclusion, unrealistic expectations about body image and sources of popularity, normalization of risk-taking behaviors, and can be detrimental to mental health. Girls and young people who identify as sexual and gender minorities can be especially vulnerable as targets. Young people’s brains are still developing, and as individuals, young people are developing their own identities. What they see on social media can define what is expected in ways that is not accurate and that can be destructive to identity development and self-image. Adolescence is a time of risk-taking, which is both a strength and a vulnerability. Social media can exacerbate risks, as we have seen played out in the news.

Although there are important benefits, social media can also provide platforms for bullying and exclusion, unrealistic expectations about body image and sources of popularity, normalization of risk-taking behaviors, and can be detrimental to mental health. – Claude Mellins

Glasofer : For those vulnerable to developing an eating disorder, social media may be especially unhelpful because it allows people to easily compare their appearance to their friends, to celebrities, even older images of themselves. Research tells us that how much someone engages with photo-related activities like posting and sharing photos on Facebook or Instagram is associated with less body acceptance and more obsessing about appearance. For adolescent girls in particular, the more time they spend on social media directly relates to how much they absorb the idea that being thin is ideal, are driven to try to become thin, and/or overly scrutinize their own bodies. Also, if someone is vulnerable to an eating disorder, they may be especially attracted to seeking out unhelpful information—which is all too easy to find on social media.

Are there any upsides to social media?

Mellins : For young people, social media provides a platform to help them figure out who they are. For very shy or introverted young people, it can be a way to meet others with similar interests. During the pandemic, social media made it possible for people to connect in ways when in-person socialization was not possible. Social support and socializing are critical influences on coping and resilience. Friends we couldn’t see in person were available online and allowed us important points of connection. On the other hand, fewer opportunities for in-person interactions with friends and family meant less of a real-world check on some of the negative influences of social media.

Whether it’s social media or in person, a good peer group makes the difference. A group of friends that connects over shared interests like art or music, and is balanced in their outlook on eating and appearance, is a positive. – Deborah Glasofer

Glasofer : Whether it’s social media or in person, a good peer group makes the difference. A group of friends that connects over shared interests like art or music, and is balanced in their outlook on eating and appearance, is a positive. In fact, a good peer group online may be protective against negative in-person influences. For those with a history of eating disorders, there are body-positive and recovery groups on social media. Some people find these groups to be supportive; for others, it’s more beneficial to move on and pursue other interests.

Is there a healthy way to be on social media?

Mellins : If you feel social media is a negative experience, you might need a break. Disengaging with social media permanently is more difficult—especially for young people. These platforms are powerful tools for connecting and staying up-to-date with friends and family. Social events, too. If you’re not on social media then you’re reliant on your friends to reach out to you personally, which doesn’t always happen. It’s complicated.

Glasofer : When you find yourself feeling badly about yourself in relation to what other people are posting about themselves, then social media is not doing you any favors. If there is anything on social media that is negatively affecting your actions or your choices—for example, if you’re starting to eat restrictively or exercise excessively—then it’s time to reassess. Parents should check-in with their kids about their lives on social media. In general, I recommend limiting social media— creating boundaries that are reasonable and work for you—so you can be present with people in your life. I also recommend social media vacations. It’s good to take the time to notice the difference between the virtual world and the real world.

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How Does Social Media Affect Your Mental Health?

Facebook has delayed the development of an Instagram app for children amid questions about its harmful effects on young people’s mental health. Does social media have an impact on your well-being?

By Nicole Daniels

What is your relationship with social media like? Which platforms do you spend the most time on? Which do you stay away from? How often do you log on?

What do you notice about your mental health and well-being when spending time on social networks?

In “ Facebook Delays Instagram App for Users 13 and Younger ,” Adam Satariano and Ryan Mac write about the findings of an internal study conducted by Facebook and what they mean for the Instagram Kids app that the company was developing:

Facebook said on Monday that it had paused development of an Instagram Kids service that would be tailored for children 13 years old or younger, as the social network increasingly faces questions about the app’s effect on young people’s mental health. The pullback preceded a congressional hearing this week about internal research conducted by Facebook , and reported in The Wall Street Journal , that showed the company knew of the harmful mental health effects that Instagram was having on teenage girls. The revelations have set off a public relations crisis for the Silicon Valley company and led to a fresh round of calls for new regulation. Facebook said it still wanted to build an Instagram product intended for children that would have a more “age appropriate experience,” but was postponing the plans in the face of criticism.

The article continues:

With Instagram Kids, Facebook had argued that young people were using the photo-sharing app anyway, despite age-requirement rules, so it would be better to develop a version more suitable for them. Facebook said the “kids” app was intended for ages 10 to 12 and would require parental permission to join, forgo ads and carry more age-appropriate content and features. Parents would be able to control what accounts their child followed. YouTube, which Google owns, has released a children’s version of its app. But since BuzzFeed broke the news this year that Facebook was working on the app, the company has faced scrutiny. Policymakers, regulators, child safety groups and consumer rights groups have argued that it hooks children on the app at a younger age rather than protecting them from problems with the service, including child predatory grooming, bullying and body shaming.

The article goes on to quote Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram:

Mr. Mosseri said on Monday that the “the project leaked way before we knew what it would be” and that the company had “few answers” for the public at the time. Opposition to Facebook’s plans gained momentum this month when The Journal published articles based on leaked internal documents that showed Facebook knew about many of the harms it was causing. Facebook’s internal research showed that Instagram, in particular, had caused teen girls to feel worse about their bodies and led to increased rates of anxiety and depression, even while company executives publicly tried to minimize the app’s downsides.

But concerns about the effect of social media on young people go beyond Instagram Kids, the article notes:

A children’s version of Instagram would not fix more systemic problems, said Al Mik, a spokesman for 5Rights Foundation, a London group focused on digital rights issues for children. The group published a report in July showing that children as young as 13 were targeted within 24 hours of creating an account with harmful content, including material related to eating disorders, extreme diets, sexualized imagery, body shaming, self-harm and suicide. “Big Tobacco understood that the younger you got to someone, the easier you could get them addicted to become a lifelong user,” Doug Peterson, Nebraska’s attorney general, said in an interview. “I see some comparisons to social media platforms.” In May, attorneys general from 44 states and jurisdictions had signed a letter to Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, asking him to end plans for building an Instagram app for children. American policymakers should pass tougher laws to restrict how tech platforms target children, said Josh Golin, executive director of Fairplay, a Boston-based group that was part of an international coalition of children’s and consumer groups opposed to the new app. Last year, Britain adopted an Age Appropriate Design Code , which requires added privacy protections for digital services used by people under the age of 18.

Students, read the entire article , then tell us:

Do you think Facebook made the right decision in halting the development of the Instagram Kids app? Do you think there should be social media apps for children 13 and younger? Why or why not?

What is your reaction to the research that found that Instagram can have harmful mental health effects on teenagers, particularly teenage girls? Have you experienced body image issues, anxiety or depression tied to your use of the app? How do you think social media affects your mental health?

What has your experience been on different social media apps? Are there apps that have a more positive or negative effect on your well-being? What do you think could explain these differences?

Have you ever been targeted with inappropriate or harmful content on Instagram or other social media apps? What responsibility do you think social media companies have to address these issues? Do you think there should be more protections in place for users under 18? Why or why not?

What does healthy social media engagement look like for you? What habits do you have around social media that you feel proud of? What behaviors would you like to change? How involved are your parents in your social media use? How involved do you think they should be?

If you were in charge of making Instagram, or another social media app, safer for teenagers, what changes would you make?

Want more writing prompts? You can find all of our questions in our Student Opinion column . Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate them into your classroom.

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Nicole Daniels joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2019 after working in museum education, curriculum writing and bilingual education. More about Nicole Daniels

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Social Media Is Doing More Harm Than Good

Much like Big Tobacco, Big Tech has realized that addicting kids -- whose brains and identities are still developing -- produces astronomical profits. For that reason, social media platforms are designed to exploit kids' and teens' attention and extract their data for the sake of advertising.

And it's working: For example, from Jan. 1 to Sept. 30 of this year, Facebook made $82.3 billion from advertising. During the same period, YouTube made $20.2 billion from advertising.

Keeping kids engaged and addicted is driving how these organizations design their platforms, and without regulation to change things, they will continue to do so. How does profit-driven, addictive design impact kids and teens? We have compiled a list of the ways in which social media's profit-driven, addictive design can harm kids and teens.

Design features such as emoji reactions and comments, autoplay and infinite scroll, push notifications, ephemeral content, and "beautifying" filters keep kids clicking, but they can also provoke social comparison, addiction, social pressure, fear of missing out, body image issues, and more.

The consequences of these design choices are tangible to students. We spoke with several high school students from the Washington Urban Debate League and the Boston Debate League, who recently debated the topic of social media regulation.

"The 'views' and 'like' features have got to be some of the worst features that were added to social media platforms," said Richemie Chery, a high school student from Massachusetts. "It's a two-edged sword kind of thing, where if you get a lot of likes, then 'Yay,' you look relevant, but then if you don't get a lot of likes and/or views, it can completely crush one's confidence. Especially knowing that you're not the only one who's able to see it."

Kids also understand the addictive intent of autoplay and infinite scroll.

"One of the challenges I face with social media is getting off it," said KesUranNu Baylor, a high school student from Maryland. "Once I get on, I have to really force myself off it because it's so addictive. All I'm doing is scrolling, but I'm subconsciously looking for an end so I can feel accomplished. But the scrolling never stops."

Recommendation algorithms, designed to hold attention at all costs, are uniquely insidious and exploitative.

For example, Facebook intentionally chose to prioritize hateful, divisive, sensationalist content over neutral and positive content in order to increase engagement. Algorithms recommend extremist and conspiratorial content on YouTube and TikTok , sending users down radicalizing rabbit holes. Instagram's algorithms amplify content that promotes social comparison , body dissatisfaction , decreased self-esteem, depressive symptoms , and anxiety around the pressure to look perfect, particularly among girls and young women . Instagram's algorithms also recommend self-harm to unsuspecting users, resulting in replication of the harm techniques shown.

These algorithms have also facilitated the rise of social media influencers -- a glamorized and seemingly attainable path to wealth and fame through the production of content. The potential to become influential incentivizes increased use of social media, which also increases platform revenue.

"The feature that I think makes social media worse is the fact that regular everyday people can be social media influencers and influence any and everyone's life," said Xyra Mercer, a high school student from Massachusetts. "The fact that this can be displayed with a blue check and title of 'public figure' under their name puts them on a pedestal. That makes little kids or young students with impressionable minds look up to them and think, 'I want to be like them,' which is a toxic mindset."

The social media platforms are aware that their design choices encourage addiction and harm kids, but they answer only to profit. If platforms are left unregulated, our children will suffer unimaginable long-term consequences. Given that kids experience these harms en masse, by the hundreds of millions, the consequences of exploitative social media will profoundly shape the future of our society.

Congress is facing a watershed opportunity to make the internet healthier for kids and everyone else. And it is encouraging to see increased bipartisan activity in Congress to hold Big Tech accountable. Congressional leaders have proposed multiple pieces of legislation to advance everything from Section 230 reform to improved child data privacy laws and and measures that could end or significantly curb manipulative marketing and design.

Social media companies will not reform themselves -- they need incentives beyond their business models. We cannot, in good conscience, allow the continued online exploitation of children.

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COMMENTS

Social Media Brings More Harm Than Good Essay
Although social media has been beneficial for us regardless of our age, it has brought about many consequences as well. Some people argue that social media is good for us because it has allowed us to widen our social circles. (Wallace)2014 said that "in the survey of more than 1,000 13- to 17-year-olds about how they view their digital lives ...
Does Social Media Do More Harm Than Good for Society?
Social media, in and of itself, is not bad or harmful to society. What makes it harmful is how we use it and how we feel about ourselves while using it. Right now, that pendulum is swinging in the wrong direction, but all it takes is enough people choosing to use it for the right reasons. Social media has both positive and negative effects on ...
Social Media Does More Harm Than Good Argumentative Essay
Social Media Does More Harm Than Good Argumentative Essay. This essay sample was donated by a student to help the academic community. Papers provided by EduBirdie writers usually outdo students' samples. Although the Internet has ended up an important source of records for many people, everyone's privacy is greatly harmed by the Internet.
A Guide to Write an Argumentative Essay about Social Media
An argumentative essay is an article that presents both sides of an issue or debate in order to reach a conclusion. It requires you to provide evidence and facts, present a point of view, and develop an argument. When writing an argumentative essay on social media, you must present both sides of the issue or debate in a balanced manner.
Argumentative Essay on Social Media
Many people think that social media is distracting, negative, and harmful, while others think it is one of the best things that has ever happened and are addicted to it. Some people love to scroll through Instagram or talk to people on Snapchat; However, they still think that the majority of the time social media is much more harmful than helpful.
How Harmful Is Social Media?
Haidt acknowledges that the extant literature on social media's effects is large and complex, and that there is something in it for everyone. On January 6, 2021, he was on the phone with Chris ...
Social media: Benefits vs. negative impact
For instance, a 2019 study involving 6,595 teenagers from the United States concludes that those who spend more than 3 hours per day on social media may have a higher risk of mental health ...
Social Media Does More Harm Than Good Argumentative Essay
In the fast-paced digital age, social media has emerged as a prominent communication platform. While it has undoubtedly brought people closer, it has also sparked numerous debates regarding its influence on society. One such pressing issue is the argument that social media does more harm than good.
Argumentative Essay about Social Media • Free Examples
Social Media: Negative Effects and Addiction. Nowadays many people, especially students, are using social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Many have access to social media through smartphones, computers, and laptops. It helps us to contact friends, family, and others even though they live far away.
Social Media Brings More Harm Than Good Essay Example
In conclusion, I agree that social media causes more harm than good. First of all, it can be damaging to one's confidence. Additionally it creates access for cyberbullying. While others believe the advantages of social media outweigh the disadvantages , it is important to seek feedback from those harmed by social media.
Does Social Media Do More Harm Than Good for Society?
While social media can be a powerful tool for communication and social networking, there is growing concern that it may be doing more harm than good for society. One of the main arguments against social media is that it can be incredibly addictive, leading to a range of negative consequences for users. Studies have found that excessive social ...
Can Social Media Have A Structure That Does More Good Than Harm?
KELLY: So you're talking about designing a social media platform with a fundamentally different business model than the existing ones have. TUFEKCI: Absolutely - because once it's infrastructure ...
Social media harms teens' mental health, mounting evidence shows. What now?
The concern, and the studies, come from statistics showing that social media use in teens ages 13 to 17 is now almost ubiquitous. Two-thirds of teens report using TikTok, and some 60 percent of ...
Social Media: Does More Harm Than Good
Grade: 5. Download. In today's digital age, social media has become an integral part of our lives. It allows us to connect with friends and family, share our experiences, and stay informed about the world. However, there is an ongoing debate about whether social media does more harm than good. While it has undeniable benefits, it also brings ...
Pros & cons: impacts of social media on mental health
Benefits. The use of social media significantly impacts mental health. It can enhance connection, increase self-esteem, and improve a sense of belonging. But it can also lead to tremendous stress, pressure to compare oneself to others, and increased sadness and isolation. Mindful use is essential to social media consumption.
Thesis Statements about Social Media: 21 Examples and Tips
21 Examples of Thesis Statements about Social Media. Recently, social media is growing rapidly. Ironically, its use in remote areas has remained relatively low. Social media has revolutionized communication but it is evenly killing it by limiting face-to-face communication. Identically, social media has helped make work easier.
Debate: Social media content moderation may do more harm than good for
Social media has become ubiquitous in the lives of young people today. Meanwhile, rates of mental health challenges among children and adolescents have soared to the extent of being declared a national emergency (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2021).Social media platforms are increasingly moderating mental health content to reduce user harm, but moderation policies should not come at the ...
The Unintended Consequences of Banning Social Media
The experience of social media is extremely complex, and a complete ban will likely take away some truly positive coping skills for many. 4. Education, instead of fear, is likely the answer. In ...
Just How Harmful Is Social Media? Our Experts Weigh-In
Whether it's social media or in person, a good peer group makes the difference. A group of friends that connects over shared interests like art or music, and is balanced in their outlook on eating and appearance, is a positive. - Deborah Glasofer. Glasofer: Whether it's social media or in person, a good peer group makes the difference. A ...
How Does Social Media Affect Your Mental Health?
Facebook's internal research showed that Instagram, in particular, had caused teen girls to feel worse about their bodies and led to increased rates of anxiety and depression, even while company ...
Social Media Is Doing More Harm Than Good
The social media platforms are aware that their design choices encourage addiction and harm kids, but they answer only to profit. If platforms are left unregulated, our children will suffer unimaginable long-term consequences. Given that kids experience these harms en masse, by the hundreds of millions, the consequences of exploitative social ...