Social media, a way in which we use our technology, has over time consumed the everyday life of the common person. While every age group uses social media, teenagers are easily the most consumed by it. From ages thirteen to eighteen, social media is a staple in the lives of this generation. Like all things, social media comes with its positive and negative impacts on the human being. Social media has taken over so much of teenager’s lives that the negative effects such as: cyberbullying, suicide, and body dysmorphia, greatly outweigh the positive ones like: faster and broader communication. 

Middle schoolers, as a whole are very easily influenced. The most influential person to a teenager is their peers. Middle schoolers are at an age of high vulnerability. Sites such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat are among the vast number of social media sources that allow people to post, share, and favorite each other’s thoughts and life updates. While this would not seem detrimental to a teenager by just looking once and a while and checking up on their followers, most children are so consumed by the constant updates of their peers that small posts and comments on a picture can do more harm than good. Research has proven that “people tend to present themselves in a favorable way on their Facebook profile”, giving other people a sense of jealousy and skewed perception of what that person’s life is like (Chou & Edge 117). Someone seeing their friends post luxurious and fun photos might become sadden by their own life, not thinking they are as fun, adventurous, or cool. This in turn can damage the viewer’s self-worth. Peers are constantly influencing one another whether it is conscious or not. Even the amount of “likes” one receives can create a sense of self-worth or in the more common instance with a lack of likes, or less than that of what one was expecting, create a sense of self-pity. It was revealed in a study that “adolescents were more likely to like a photo if that photo had received more likes from peers” (Sherman 5). Teenagers react to this by putting the person who received the high amount of likes in a position of authority above those who typically receive less likes. 

Along with the influences of peers, teenagers have reported stating that their busy, ever-moving lives, also play a part in their constant social media exposure. The average child in middle school and even high school have a typical day consisting of school, sports or another after school activity, then homework, dinner, and finally going to bed. Not having much time to “day dream”, these children are constantly checking social media on their drives to and from their next destination. Along with constantly being “plugged in” online, comes a new goal teenagers aspire for: fame. 

Instead of being “one of the gang” or just fitting in, teenagers aspire to stand out. They portray themselves online in a way that the user thinks is different from everyone else. With the help of constant check-ins on their social media accounts, teenagers are constantly refreshing the different social media applications to get up to date with all of the famous trends. Posting what they think their peers want to see can lead teenagers to do things they would not normally do. A young teen girl might post a scandalous bathing suit picture that she would not want her mother to see, however, post it anyway in hopes her followers will like her more for it. One survey, it was found that “teens worry about missing out on conversations on social media, focus with increasing intensity on their online appearance, and react to the amplifying effect of social media” (Kang 9). Being so overwhelmed by social media causes teenagers to worry about their online actions more than their in-person actions. This creates a more profound impact on what people comment on others status’, pictures, and videos. It is the heavy burden of others opinions that allows social media to become dangerous to the growth of teenagers. Teens nowadays want to stand out, however do not want to be criticized for standing out too much. 

However beneficial or detrimental social media is, its commonality is what makes it so prevalent to the everyday person. Not having social media would be going against the social norm. Even having social media but not checking it daily is considered abnormal as well. The normal usage of social media among teenagers is posting, updating, and checking their accounts multiple times every day. Kids nowadays make friends and even enemies through social media. People keep in touch with others whom also like the same posts and share similar facts as themselves. A problem that has arisen from social media and the easy ability to meet people is the lack of concern for teenagers talking to strangers. It was once the expected behavior not to talk to strangers. Parents, teachers, and guardians alike raved about the dangers of talking to unfamiliar faces. Now, with the help of social media, applications such as Tinder, Grinder, and even Facebook, allow for young teens to talk to people, most commonly in hopes of true love. This is a negative effect of social media in that there have been numerous cases of these “meet ups” gone wrong. Statistics have shown that sexual assault due to social media has increased by over 300% (GuardChild 1). That fact strengthens a case to again increase awareness among teenagers to stay clear of strangers or at least only follow people they known.

Not only is it common to be a victim of cyberbullying that could result in suicide, but actual murder has come about through the new-found trust in meeting strangers. Murder is an extreme case; however, social media has allowed more and more attacks to be more easily planned out. Studies show that “half of all sex crimes against a minor involving a social networking site, the social networking site was used to initiate the relationship” (GuardChild 1). Social networking sites are not meant to lead to assault, bullying, or death, however, not knowing how to properly manage privacy and security settings has increased these risks. Teenagers go on social networking sites in order to fit in and be constantly updated by what is relevant in the world. Unfortunately, these teens lack the common knowledge that not all people are good and talking to those not good people could result in heinous actions committed against them.  

Teenagers have become so consumed by social media that they base their self-worth off the amount of likes and comments they receive from their followers. The users constantly compare the amount of “likes” they receive to the amount of “likes” their peers get as well. This amount of personal worth that people gain from social media can have horrible consequences on the human person. People with especially low self-esteem and low confidence levels are said to use social media sites the most. It is these users that constantly want to make sure they are always up to date on the latest trends to make themselves feel more liked by their peers. It was found in a study that “the most vulnerable users are the ones who spend most of their time posting, commenting on and comparing themselves to photos” (Simmons 11). This study could also correlate with “vulnerable” or insecure users being more reliant on what others comment on their posts or who and how many people like it. All of these factors tie into the easy ability for users, especially easily influenced teen social media users, to be more prone to the effects their peers have over them. Studies have linked social media to cyberbullying cases that lead to either body-shaming, self-harm, eating disorders, and even suicide. Cyberbullying can come about directly or indirectly through many different social media sites. One common form of social media that is used very frequently in terms of use to cyberbully is through anonymous sites. Sites such as “ask.fm”, that allow users to ask questions and answer surveys, have been used by teens to torment their peers by posting mean and hurtful comments and surveys about their peers without them ever knowing who is behind it. However, cyberbullying can also come about through direct social media usage too. It is very common to see a group of teenagers all comment on one person’s picture or post on one person’s wall, cruel comments and embarrassing pictures. 

One major effect of social media on middle school children is eating-disorders. While eating-disorders are more common in girls than boys, it still does effect both. Constantly being compared to one another, being body shamed by peers can cause life-long effects. To get to a certain weight or attain a figure like the popular girl in school can sometimes cause children to starve themselves or even purge after every meal and snack they intake. These serious disorders can come about due to a lack of self-worth. Seeing their peers and famous personalities online that seem to be perfect lead others to want to look “perfect”. This sometimes results in the yearning viewer to go through extreme measures to do so. Unfortunately, when one cannot attain the look they want from eating disorders, depression and even self-harm can come about. Some people feel so worthless as a result of comparing themselves to others through social media, that they cut themselves to try and prove that they are in fact worthless and not good enough. Body dysmorphia is also a disease in which people actually perceive themselves to look differently than they actually do. Girls will think they are overweight, when in reality, most of these girls are suffering from body dysmorphia.  

Another harmful effect of social media, that stems mainly from cyberbullying, is suicide. Many suicides have been reported as a result of social media. One article from TIME magazine examined the suicide of one boy. This boy had been living a normal life, however, through the anonymity of the survey site “ask.fm”, many of his peers started posting about him. One thing lead to another and over time he could not take the cruelty anymore and committed suicide. The ability to be anonymous online allowed for the comments and posts to be more harmful and viscous than normal cyberbullying because the bullies felt as though they would never be caught. These social media sites, especially the ones with anonymity, “create a culture among kids that backstabbing and libel are normal parts of human interaction” (Dickey 2). This example of the boy that took his life only shows how bullying through social media is becoming a norm and should almost be expected for a lot of teenagers. 

While social media has a vast amount of negative effects, it also has positive benefits that cannot be ignored. Fast communication through the use of social media allows for awareness of events, disasters, or even fundraisers to be broadcasted to a large group of people anywhere that social media is present. This use of social media is constant. Businesses use this to their advantage, advertising the newest product or awareness for their philanthropies. Specifically relating the benefits to middle school aged teenagers, one news reporter, Ashely Ford, even used social media to raise money to pay for underprivileged children’s school lunch debts so the children would be able to receive lunches at school. Her one tweet sparked attention from all over the United States, allowing her to in fact, raise money for the children’s lunches. It is even said that “it’s not the first-time Ford’s tweets helped inspire an outpouring of public generosity” (Associated Press 1). Many citizens around the world have been using many different social networking sites, like Ford, to raise money or even just awareness for a cause or event that the user believes in or just wants to help out. 

Overall, social media has many positive and negative effects on the middle school-aged teenager. With the positive benefits such as: faster and broader communication social media provides, it shows that it has a definite need. However, this need comes with a flashing sign that it needs to be controlled. Too much of anything is not good, therefore, that is why social media has become a bad thing. Children need to lessen their exposure to it or even just learn to use it wisely. One journalist, Devorah Heitner, interviewed a group of teenagers about their own social media rules and he learned the best way to control and help children online is to have them do it themselves. Some school girls he talked to told him that when posting online it is universally known what is “too sexy” and what is appropriate for your parents to see (Heitner 14). Anything can influence a teenager, whether it be social media, their peers, celebrities, or even television advertisements. 

Social networking sites have become more prevalent as time has gone on. Technology is very dynamic causing it to be everchanging and constantly updating. The social media applications used by teens today are becoming an important part of every middle and high schoolers life. With constant updates, status’, and new pictures being posted, everyone knows everything about everyone. The lack of privacy settings that is used among most teenagers can lead to life threatening, serious consequences. Strangers are still a threat to younger kids whether they are aware of it or not. Cyberbullying was a term just recently created due to the overwhelming amount of middle school and high school teens that have turned victim to online abuse. The online abuse has resulted in teens turning to self-harm, body shaming, and sometimes even suicide. The negative effects of social media have caused this generation of teenagers to rely on what others think of them. This ultimately effects how the users act online. heavy reliance on the thoughts of what the user’s peers think of each other determines how users act online. The demand to want to stand out and reach the goal of fame through different social media sites causes negative attention for some users. This again is a result of cyberbullying and is one reason why teens need to be careful online and not be so influenced by others. Social networking has proven beneficial to the world today in helping with faster communication and the ability to raise awareness for less fortunate people or places that lack the ability to raise awareness themselves. With how helpful social media is as a whole for the world, for teenagers, it has become something that they cannot live without. To remove social media altogether would be almost impossible. Social media is a brilliant device for people of all ages; teens just need to learn how to use it in a safe, smart, and friendly way. 
