Social media helps spread ideas and keep us in touch with people around the world, but it can have dark consequences, too.
Social media seems like it is a harmless time-waster for teens. According to researchers from the University of Maryland, College Park, teens can spend 45 minutes to an hour a day on social media to get benefit out of it rather than be affected. Over one-third of the time is spent on smartphones.
Parents, teachers, and even teenage subscribers must have been asking themselves this question as they saw their precious time evaporate. The privilege of being able to pull up your phone for 24/7 access to social media is not really that good of an “empowering” tool.
Nowadays, even friends or family are sitting together; all are busy on their social profiles rather than connecting with each other. A major change is in the age of teenage to adolescence. Even toddlers are major on Instagram, YouTube videos, etc. Spending much time on social media. It not only affects our mental health but also affects the major connectivity among family members or friends.
It’s high time we know the consequences if we’ll not take this problem into consideration.
Addiction to Social Media is a Waste of Time for all
Social media is for networking with others or learning and sharing knowledge, but in recent times, the Purpose of it shifts to addiction. In past times, when we’re sitting idle, we scroll through our social media profiles to get engaged with something and it somehow passes our time.
In recent times, we have been active on social profiles even when are at work, home, travel, etc. Our fingers keep scrolling on these and it creates a dopamine effect. As a result, we deviate our minds from the primary task and are active in social media. It not only deteriorates efficiency and productivity but also affects our mental ability.
Social media affects the mental health of all major youth
Being active in social media always starts affecting or mental ability. We always occupy our minds with multitasking on social media and other activities. It’s applicable for working professionals, students, and homemakers, etc. The major impact is on youth, as they treat it as of utmost importance. We never provide rest to mind and body. We’re affected even though when there is no ping or notification of social media profiles still checking our smartphones then and while is the level we are at. Even though mental health professionals caution use of Snapchat, Instagram, and other social media apps.
As per UNICEF research, being active on social media for regular intervals of time can lead to ADHD symptoms, depression, anxiety, and sleep deprivation.
Nowadays, depression and other mental health problems start from the age of 14. As adolescents are replacing other social exposures with excessive use of social media profiles and always being active on their smartphones.
How Social Media Causes Anxiety
We wasted the time spent on social media. Instagram has a narcissistic mindset, Facebook is an ego-shrinking space, and social media is addictive. There is a need for further research on how social media affects youth life. Let’s get into it.
Using Social media for long intervals creates a chemical in your mind named dopamine. It somehow makes you addicted to your pleasurable activities like food, travel, or any other interest. Day by Day the level keeps on increasing and it becomes your routine. They design these platforms in such a way so that people get addicted as much. A lot of addiction leads to anxiety and even physical body problems. As per our research, 69% of adults and 81% of teens are using social media.
Apart from this, people compare themselves with others for such happiness, which is even not reality. It makes them dissatisfied, demoralized, sad, negative about what they have is not enough.
The positive side of Social media
It helps in communicating with others worldwide and gets updates.
It’s a good initiative for improving networks for work and personal levels also
It’s a great platform for spreading knowledge and lessons instantly at a high audience level.
Above are the consequences of addiction to social media, now proceed to How to not get affected by these.
Look for Social Media Alternatives,
It’s important to agree that social media connectivity is not the replacement of human connectivity. Personal touch through human connectivity serves many benefits which can’t be felt by the digital presence on social media. Human connectivity brings optimism, reduces stress, loneliness, creates a happy and healthy environment to make all comfortable, and many more.
How to come out of it?
- Start tracking your and your child’s social media time and fix it for a limited duration in a day. Allow them only as a break time.
- Indulge yourself more into personal activities( meeting new people) rather than social media events and conferences by meeting new people physically.
- Work on your offline interests and passion activities apart from social media.
- Don’t let you deviate focus from the principal work and stop using social media simultaneously with any task.
- Opt for gratitude rather than getting affected by others’ social media profile posts.
- Plan outings with family and acquaintances as breaks or stress busters weekly or monthly as per your schedule.
Takeaways
It’s high time to monitor our time on social media, analyze are you using it for benefit or addiction? Drop your comments about your analysis. Did the above content help you?
HAPPY READING
-ASHMEEN KAUR
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Previously Published on medium
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The post How Is Social Media Evaporating the Time of Youth? appeared first on The Good Men Project.
