Mahir Shahriar
Engl 110
Research Paper Cover Letter
When I chose the topic of social media, I originally thought of it as an easy topic to write about. After all, I was chronically online. I spent all my time growing up on social media. I had seen the negatives of social media in the form of cancel culture, bullying, and even going through an eating disorder. I first got interested in this topic through the TedTalk I used as a source. My AP Computer Science A teacher from my senior year of high school showed it to us in class. It had nothing to do with computer science, so I was a bit confused, but as the video kept playing, I found myself relating increasingly to what Parnell was saying. It made me intrigued by the statistics of everything, why I related so much, and how many more people related to the video.
In writing the essay, I wanted to learn exactly that. The statistics of social media’s effect on mental health, what exactly were those effects, and how many more people related to those effects. In doing the research, I found that around 95% of teens my age are now on social media platforms, and more than 80% of them go through some form of mental health problems from their use of social media. I find those numbers ludicrous, and it served as a warning to me to start to pull back on my social media usage and think about how even my little actions on social media, regardless of how mundane or mindless they were, had a negative effect on me. For my audience, hopefully, other teenagers and young adults who spend far too much time on social media, I hope they can see how absurd the effects of our rampant use of social media are and how it is imperative that we fix our ways before it is too late. As teenagers and young adults, our brains are still developing. If we break our bad social media habits now, we can avoid permanent damage to our brain and avoid living life through dopamine addiction and ADHD. I also hope reading this essay will inspire someone to go and commit more research into social media’s effects on mental health. Despite all the research that already has been done, few know of effective ways to avoid and treat social media addiction, psychological disorders, and low attention span.
Mahir Shahriar
Engl 110
Research Paper
Have you ever spent a prolonged period of time scrolling through TikTok, not knowing how much time had passed? I know I have. Maybe there have been days that just seem so endlessly dull. Or perhaps you had the sudden urge to change your life around at 2 a.m. Perhaps you’ve randomly gone through an extremely depressive episode where you just don’t know what’s causing it. All these events have become quite common in people, especially teenagers, since the social media boom. Chances are you also have been on social media. Almost everyone from 3-year-olds on their parents’ iPads to my 70-year-old grandfather has been on a social media platform like YouTube or Facebook. Social media has a profound impact on people; it can convey information around the world like nothing else, connect people across the globe, and allow people to make a living sharing information or entertainment media. Many people credit social media as the cause of most behavioral and psychological disorders in people, but some argue that social media has a net positive effect on people. While social media has allowed people to connect and learn from each other, the extensive use of it by teenagers and young adults has been shown to have detrimental effects on them, affecting their behavior and self-image, shortening their attention spans, and increasing their risk to psychological disorders such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and eating disorders. In this research paper, I aim to identify the extent of these behavioral changes and psychological disorders caused by social media and argue that despite the positives social media brings, it is detrimental to the mental health of today’s youth (including me.)
Social media has a profound impact on our daily lives. It is one of the best technological advancements we have ever seen. We can connect to people worldwide through the internet and access the latest news at any time of day. People spread information that normally you would have to learn through hands-on experience or school freely with everyone in the world. To teenagers, social media can be a great tool to help them get through the struggles of growing up. Platforms such as YouTube have a diverse collection of content creators who aim to help people through their content, whether it be helping students learn how to study and organize their time, get over anxieties and eating disorders, or teach how to make money and live a more successful life. For teenagers struggling through life and unable to get over the hurdles of growing up, these videos can serve as great guides and inspiration to make changes within themselves and push society forward. We tend to learn a lot on social media; it tends to influence the people we choose to keep in our company, the way we think of the world, and how we think of ourselves. Professor of the Department of Computer Applications at Government Degree College Mendhar J&K, Waseem Akram, in his article “A Study on Positive and Negative Effects of Social Media on Society” published in the International Journal of Computer Sciences and Engineering, addresses the topic of the effects of social media on various aspects of society. He goes over many general effects of social media, such as its effects on health, business, society, and education. One section of this article is dedicated to the effects of social media on adolescents, where he broadly mentions several positive effects on them, such as developing social skills, and awareness, and inspiring them. In talking about inspiring them, he specifically states, “With a minute control on teens, they can use the movie as encouragement, motivation, and inspiration! Maybe our teen will decide to take up martial arts training, all thanks to a Bruce Lee movie!” (Akram 353). This inspiration he brings up in this quote along with the other positive effects of social media that he mentions are all things I personally have been affected by. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I found myself sitting at home all day, not talking to anyone, and just sitting there playing games. I hated how I looked and felt, and one day a video came up on my YouTube recommended page about long-term change, and how I could make my life better. That video inspired me to make a change; I started to go to the gym and box to lose weight, and I used social media platforms like Instagram and Reddit to keep up with daily news and events and used Discord to connect to classmates and friends to socialize with them.
While those positives exist, the negatives far outweigh them. Founder & CEO (Chief Executive Officer) of #SafeSocial, an educational institution to teach people about social media’s impact on mental health, Bailey Parnell, in her TedTalk, “Is Social Media Hurting Your Mental Health?” addresses the topic of how social media hurts your mental health, and argues that despite how social media harms the mental health with its users, mostly adolescents between the ages of 18 and 24 but also starting at age 12, it does not have to be harmful. Parnell’s purpose in giving this speech is to warn people of the harms of social media and show that by changing how you approach social media and use it, it does not have to be harmful. She adopts an informative tone for her audience, the listeners of TedTalks, and anyone else who is interested in the effects of social media. In her TedTalk, she states, “With every like, you get a shot of that feel-good chemical, dopamine. …We’re anxious if we do not have access” (Parnell). This dependence on dopamine, a chemical secreted by your body to make you feel good along with an anxiety known as the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) parallels how an actual addiction would work. You have this “thing,” in this case getting likes or messages on social media, that makes you incredibly happy. You become reliant on that feeling of happiness it gives you and become anxious when you do not have it. This reliance and addiction to social media can be a great hindrance to our daily lives. We can be in a conversation, not getting the dopamine we are so used to getting every time we check our phones, that we become distracted from that conversation. We check our phones while the other person is talking, we message someone else, or see some other media that provides us that dopamine, but we are not fully engaged in that conversation. Depending on the type of media we consume, we may also start affecting our attention spans. Undergraduate writer from Oxford University, Jui Zaveri, in her entry “TikTok and the Death of the Attention Span” in The Oxford Blue online newspaper addresses the topic of the rapid rise in popularity of TikTok and its correlation with the decrease in attention span in students and users. She adopts a friendly academic tone when informing her audience, the readers of The Oxford Blue, or anyone else interested in the effects of TikTok on attention span, of the harms of TikTok. In her newspaper entry, she says, “In fact, nearly 50% of users surveyed by TikTok said that videos longer than a minute long were “stressful”. The truth is that our attention spans are shrinking – so much so that the effect of short-form media on our cognitive functions has been given a name: TikTok Brain” (Zaveri). TikTok, one of the world’s most popular social media platforms, is made up of user-created “TikToks,” short-form videos usually under 30 seconds densely packed with information meant for entertainment, although it is used by some to spread information. The short length of the videos, paired with the immense number of available TikToks to view allows the brain to gain a large amount of dopamine and information in a noticeably short amount of time, something our brain becomes accustomed to. Especially in teenagers and young adults, whose brains are still developing, this is detrimental to their attention spans. The dopamine release caused by the digestion of TikTok’s short-form videos causes somewhat of an addiction. Many users are on TikTok for substantial amounts of time without realizing it, and they often start feeling strange when they have not been on TikTok for some time, an early form of addiction to the platform caused by the excessive amount of dopamine it allows the user to release. The high amount of information found in a TikTok along with the high amount of use it has among young adults and teenagers causes their brain to slowly lose the focus needed to internalize information for longer periods of time, which can lead to cases of ADHD. This is an effect that I have seen in both my peers and myself. I find it hard to concentrate and study for extended periods of time and when I spend time with friends, I see that it is often hard for us to stay on the same topic as we need to constantly change what we are talking about, or we just end up forgetting what we were saying.
Social Media platforms such as Instagram, X (formerly known as Twitter), and Snapchat are breeding grounds for body dysmorphic behavior and instability in people’s body images. Most of the content on these platforms are user-submitted photos, of themselves, of others, or just landscapes or anything else. By far, most of the images posted on these sites are self-posted photos of people. These images can be very damaging to people’s own body image and self-esteem. Dr. Anne Morris of the Department of Paediatrics and Psychiatry, in her entry to the Paediatr Child Health Journal for the National Library of Medicine, “The impact of the media on eating disorders in children and adolescents,” addresses the impact of media on the cause eating disorders and adolescents and states, “Among the narrative data was the frequent theme of subjects reporting an interest in weight loss as a means of modeling themselves after television characters” (Morris). At the time of this study, the main form of social media was television. Young girls would often see the women portrayed on television, showing off the “ideal body type” for women, that being a lean thin body. This is paralleled today on social media platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat, where many women post pictures of themselves conforming to that “ideal body type.” Those posts statistically get more likes and followers than posts of women who do not conform to that standard. For many people, that representation of how their body should look is almost unachievable, however, due to its widespread exposure in social media, many people believe that if they do not fit that standard, they are not good enough, that they must do whatever they can to achieve that body type to get more likes and followers. The need for dopamine from that increase in followers and likes causes people to develop eating disorders, such as anorexia, which is a fear of gaining weight that alters their perception of their own body, making them think they are fat when they are not. They often supplement their fears by going through periods of starvation to try make themselves “no longer fat,” causing extreme damage to their bodies, all for some extra dopamine from the likes and followers they can get. Those eating disorders that many women (and men) receive from using social media are only heightened with their use of social media, as many studies show that the severity of their disorders positively correlated with the time they spent on those platforms. Eating disorders affect not only their physical appearance but also their self-image and self-esteem. Telehealth Counsellor at Eating Disorders Victoria, Rosie Jean Marks, in her article “The pursuit of wellness: Social media, body image, and eating disorders,” addresses the topic of how social media interactions fuel eating disorders and how that can lead to a decrease in self-esteem. She states in her article that “[the] examined time spent viewing, commenting and posting images on Facebook among female adolescents, and found that heightened exposure to image-based content was associated with body dissatisfaction and internalization of the thin ideal” (Marks). The more time female users spent looking at pictures of other women who fit the ideal “thinness” better than them, the more they started to look at themselves and think that what they were doing was not enough. This is something I have experience with. While I am not a female, the effects on body image caused by social media also affect men. For around a year, I struggled through eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia as I saw these “shredded” models who seemed to have their bodies look good so easily. Little did I know at the beginning, that most of those models did not look that good, they were using steroids to make their bodies have more muscle and used Photoshop to make themselves look leaner. This hurt my mental state as I was constantly telling myself that I was stupid for eating. The deeper I went into the different forums and threads with pictures of these “models,” the worse my self-image got as I was not good enough for love if I did not look like that. While my self-esteem plummeted due to my body dysmorphia, many studies show that simply being on social media a lot can contribute to weakened self-esteem. Professor of Psychology and researcher at Syracuse University, Zahra Vahedi, in her research article, “Social Networking Site Use and Self-Esteem: A Meta-Analytic Review” published in the Personality and Individual Differences Journal, addresses the topic of active users of social networking sites (SNSs) and the relationship between their self-esteem and their SNS usage. Her study finds that there is a significant negative relationship between the use of SNS and self-esteem. However, her study highlights a different reason for this decreased self-esteem, stating, “SNS users may be developing weaker, online relationships on SNSs, which then begin to replace stronger, in-person relationships (Hill, 2014). The replacement of stronger, in-person relationships with weaker, superficial online relationships may be associated with poorer self-esteem” (Vahedi). While most sources highlight low self-esteem as a correlation with low body image on the internet, this study dives into the minority of people who have low self-esteem without a low body image. This makes sense. With people spending more time on social media, they have more time to devote to weaker non-existent relationships. When they get used to these weak relationships, people struggle to form any real connections with their peers, lowering their self-esteem as they believe that the reason they cannot form those relationships is because they do not deserve to.
In conclusion, the impact of social media on the mental health of teenagers and young adults is a widely researched field, many, including myself, argue that it is a hindrance to their mental health and development. While social media platforms offer opportunities for the global connection of people and the flow of information, the widespread use of social media by the youth is detrimental to their development. As stated by U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy on the news channel TODAY in their video “Surgeon General warns of social media danger to mental health,” “We see rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide among young people. I’m concerned that social media is an important driver of that” (Murthy). While the benefits of social media cannot be overlooked, and abstinence from social media not being an option, we as teenagers and young adults should think critically about our social media use and prioritize our well-being over some Instagram likes.
Works Cited
Akram, Waseem, and R. Kumar. “A study on positive and negative effects of social media on Society.” International Journal of Computer Sciences and Engineering, vol. 5, no. 10, 2017, pp. 351–354, https://doi.org/10.26438/ijcse/v5i10.351354.
Saiphoo, Alyssa N., et al. “Social networking site use and self-esteem: A meta-analytic review.” Personality and Individual Differences, vol. 153, 2020, p. 109639, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.109639.
Zaveri, Jui. “Tiktok and the Death of the Attention Span .” The Oxford Blue, 23 May 2023, theoxfordblue.co.uk/tiktok-and-the-death-of-the-attention-span/.
Morris, Anne M, and Debra K Katzman. “The Impact of the Media on Eating Disorders in Children and Adolescents.” Paediatrics & Child Health, U.S. National Library of Medicine, May 2003, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2792687/.
Marks, Rosie Jean, et al. “The pursuit of Wellness: Social Media, body image and eating disorders.” Children and Youth Services Review, vol. 119, 2020, p. 105659, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105659.
“Is Social Media Hurting Your Mental Health? | Bailey Parnell | TEDxRyersonU.” Performance by Bailey Parnell, YouTube, TEDxRyersonU, 22 June 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czg_9C7gw0o. Accessed 17 Nov. 2023.
Murthy, Vivek H, director. Surgeon General Warns of Social Media Danger to Mental Health. YouTube, TODAY, 23 May 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SvqoaZzyVs. Accessed 17 Nov. 2023.
