Influence of Social Media Sites on Mental Health and Self-Esteem

Increased Prevalence of Social Media Sites over the Past Decade

In 2004, the world of social media as we know it today was changed forever. Facebook was first created an entire decade ago with similar social media platforms such as MySpace, Twitter, and Instagram being created ever since. Similarly, phrases such as "cyber-bullying" were not used or even a thing over a decade ago. However, in today's world social media and cyber-bullying are both intertwined with society and how we communicate with one another over the Internet. Facebook, the biggest social media website of them all, has over a billion users and the amount of users will only continue to grow. The scope and influence of social media should be taken seriously with regards to mental health and the prosperity of its users.

Correlation between Social Media and Symptoms of Depression

Currently there is much debate as to whether or not there is concrete evidence with regards to any correlations between social media websites and depression. This is mostly because social media is so new and used in so many different ways that it is tough to scientifically study something so subjective. Although, researchers do agree that depressive symptoms and factors are easier to identify through social media outlets. Users who have depression issues typically take to social media in order to express their emotions. Therefore, even though we cannot definitively say that social media leads to depression symptoms in some users, researchers can agree that symptoms of depression are more easily identifiable on social media websites.

How Social Networks Negatively affects Users Self-Esteem

In order to analyze the relationship between social media and self-esteem, we first must define what exactly self-esteem is for our study. For our purposes, self-esteem is the degree of which one approves, values, or likes ones self. With that in mind, researchers found an overwhelmingly negative response to social media websites. The belief as to why that is the case is because social media is self-promotional and, in some cases, narcissistic at its core. The appearance of being cool and having a great life is almost more important than actually having those things because your reputation is based upon your social media reputation nowadays. Based upon the research conducted, social media has a negative affect on self-esteem in most cases so the question to ask now is: how do we change social media to make it a more positive environment for its users?

Similar to Drugs, Social Media can be Addictive

A study conducted analyzed the affects of social media on the brain and what happens when social media usage is taken away. Interestingly enough, subjects of the study experienced withdrawal symptoms when having to eliminate social media usage. Chronic users of social media exhibited symptoms that resembled that of alcohol and nicotine abusers. Addiction to social media is a real problem especially considering the adverse affects I covered above. Social media seems to provide more issues than actual positives for its users today however, that's not to say that it can improve in the future.