
Despite the positive effects of social media on both confidence and relationships, social media ultimately has many negative psychological effects on teens and even young adults. This is increasingly important as social media continues to grow and embed itself within the lives of people for risk prevention and harm reduction.  Teenagers are the most important people on the internet in the world today as they are the people who have grown up in a world based around social media or at least the internet. New studies show that many youth spend major parts of their days interacting with people through social media rather than in person, and the people conducting the study were researching psychological side effects of social media as they are becoming a high concern for the well-being of many youth today. When referencing social media generally speaking it could mean Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram but YouTube and even Video Games are forms of sites that many people use to connect and interact regularly. Because of this deep inclusion of social media within the lives of youth that steps up the game for parents to be aware of what their children do on the internet so that they can steer their children clear of the negative nature some forms of social media take. Encouraging healthy use of social media is prevalent towards the reduction of many results caused by poor social networking use such as “cyberbullying, “Facebook depression,” sexting, and exposure to inappropriate content.” Some of social networking’s positive effects still come with negatives in a sense because they give some people confidence, but in some cases social media obsession which can cause people to directly correlate their own confidence with the feedback they receive from the social networks they use. 

Social media can be used positively as a confidence booster or even an aid to interacting with friends. CNN covers a mother who has taken steps towards healthy use of social media in her daughter’s life because she does not want her to experience cyberbullying or be exposed to sexting. The positive aspects of social media are plenty as it can do anything from encourage social growth, strengthen relationships, and allow people to feel generally more connected. Studies done by Common Sense Media state that six times the amount of teens studied felt that social media made them more confident. In their survey of 1,000 13 to 17 year olds “28% said social networking made them feel more outgoing versus 5% who said it made them feel less so; and 29% said it made them feel less shy versus the 3% who said it made them feel more introverted.” Social media can even influence people to work together towards social good or to fight for a common purpose. Social media use can also remain positive when parents take the initiative to speak to their children and honestly just educate them about social networking. One thing to learn would be to be above cyberbullying so that it won’t have negative psychological side effects on happiness, and parents should also work to educate their children on sex and healthy relationships. Many adolescents are exposed to cyberbullying and sexting which can in turn have many negative side effects. 

   Additionally there is another report done by Common Sense Media stating “75 percent of teenagers in America currently have profiles on social networking sites,” and that means that three fourths of all teenagers in America are also exposed to “Facebook depression, sexting, and cyberbullying.” These are becoming more prominent in the lives of many people in an ominous way as Pew Research studies say about 40% of teens say they have experienced online bullying in some way shape or form, and just over a third of the teens had also received threatening messages from harassers on social networks. With the way the modern social networking world has allowed people to hide behind anonymity and a computer screen that has forced the government to begin taking steps towards stopping cyberbullying by treating it as serious as it really is. Cyberbullies are often either people with power obsessions like people who have become self-consumed through social media, or people who troll the internet to get back at them for some form of bullying they may receive in person or because they do not receive the same admiration through social networking. The National Council on Crime Prevention  states that just under a quarter of all people cyberbullied are bullied by people they don’t know. This explains a new psychological state of depression identified as “Facebook depression.”

This “Facebook depression” is being diagnosed as an “emotional disturbance that develops when preteens and teens spend a great deal of time on social media.” With 75% of teens on social media that has 75% of teens at risk for this emotional disturbance if they are not mentally able to handle the possible cyberbullying they are exposed to with active social networking. Some of this depression caused by social media stems from the lack of physical confrontation and association with other people that social media offers. In many cases people will be messaging each other but it is not really a conversation because they will interpret the words being said differently than they actually are. Not only can social networking based misinterpretation cause things like sarcasm to come off painful, but the use of social networking also can hurt your self-esteem. Studies done by two German universities state that one in every three people felt “lonely, frustrated, or angry” after spending time on their social media network and that is theorized to be caused by “perceived inadequacies when comparing themselves to friends.” Another psychological negative when people compare themselves to others is them not being happy with who they are as they are which can cause people to under eat to try and fit images set by people they admire. Social media can also inversely cause people to eat more as some research done by Columbia University states that social networking use may have a psychological correlation with lower self-control. Social networking over-involvement can even psychologically influence the things people like or are entertained by because of the effect of those around them. 

Another psychological side effect of social media is how attached people are to being involved in whatever is going on at whatever time no matter where they are. The odd thing about social media allowing people to be together when separated is that it in turn causes people to be separated in many ways when they are actually together. Sherry Turkle states that “our little devices are so psychologically powerful that they not only change what we do but change who we are,” and one of the ways people have become is isolated through the little device many of us hold dear. Sherry references a photo of her own daughter with three of her friends all on their phones and that image should already key the point to be taken from it. These people are often denied attention at some point in their lives and seek out social networking as a way to not only constantly be able to receive some form of interaction but to not feel alone. The problem is that when they are exposed to groups of people no matter it be work or play that many people run back to social media as soon as they are no longer interested. Bear in mind that a 2010 study stated that 87% of adolescents between 12 and 17 use social media, and any youth could vouch that when they are in any social setting that many people are still very involved in their technology. This is negative for psychology in many ways as it is making people more comfortable with the feeling of isolation which is something we are not psychologically fond of. 

The way people psychologically respond to isolation and the fear of it is now being pushed on to social media and this can be seen through Hannah Schacter’s article which begun by referencing the depths her sister goes to just to maximize likes on social media sites. For example she said she won’t ever post “on Friday or Saturday nights because no one is checking,” implying anybody who is anyone is busy on the weekend and doesn’t care about social media. The sister also takes into account many variables such as time zone, previously most liked posts, and even sharing algorithms. This obsession cannot be healthy and with many youth growing up in a world where social networking is just part of what they do this obsession is increasingly hard to avoid. The writer had been in a position to acknowledge this but at one point slipped and was even begging her sister to like her post just because she felt inadequate due to lack of attention to one of her other posts. The deadly cycle had begun when she compared herself to somebody else seeing that they got more likes made her feel like people liked the other person more. The big problem with people obsessing over how other people view them though is that it can cause them to be boring in real life. Have you ever been in an elevator with 10 people all on their phones and nobody is speaking? If so you have experienced one of the many negative side effects of social networking. A lot of the issues with social networking spawn from the average youth’s lack of self-control when it comes to internet use that in turn causes overuse and abuse of social media. In a more recent study on adolescents done by “Nesi and Prinstein” in 2015 state that a majority of 8th and 9th graders report social media is used to compare their lives to others or to  see how people think they look. This is the exact type of negative use that can spawn obsession or depression within the mind of an adolescent. 

This social media obsession with people’s opinions and comparison has had a negative impact on the development of identity in adolescents. “The process of integrating one’s characteristics and experiences to form an increasingly stable and unique sense of self” is how this American Journal of Men’s Health study defines “Adolescent Identity Formation.” With social media sites spreading information faster than any other media that allows youth to know what is new and what is popular in times quicker than any generation has experienced before. The problem with this psychologically is that it allows many people to obsess images that they do not fit and can force a lot of people to fit a uniform cookie cutter mold of what is liked rather than developing their own person. This can greatly impact the individuality of modern youth if they reached a point where they are no longer psychologically developing at their own paces but rather forcing themselves to conform to whatever image is being projected as likeable. Not only can it shift people’s interests towards their popularity, but it can also negatively impact learning and development. Social networking can force people to begin mentally moving away from dependence on their parents at younger ages, and social media can also psychologically influence early development of teens as well as early involvement in sexual activity. These effects of social media can affect the stability of adolescents identities and force them to think less abstractly as they move into more intimate relationships. One of the Men’s Journal writers theorized “that young adolescents are more concerned with individual identity than are older adolescents, who are more concerned with sexual identity and sexuality.” 

Many of these effects on individuality are directly caused by social networking replacing human interaction .Modern youth bases much of their communication off of social media which is exponentially different than the way many of their parents and even older siblings were raised. Many youth begin using technology at young elementary school ages and they utilize the new technology but watching them use technology as they develop into teenagers can be trivial and hard to keep up with. Many youth have done the same activities adolescents have always partaken such as hanging out in parking lots or shopping malls or basically gathering in any way they can to do a variety of things. This variety of activities includes “negotiating identity, gossiping, supporting another, jockeying for status, collaborating, sharing information, flirting, joking, and goofing off.” Basically social networking is embodying all of these things and is allowing teenagers to hangout without actually hanging out. The issue comes with older adolescents having a focus on sexuality because they developed their individuality as a youth without technology socializing as normal. The problem is that many youth look up to the older people as they usually have more prominence on social networks and thus people are more interested in what they are doing.  This is probably due to many youth being exposed to a world engulfed by media’s opinions at younger ages whereas older adolescents grew up in a less monitored more risqué world of social media so they are generally more expressive.

Additionally the shift of focus from individuality to sexuality has been aided by social networking being used for sexual expression. According to a 2007 study, which is now 10 years old, 75% of victims in internet-initiated sex crimes are female and that just over a fifth of all people have been victimized through sexting. “Sexting can be defined as “sending, receiving, or forwarding sexually explicit messages, photographs, or images via cell phone, computer, or other digital devices” which in a perfect world could be playful for adults but is more often than not a realistic threat for adolescents. Many of these pictures sexted amongst teens will end up rapidly dispersed through the wildfire that social media has become for information sharing amongst adolescents. One fifth of teenagers have sent or posted sexual photographs or videos of themselves through social networking, and in turn many have been threatened by many others or charged with felony child pornography. Many consequences other than a felony can result from sexting such as school suspensions, mental health evaluations, and in some cases removals from schools due to the severity of the responses to the images. Sexting can not only cause depression and poor body image, but it can easily allow for manipulation of adolescents through threats and blackmail. A person could hold a sext over another person’s head or just share it so the whole world could see and cause severe depression. 

Sexting is one of the more sever dangers for adolescents in the social media world as it can result in direct threats and even crime charges in more severe cases. But there are many negatives to social media use such as the loss of individuality, depression, lack of involvement, and lack of emotion in some situations. Many of these issues develop through the emotional wall that phones can create for adolescents allowing them to be more bold and less caring as studies show 20% of youth feel more daring on or at the influence of the internet. Despite the internet’s ability to allow people to communicate and be more actively involved in the lives of their friends, social media inversely causes many people to not be as involved when actually presented a social situation or even less likely to go.  Despite the positive effects of social networking adolescents confidence and interaction with each other, social media ultimately has many negative psychological effects on teens and young adults such as depression, isolation, and even a loss of individuality. 
