Social Media Can Be Unpredictable 

Social media is part of everyone’s daily lives. Social media has been around for a very long time, it’s a new way of communicating with one another. People wake up and sometimes the first thing they do is check their phones. Social media can affect you in a good or in a bad way. One of my sources Social Media and Mental Health explains how social media can cause anxiety, depression, and many other things. Another one of my sources Social media use can be positive… explains that social media can be a positive thing because it can help connect with other people online. I believe that social media can be both a bad and a good thing because it affects your mental health and it can also be very helpful such as communicating with people. Both sources are different from each other but the first source showed how social media can affect people’s mental health and that also affects their appearance which can cause many issues. Social media can be many things such as it can be useful or it can be addicting. This is an issue that everyone should pay attention to because technology is something we use every day. 

Technology has improved for so many years and it’s still improving to this day. Many new devices and apps are always being created every second of the day. For example, Apple products are very famous and are always a trend because of their famous iPhones and so many of their products. Social media such as online newspapers or magazines provide us information for upcoming new electronic devices and what is happening in our everyday lives. It’s a faster way of notifying us quickly instead of reading things on paper. Social media lets us know what celebrities are doing in their everyday lives. There are many apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and so many more. According to Etactics, there are over 5 billion users which is a lot and that is in the year 2019. Most of these users are teenagers and young adults that use social media the most. Everywhere you go, someone is pulling out their devices and is using their social media apps. 

Social media can be very helpful for everyone, it’s a way of finding new people and communicating with people you know. A lot of people have made many friends online and it’s thanks to social media. It could also help you meet your possible lover there too. Also, It’s a helpful tool for influencers as well who are people who influence other people. A very famous app has been trending for a long time which is called TikTok and so many people use that app. I’ve learned that people use this app to distract themselves from problems or it’s just a fun app. I can admit that I also use TikTok and I use the app whenever I’m bored and I just need a laugh. It also distracts me from the real world. Sometimes people use social media to distract them from the real world and it can be helpful for them. Many people are on social media and start talking about their day and they sometimes post what is happening in their lives. People use social media to also post about their future business which can include clothes, makeup, and so on. Social media lets us know what is trending and maybe makes us be a part of it too. 

It has been two years since the pandemic and so many things have changed over the past two years. During those two years, we weren’t allowed to go outside because a lot of people were getting sick and it was just terrifying. Many people lost their jobs because of the pandemic. Some people luckily still had their jobs but at home. Many students didn’t go to school in person but had them online. We all spent our lives at home and online. It was a very hard time for everyone. Almost every person spent their whole time online because people had to work and be in school. Many people couldn’t even go out because they were afraid. There weren’t many things to do at all but to just survive and go through the pandemic. Most people spend their time being on social media trying to distract themselves from boredom. There was an increase that showed that many people were being on social media.

As I said, social media can be a good thing for people and there are benefits when using it. On the other hand, social media can also be dangerous to people. It can cause depression, isolation, and anxiety according to Social Media and Mental Health. Even though social media can help you communicate with many new people, it can be dangerous as well. You don’t know what people’s intentions are towards you. These people on social media can be false online and can maybe trick you. Social media can be very dangerous. Many cases have been going on and it’s about how teens are getting kidnapped or being tricked by adults because they were pretending they were someone else. Also, like I said there are many influencers on social media that can give positive advice to their audience. There are many famous people such as models and so on but it can affect people mentally as well. These influencers and models are posting about having the perfect body and having so many designer clothes. This can affect people because it will try to make you feel a type of way. It affects people’s physical appearance because a model has a nice body and they are wearing nice clothes. It can start making you feel bad about your whole appearance and it can cause depression because of it. In some cases, many people try to fix their appearance because they want to become “beautiful” and “loved”. Some put themselves down because they don’t look perfect or they are not popular enough to get noticed by people. Many people even consider surgery because they want to fix themselves. 

Many users are on social media all the time. Studies show that people who are on it all the time can cause “loneliness, dissatisfaction, frustration…”(Social media and mental health). This can be very bad for your mental health because this will keep putting you down. Once you are attached to social media, you no longer are connected in the real world but on the internet. It might be hard for some people to make friends in real life and people can gain social anxiety because they don’t know how to interact with real people. It can also cause depression because you are not connecting with someone in real life and you are with a person you truly care about which is the reason that causes loneliness and fear of being around people. Once you are on social media, it is very hard to get off because there are so many things happening and sometimes you are afraid of missing out. The article states how “the idea that you’re missing out on certain things can impact your self-esteem, trigger anxiety, and fuel even greater social media use”. This can be a bad thing because people are constantly checking their phones to see what is going on as I said before. It can distract from many things especially when you try to sleep or when you are driving somewhere. 

Cyberbullying is when you bully someone online and start sending them awful messages or threats to that person. Cyberbullying has been going on since social media was created. It’s shocking how there are people who bully other people online. There are about “About 10 percent of teens report being bullied on social media and many other users are subjected to offensive comments.”(Social media and mental health). It can cause depression and it can lead to emotional scars because this is something no one wants to go through, being bullied online shouldn’t be happening at all because no one deserves that. 

COVID-19 has affected users online and there is a reason why. According to Social media use and mental health… it states how “Excessive social media exposure to this public health crisis might lead to heightened acute stress and long-term psychological distress”. This also goes along with FOMO because during the pandemic people were doing almost everything online. For example, the news was everywhere such as on social media and there were so many deaths because of COVID-19. This made people scared and anxious because everyone was receiving news on what was going down during the pandemic on a daily basis. Some family members lost one another due to COVID-19 and it triggered them once they heard the news. Some people also wanted to know what would happen next during the pandemic and if there were any good updates instead of bad ones. An example can be the NY state governor who always gave us updates on everything and what was going to happen at all times.

To conclude, social media has a big impact on everyone no matter what. Every person uses social media for certain purposes but it’s especially hard for younger people because it’s unpredictable. Social media can help you make connections and networks. It helps you have updates with your friends and family. Social media can also be a way of expressing yourself. On the other hand, social media can be hurtful and dangerous. It can cause you emotional scars. It can lead to anxiety or even depression. It can also lead to isolation because using too much social media can remove you from the real world. There isn’t going to be a solution to social media because we can’t control what goes on on the internet but people should be informed about what actually goes on because you never know what a person might be going through.