How Social Media Affects Our Mental Health Through Comparison
In the twenty-first century, phones have become an everyday item for all generations and can be seen as a necessity by many. Everyone has different reasons for why they go on their phones. For some, it's to look something up online, check their email, and even do what it's meant to call people. However, in the past few years apps that we have downloaded to simply keep in contact with friends have slowly taken over our lives. By taking over our lives, I mean mostly our mental health and how it's affected youth the most. But before I go any further, I want to give a brief history of the potential and history of social media.
Surprisingly the term "social media" has been around since the 1800s, meaning that some people consider the invention of the telegraph as the beginning of how we communicate via technology versus physical face-to-face interaction. However, the social media that I will be mentioning are four of the world's most popular apps, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and Tik Tok.
These forms of social media wouldn't see the light of day until after the 2007 release of the iPhone. Although only Twitter out of the four new apps was created and available to download, the iPhone wasn't seen as a huge communication tool outside of calling or texting others. However, the iPhone did lead to the potential availability of new apps to be created and used on this new device.
It wasn't until nearly three years in 2010 after the first iPhone was launched that social media began to make its appearance on people's phones. In 2010 one of the world's biggest social media apps dropped, and that was Instagram. Instagram was a new app that allowed you to post photos and share them with others as well as allowing you to like them. Once Instagram became a hit, it led a gateway to people downloading other apps such as Twitter, Snapchat, and eventually Tik Tok. It's the most likely word of mouth was the reason that these apps became so popular and why people downloaded them. However, it's usually not touched upon how celebrities can have an effect on why people wanted to download these apps. Think about it, you see your favorite celebrity has both an Instagram and Twitter account. Since they're your favorite celebrity you're more likely to download these apps because you want an insight into your favorite celebrity's life rather than a friend just suggesting you download Instagram just for fun.
Although social media allowed people to have an outlet and connect with friends, it also started to have downfalls in people's mental health and still does to this day. One of the most common ways that social media takes on a toll on our mental health is through comparison. This is very popular on apps such as Instagram and Tik Tok. People use social media as an outlet to post only the highlights of their life on them. However, when doing this it can seem like your life only has happy moments and when people see that, they begin to question how good theirs is.
Although comparison through social media can affect anyone, it's most notably known to affect young teenagers the most. Having teens constantly look at social media on their phones every day can become damaging to them because they not only compare themselves to other people, but it can affect their development in growth. For example, when young girls see women post pictures of themselves they are more likely to compare their own bodies to theirs. Even if the woman that they see is more developed and most likely has their picture altered or photoshopped as a whole. This can lead to girls developing eating disorders or body dysmorphia because they want to look like someone that they saw online.
Even though social media can be a positive outlet for many, it can also lead to people developing mental health disorders throughout their time on it. Obviously social media won't be going away anytime soon, but we should look out for ourselves and each other when we use them. As well as to remember that everything we see online is not what it looks like in real life.
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