Social media has never been so widely used or so easily accessible; according to Forbes, in 2023, social media had around 4.9 billion global users (over half the world’s population), with the average person estimated to spend around 145 minutes a day using it.  

This is concerning because such a significant amount of our precious time is being given to something that can be damaging for a plethora of reasons, affecting teens who are living through their formative years largely online, growing up during the unprecedented age of AI and Instagram.

Since its creation in the late 90s, it has become more and more clear that social media use and teen’s mental health are interlinked; heavy use increases feelings of depression, anxiety and low self-esteem – according to a study of 12–15 year olds in America, those who used social media for more than 3 hours a day were twice as likely to report poor mental health. 

Constant bombardment of perfect–looking images and lifestyles on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok, with many pictures posted highly, often undetectably, edited, can cause a disconnection from reality and a false sense of what normal people look like.  

This leads to heightened feelings of low self-esteem and poor body image in both boys and girls, as they compare themselves to impossible standards, with research concluding in 2021 that 1 in 3 girls are unhappy with their appearance by the age of 14 (possibly social media has contributed to this).

This seems to have also resulted in abnormal behaviours for young people influenced by media trends, such as kids asking for expensive adult skincare products and vulnerable boys adopting ‘looksmaxxing’. 

Furthermore, teenagers spend much time communicating online, texting, snapping and sharing, meaning that teens can lack real social interaction as, instead of meeting up with their friends in person, they may choose to simply text them at home. 

In this way, young people, still developing, are missing out on learning critical social skills like body language and facial expression cues, causing loneliness and social anxiety. 

Unfortunately, communicating via a screen also gives rise to cyberbullying as kids feel as though they can say things to someone that they would never ordinarily say in person. 

Moreover, as social media can provide us with direct access to millions of people from all over the world, people now hold the inflated belief that they have hundreds of options, causing them to become non-committal, which could be why so many young people are involved in ‘situationships’ - the blurred existence of a proper relationship - and a term made popular on TikTok. 

As well as this, excessive use (which is the case for 48% of 7000 British teens who said they feel addicted to social media in a Millennium Cohort study) can be linked to short-attention spans, sleep problems and FOMO; meanwhile, social media can expose teens to dangerous misinformation, fake news and propaganda. 

Nevertheless, social media has a significant number of positives too; it provides a space for community and connection for people who share identities and interests or those that feel marginalised, it can be used as an outlet for creativity, and it can provide information, entertainment and social awareness.

Overall, the goal is to be able to use and enjoy social media safely; therefore, we should be greatly limiting the amount of time we spend on it, whilst the government should be better regulating all social media platforms in general.