Social Media is a Disease

This week I watched a variety of TED talks that surrounded the topic of social media. The one that really stood out to me was about the harms and negative effects of social media on our bodies and mental health, it was called Why you should quit social media, performed by computer scientist Cal Newport. Newport is someone who has admitted to never having a social media account. This statement was eye-opening to me because "Social media usage is one of the most popular online activities in 2019, 79% of the population in the United States had a social networking profile (Clement.)" This means Newport is a part of the 21% of Americans who don’t. You could also infer from this information that Newport is a little bias because he is not a social media user himself. Personally, I'm interested in this topic because I’m involved with many different social media platforms, and I never really understood the gravity of how bad it is for me as a person. 

The main idea that Newport touched on was how addictive social media is. As a social media user myself, I can agree and vouch for this. I’ll admit, I never really thought about or realized how addictive social media is. But after sitting back and reflecting on it, I definitely view it as an addiction. I constantly find myself checking and using social media throughout the day. 

During my Freshman year, I attempted to delete Snapchat. Snapchat is a social media app that many teens around the world use to communicate through photos and texts. Snapchat was something that was negatively affecting my sleep pattern and raising my screen time. It has one feature in particular that I find very addicting to teenagers, and that is “streaks.” When two people communicate on Snapchat they have a virtual streak that appears next to their name and it represents the number of days in a row that they communicated for. If you don’t snap or reply to that person within 24 hours, your snap streak is broken. There are no real benefits to a snap streak, but they were still weirdly addictive. 

The people who design these features are called attention engineers, and their job is to make a product as addicting as possible. This all starts with the connections in your brain. For example, dopamine is an important neurotransmitter in our brain that plays a part in how we feel pleasure and our emotions. Our brains set off dopamine receptors whenever we get positive feedback on a social media post or text. This triggers and affects the way our brains work, and can eventually lead to bigger problems like anxiety and depression. Commonly, you think of an addiction as being related to drugs or alcohol. But in reality, social media is one of the biggest addictions there is, and it affects people of all ages, especially teenagers. 

Yes, social media can be beneficial, but is it worth the mismatches in your brain, or the possible stress and anxiety? This has really opened my eyes to the harms of social media and the effects it has on my brain and mental health. As a result, I’m more mindful of the amount of time I spend on social media and what it’s doing to my body. Personally, I don’t intend on cutting social media out of my life entirely because it’s a way for me to connect with my family and friends, and so far I’ve had enough self-control to limit my use, and I don’t struggle with any depression or anxiety. But in the end, this is a choice that you have to make for yourself, and it can make or break your well-being.

Works Cited

Clement, J. "Percentage of U.S. population who currently use any social media
     from 2008 to 2019." Statista, 19 May 2020, www.statista.com/statistics/
     273476/percentage-of-us-population-with-a-social-network-profile/
     #:~:text=Social%20media%20usage%20is%20one,reach%20in%20the%20previous%20year.
     Accessed 18 Dec. 2020.

Newport, Cal. "Why you should quit social media." TED, June 2016, www.ted.com/talks/cal_newport_why_you_should_quit_social_media. Accessed 14 Dec. 2020.