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How Social Networking Can Ruin Your Life: Negative Effects of Social Media

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Why is social media bad for mental health, why social media is bad: a conclusion.

• Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2019). Associations between screen time and lower psychological well-being among children and adolescents: Evidence from a population-based study. Preventive Medicine Reports, 15, 100928. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmedr.2019.100928
• Lin, L. Y., Sidani, J. E., Shensa, A., Radovic, A., Miller, E., Colditz, J. B., ... & Primack, B. A. (2016). Association between social media use and depression among US young adults. Depression and Anxiety, 33(4), 323-331. https://doi.org/10.1002/da.22466
• Rosen, L. D., Whaling, K., Carrier, L. M., Cheever, N. A., & Rokkum, J. (2013). The media and technology usage and attitudes scale: An empirical investigation. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(6), 2501-2511. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2013.07.009
• Kross, E., Verduyn, P., Demiralp, E., Park, J., Lee, D. S., Lin, N., ... & Ybarra, O. (2013). Facebook use predicts declines in subjective well-being in young adults. PloS one, 8(8), e69841. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0069841
• Turel, O., & Qahri-Saremi, H. (2016). Problematic use of social media: Antecedents and consequences. Information Systems Journal, 26(2), 99-118. https://doi.org/10.1111/isj.12082

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Science News

Social media harms teens’ mental health, mounting evidence shows. what now.

Understanding what is going on in teens’ minds is necessary for targeted policy suggestions

Most teens use social media, often for hours on end. Some social scientists are confident that such use is harming their mental health. Now they want to pinpoint what explains the link.

Carol Yepes/Getty Images

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By Sujata Gupta

February 20, 2024 at 7:30 am

In January, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook’s parent company Meta, appeared at a congressional hearing to answer questions about how social media potentially harms children. Zuckerberg opened by saying: “The existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal link between using social media and young people having worse mental health.”

But many social scientists would disagree with that statement. In recent years, studies have started to show a causal link between teen social media use and reduced well-being or mood disorders, chiefly depression and anxiety.

Ironically, one of the most cited studies into this link focused on Facebook.

Researchers delved into whether the platform’s introduction across college campuses in the mid 2000s increased symptoms associated with depression and anxiety. The answer was a clear yes , says MIT economist Alexey Makarin, a coauthor of the study, which appeared in the November 2022 American Economic Review . “There is still a lot to be explored,” Makarin says, but “[to say] there is no causal evidence that social media causes mental health issues, to that I definitely object.”

The concern, and the studies, come from statistics showing that social media use in teens ages 13 to 17 is now almost ubiquitous. Two-thirds of teens report using TikTok, and some 60 percent of teens report using Instagram or Snapchat, a 2022 survey found. (Only 30 percent said they used Facebook.) Another survey showed that girls, on average, allot roughly 3.4 hours per day to TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, compared with roughly 2.1 hours among boys. At the same time, more teens are showing signs of depression than ever, especially girls ( SN: 6/30/23 ).

As more studies show a strong link between these phenomena, some researchers are starting to shift their attention to possible mechanisms. Why does social media use seem to trigger mental health problems? Why are those effects unevenly distributed among different groups, such as girls or young adults? And can the positives of social media be teased out from the negatives to provide more targeted guidance to teens, their caregivers and policymakers?

“You can’t design good public policy if you don’t know why things are happening,” says Scott Cunningham, an economist at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

Increasing rigor

Concerns over the effects of social media use in children have been circulating for years, resulting in a massive body of scientific literature. But those mostly correlational studies could not show if teen social media use was harming mental health or if teens with mental health problems were using more social media.

Moreover, the findings from such studies were often inconclusive, or the effects on mental health so small as to be inconsequential. In one study that received considerable media attention, psychologists Amy Orben and Andrew Przybylski combined data from three surveys to see if they could find a link between technology use, including social media, and reduced well-being. The duo gauged the well-being of over 355,000 teenagers by focusing on questions around depression, suicidal thinking and self-esteem.

Digital technology use was associated with a slight decrease in adolescent well-being , Orben, now of the University of Cambridge, and Przybylski, of the University of Oxford, reported in 2019 in Nature Human Behaviour . But the duo downplayed that finding, noting that researchers have observed similar drops in adolescent well-being associated with drinking milk, going to the movies or eating potatoes.

Holes have begun to appear in that narrative thanks to newer, more rigorous studies.

In one longitudinal study, researchers — including Orben and Przybylski — used survey data on social media use and well-being from over 17,400 teens and young adults to look at how individuals’ responses to a question gauging life satisfaction changed between 2011 and 2018. And they dug into how the responses varied by gender, age and time spent on social media.

Social media use was associated with a drop in well-being among teens during certain developmental periods, chiefly puberty and young adulthood, the team reported in 2022 in Nature Communications . That translated to lower well-being scores around ages 11 to 13 for girls and ages 14 to 15 for boys. Both groups also reported a drop in well-being around age 19. Moreover, among the older teens, the team found evidence for the Goldilocks Hypothesis: the idea that both too much and too little time spent on social media can harm mental health.

“There’s hardly any effect if you look over everybody. But if you look at specific age groups, at particularly what [Orben] calls ‘windows of sensitivity’ … you see these clear effects,” says L.J. Shrum, a consumer psychologist at HEC Paris who was not involved with this research. His review of studies related to teen social media use and mental health is forthcoming in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research.

Cause and effect

That longitudinal study hints at causation, researchers say. But one of the clearest ways to pin down cause and effect is through natural or quasi-experiments. For these in-the-wild experiments, researchers must identify situations where the rollout of a societal “treatment” is staggered across space and time. They can then compare outcomes among members of the group who received the treatment to those still in the queue — the control group.

That was the approach Makarin and his team used in their study of Facebook. The researchers homed in on the staggered rollout of Facebook across 775 college campuses from 2004 to 2006. They combined that rollout data with student responses to the National College Health Assessment, a widely used survey of college students’ mental and physical health.

The team then sought to understand if those survey questions captured diagnosable mental health problems. Specifically, they had roughly 500 undergraduate students respond to questions both in the National College Health Assessment and in validated screening tools for depression and anxiety. They found that mental health scores on the assessment predicted scores on the screenings. That suggested that a drop in well-being on the college survey was a good proxy for a corresponding increase in diagnosable mental health disorders. 

Compared with campuses that had not yet gained access to Facebook, college campuses with Facebook experienced a 2 percentage point increase in the number of students who met the diagnostic criteria for anxiety or depression, the team found.

When it comes to showing a causal link between social media use in teens and worse mental health, “that study really is the crown jewel right now,” says Cunningham, who was not involved in that research.

A need for nuance

The social media landscape today is vastly different than the landscape of 20 years ago. Facebook is now optimized for maximum addiction, Shrum says, and other newer platforms, such as Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok, have since copied and built on those features. Paired with the ubiquity of social media in general, the negative effects on mental health may well be larger now.

Moreover, social media research tends to focus on young adults — an easier cohort to study than minors. That needs to change, Cunningham says. “Most of us are worried about our high school kids and younger.” 

And so, researchers must pivot accordingly. Crucially, simple comparisons of social media users and nonusers no longer make sense. As Orben and Przybylski’s 2022 work suggested, a teen not on social media might well feel worse than one who briefly logs on. 

Researchers must also dig into why, and under what circumstances, social media use can harm mental health, Cunningham says. Explanations for this link abound. For instance, social media is thought to crowd out other activities or increase people’s likelihood of comparing themselves unfavorably with others. But big data studies, with their reliance on existing surveys and statistical analyses, cannot address those deeper questions. “These kinds of papers, there’s nothing you can really ask … to find these plausible mechanisms,” Cunningham says.

One ongoing effort to understand social media use from this more nuanced vantage point is the SMART Schools project out of the University of Birmingham in England. Pedagogical expert Victoria Goodyear and her team are comparing mental and physical health outcomes among children who attend schools that have restricted cell phone use to those attending schools without such a policy. The researchers described the protocol of that study of 30 schools and over 1,000 students in the July BMJ Open.

Goodyear and colleagues are also combining that natural experiment with qualitative research. They met with 36 five-person focus groups each consisting of all students, all parents or all educators at six of those schools. The team hopes to learn how students use their phones during the day, how usage practices make students feel, and what the various parties think of restrictions on cell phone use during the school day.

Talking to teens and those in their orbit is the best way to get at the mechanisms by which social media influences well-being — for better or worse, Goodyear says. Moving beyond big data to this more personal approach, however, takes considerable time and effort. “Social media has increased in pace and momentum very, very quickly,” she says. “And research takes a long time to catch up with that process.”

Until that catch-up occurs, though, researchers cannot dole out much advice. “What guidance could we provide to young people, parents and schools to help maintain the positives of social media use?” Goodyear asks. “There’s not concrete evidence yet.”

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How Harmful Is Social Media?

By Gideon Lewis-Kraus

In April, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt published an essay in The Atlantic in which he sought to explain, as the piece’s title had it, “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.” Anyone familiar with Haidt’s work in the past half decade could have anticipated his answer: social media. Although Haidt concedes that political polarization and factional enmity long predate the rise of the platforms, and that there are plenty of other factors involved, he believes that the tools of virality—Facebook’s Like and Share buttons, Twitter’s Retweet function—have algorithmically and irrevocably corroded public life. He has determined that a great historical discontinuity can be dated with some precision to the period between 2010 and 2014, when these features became widely available on phones.

“What changed in the 2010s?” Haidt asks, reminding his audience that a former Twitter developer had once compared the Retweet button to the provision of a four-year-old with a loaded weapon. “A mean tweet doesn’t kill anyone; it is an attempt to shame or punish someone publicly while broadcasting one’s own virtue, brilliance, or tribal loyalties. It’s more a dart than a bullet, causing pain but no fatalities. Even so, from 2009 to 2012, Facebook and Twitter passed out roughly a billion dart guns globally. We’ve been shooting one another ever since.” While the right has thrived on conspiracy-mongering and misinformation, the left has turned punitive: “When everyone was issued a dart gun in the early 2010s, many left-leaning institutions began shooting themselves in the brain. And, unfortunately, those were the brains that inform, instruct, and entertain most of the country.” Haidt’s prevailing metaphor of thoroughgoing fragmentation is the story of the Tower of Babel: the rise of social media has “unwittingly dissolved the mortar of trust, belief in institutions, and shared stories that had held a large and diverse secular democracy together.”

These are, needless to say, common concerns. Chief among Haidt’s worries is that use of social media has left us particularly vulnerable to confirmation bias, or the propensity to fix upon evidence that shores up our prior beliefs. Haidt acknowledges that the extant literature on social media’s effects is large and complex, and that there is something in it for everyone. On January 6, 2021, he was on the phone with Chris Bail, a sociologist at Duke and the author of the recent book “ Breaking the Social Media Prism ,” when Bail urged him to turn on the television. Two weeks later, Haidt wrote to Bail, expressing his frustration at the way Facebook officials consistently cited the same handful of studies in their defense. He suggested that the two of them collaborate on a comprehensive literature review that they could share, as a Google Doc, with other researchers. (Haidt had experimented with such a model before.) Bail was cautious. He told me, “What I said to him was, ‘Well, you know, I’m not sure the research is going to bear out your version of the story,’ and he said, ‘Why don’t we see?’ ”

Bail emphasized that he is not a “platform-basher.” He added, “In my book, my main take is, Yes, the platforms play a role, but we are greatly exaggerating what it’s possible for them to do—how much they could change things no matter who’s at the helm at these companies—and we’re profoundly underestimating the human element, the motivation of users.” He found Haidt’s idea of a Google Doc appealing, in the way that it would produce a kind of living document that existed “somewhere between scholarship and public writing.” Haidt was eager for a forum to test his ideas. “I decided that if I was going to be writing about this—what changed in the universe, around 2014, when things got weird on campus and elsewhere—once again, I’d better be confident I’m right,” he said. “I can’t just go off my feelings and my readings of the biased literature. We all suffer from confirmation bias, and the only cure is other people who don’t share your own.”

Haidt and Bail, along with a research assistant, populated the document over the course of several weeks last year, and in November they invited about two dozen scholars to contribute. Haidt told me, of the difficulties of social-scientific methodology, “When you first approach a question, you don’t even know what it is. ‘Is social media destroying democracy, yes or no?’ That’s not a good question. You can’t answer that question. So what can you ask and answer?” As the document took on a life of its own, tractable rubrics emerged—Does social media make people angrier or more affectively polarized? Does it create political echo chambers? Does it increase the probability of violence? Does it enable foreign governments to increase political dysfunction in the United States and other democracies? Haidt continued, “It’s only after you break it up into lots of answerable questions that you see where the complexity lies.”

Haidt came away with the sense, on balance, that social media was in fact pretty bad. He was disappointed, but not surprised, that Facebook’s response to his article relied on the same three studies they’ve been reciting for years. “This is something you see with breakfast cereals,” he said, noting that a cereal company “might say, ‘Did you know we have twenty-five per cent more riboflavin than the leading brand?’ They’ll point to features where the evidence is in their favor, which distracts you from the over-all fact that your cereal tastes worse and is less healthy.”

After Haidt’s piece was published, the Google Doc—“Social Media and Political Dysfunction: A Collaborative Review”—was made available to the public . Comments piled up, and a new section was added, at the end, to include a miscellany of Twitter threads and Substack essays that appeared in response to Haidt’s interpretation of the evidence. Some colleagues and kibbitzers agreed with Haidt. But others, though they might have shared his basic intuition that something in our experience of social media was amiss, drew upon the same data set to reach less definitive conclusions, or even mildly contradictory ones. Even after the initial flurry of responses to Haidt’s article disappeared into social-media memory, the document, insofar as it captured the state of the social-media debate, remained a lively artifact.

Near the end of the collaborative project’s introduction, the authors warn, “We caution readers not to simply add up the number of studies on each side and declare one side the winner.” The document runs to more than a hundred and fifty pages, and for each question there are affirmative and dissenting studies, as well as some that indicate mixed results. According to one paper, “Political expressions on social media and the online forum were found to (a) reinforce the expressers’ partisan thought process and (b) harden their pre-existing political preferences,” but, according to another, which used data collected during the 2016 election, “Over the course of the campaign, we found media use and attitudes remained relatively stable. Our results also showed that Facebook news use was related to modest over-time spiral of depolarization. Furthermore, we found that people who use Facebook for news were more likely to view both pro- and counter-attitudinal news in each wave. Our results indicated that counter-attitudinal exposure increased over time, which resulted in depolarization.” If results like these seem incompatible, a perplexed reader is given recourse to a study that says, “Our findings indicate that political polarization on social media cannot be conceptualized as a unified phenomenon, as there are significant cross-platform differences.”

Interested in echo chambers? “Our results show that the aggregation of users in homophilic clusters dominate online interactions on Facebook and Twitter,” which seems convincing—except that, as another team has it, “We do not find evidence supporting a strong characterization of ‘echo chambers’ in which the majority of people’s sources of news are mutually exclusive and from opposite poles.” By the end of the file, the vaguely patronizing top-line recommendation against simple summation begins to make more sense. A document that originated as a bulwark against confirmation bias could, as it turned out, just as easily function as a kind of generative device to support anybody’s pet conviction. The only sane response, it seemed, was simply to throw one’s hands in the air.

When I spoke to some of the researchers whose work had been included, I found a combination of broad, visceral unease with the current situation—with the banefulness of harassment and trolling; with the opacity of the platforms; with, well, the widespread presentiment that of course social media is in many ways bad—and a contrastive sense that it might not be catastrophically bad in some of the specific ways that many of us have come to take for granted as true. This was not mere contrarianism, and there was no trace of gleeful mythbusting; the issue was important enough to get right. When I told Bail that the upshot seemed to me to be that exactly nothing was unambiguously clear, he suggested that there was at least some firm ground. He sounded a bit less apocalyptic than Haidt.

“A lot of the stories out there are just wrong,” he told me. “The political echo chamber has been massively overstated. Maybe it’s three to five per cent of people who are properly in an echo chamber.” Echo chambers, as hotboxes of confirmation bias, are counterproductive for democracy. But research indicates that most of us are actually exposed to a wider range of views on social media than we are in real life, where our social networks—in the original use of the term—are rarely heterogeneous. (Haidt told me that this was an issue on which the Google Doc changed his mind; he became convinced that echo chambers probably aren’t as widespread a problem as he’d once imagined.) And too much of a focus on our intuitions about social media’s echo-chamber effect could obscure the relevant counterfactual: a conservative might abandon Twitter only to watch more Fox News. “Stepping outside your echo chamber is supposed to make you moderate, but maybe it makes you more extreme,” Bail said. The research is inchoate and ongoing, and it’s difficult to say anything on the topic with absolute certainty. But this was, in part, Bail’s point: we ought to be less sure about the particular impacts of social media.

Bail went on, “The second story is foreign misinformation.” It’s not that misinformation doesn’t exist, or that it hasn’t had indirect effects, especially when it creates perverse incentives for the mainstream media to cover stories circulating online. Haidt also draws convincingly upon the work of Renée DiResta, the research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, to sketch out a potential future in which the work of shitposting has been outsourced to artificial intelligence, further polluting the informational environment. But, at least so far, very few Americans seem to suffer from consistent exposure to fake news—“probably less than two per cent of Twitter users, maybe fewer now, and for those who were it didn’t change their opinions,” Bail said. This was probably because the people likeliest to consume such spectacles were the sort of people primed to believe them in the first place. “In fact,” he said, “echo chambers might have done something to quarantine that misinformation.”

The final story that Bail wanted to discuss was the “proverbial rabbit hole, the path to algorithmic radicalization,” by which YouTube might serve a viewer increasingly extreme videos. There is some anecdotal evidence to suggest that this does happen, at least on occasion, and such anecdotes are alarming to hear. But a new working paper led by Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth, found that almost all extremist content is either consumed by subscribers to the relevant channels—a sign of actual demand rather than manipulation or preference falsification—or encountered via links from external sites. It’s easy to see why we might prefer if this were not the case: algorithmic radicalization is presumably a simpler problem to solve than the fact that there are people who deliberately seek out vile content. “These are the three stories—echo chambers, foreign influence campaigns, and radicalizing recommendation algorithms—but, when you look at the literature, they’ve all been overstated.” He thought that these findings were crucial for us to assimilate, if only to help us understand that our problems may lie beyond technocratic tinkering. He explained, “Part of my interest in getting this research out there is to demonstrate that everybody is waiting for an Elon Musk to ride in and save us with an algorithm”—or, presumably, the reverse—“and it’s just not going to happen.”

When I spoke with Nyhan, he told me much the same thing: “The most credible research is way out of line with the takes.” He noted, of extremist content and misinformation, that reliable research that “measures exposure to these things finds that the people consuming this content are small minorities who have extreme views already.” The problem with the bulk of the earlier research, Nyhan told me, is that it’s almost all correlational. “Many of these studies will find polarization on social media,” he said. “But that might just be the society we live in reflected on social media!” He hastened to add, “Not that this is untroubling, and none of this is to let these companies, which are exercising a lot of power with very little scrutiny, off the hook. But a lot of the criticisms of them are very poorly founded. . . . The expansion of Internet access coincides with fifteen other trends over time, and separating them is very difficult. The lack of good data is a huge problem insofar as it lets people project their own fears into this area.” He told me, “It’s hard to weigh in on the side of ‘We don’t know, the evidence is weak,’ because those points are always going to be drowned out in our discourse. But these arguments are systematically underprovided in the public domain.”

In his Atlantic article, Haidt leans on a working paper by two social scientists, Philipp Lorenz-Spreen and Lisa Oswald, who took on a comprehensive meta-analysis of about five hundred papers and concluded that “the large majority of reported associations between digital media use and trust appear to be detrimental for democracy.” Haidt writes, “The literature is complex—some studies show benefits, particularly in less developed democracies—but the review found that, on balance, social media amplifies political polarization; foments populism, especially right-wing populism; and is associated with the spread of misinformation.” Nyhan was less convinced that the meta-analysis supported such categorical verdicts, especially once you bracketed the kinds of correlational findings that might simply mirror social and political dynamics. He told me, “If you look at their summary of studies that allow for causal inferences—it’s very mixed.”

As for the studies Nyhan considered most methodologically sound, he pointed to a 2020 article called “The Welfare Effects of Social Media,” by Hunt Allcott, Luca Braghieri, Sarah Eichmeyer, and Matthew Gentzkow. For four weeks prior to the 2018 midterm elections, the authors randomly divided a group of volunteers into two cohorts—one that continued to use Facebook as usual, and another that was paid to deactivate their accounts for that period. They found that deactivation “(i) reduced online activity, while increasing offline activities such as watching TV alone and socializing with family and friends; (ii) reduced both factual news knowledge and political polarization; (iii) increased subjective well-being; and (iv) caused a large persistent reduction in post-experiment Facebook use.” But Gentzkow reminded me that his conclusions, including that Facebook may slightly increase polarization, had to be heavily qualified: “From other kinds of evidence, I think there’s reason to think social media is not the main driver of increasing polarization over the long haul in the United States.”

In the book “ Why We’re Polarized ,” for example, Ezra Klein invokes the work of such scholars as Lilliana Mason to argue that the roots of polarization might be found in, among other factors, the political realignment and nationalization that began in the sixties, and were then sacralized, on the right, by the rise of talk radio and cable news. These dynamics have served to flatten our political identities, weakening our ability or inclination to find compromise. Insofar as some forms of social media encourage the hardening of connections between our identities and a narrow set of opinions, we might increasingly self-select into mutually incomprehensible and hostile groups; Haidt plausibly suggests that these processes are accelerated by the coalescence of social-media tribes around figures of fearful online charisma. “Social media might be more of an amplifier of other things going on rather than a major driver independently,” Gentzkow argued. “I think it takes some gymnastics to tell a story where it’s all primarily driven by social media, especially when you’re looking at different countries, and across different groups.”

Another study, led by Nejla Asimovic and Joshua Tucker, replicated Gentzkow’s approach in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and they found almost precisely the opposite results: the people who stayed on Facebook were, by the end of the study, more positively disposed to their historic out-groups. The authors’ interpretation was that ethnic groups have so little contact in Bosnia that, for some people, social media is essentially the only place where they can form positive images of one another. “To have a replication and have the signs flip like that, it’s pretty stunning,” Bail told me. “It’s a different conversation in every part of the world.”

Nyhan argued that, at least in wealthy Western countries, we might be too heavily discounting the degree to which platforms have responded to criticism: “Everyone is still operating under the view that algorithms simply maximize engagement in a short-term way” with minimal attention to potential externalities. “That might’ve been true when Zuckerberg had seven people working for him, but there are a lot of considerations that go into these rankings now.” He added, “There’s some evidence that, with reverse-chronological feeds”—streams of unwashed content, which some critics argue are less manipulative than algorithmic curation—“people get exposed to more low-quality content, so it’s another case where a very simple notion of ‘algorithms are bad’ doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. It doesn’t mean they’re good, it’s just that we don’t know.”

Bail told me that, over all, he was less confident than Haidt that the available evidence lines up clearly against the platforms. “Maybe there’s a slight majority of studies that say that social media is a net negative, at least in the West, and maybe it’s doing some good in the rest of the world.” But, he noted, “Jon will say that science has this expectation of rigor that can’t keep up with the need in the real world—that even if we don’t have the definitive study that creates the historical counterfactual that Facebook is largely responsible for polarization in the U.S., there’s still a lot pointing in that direction, and I think that’s a fair point.” He paused. “It can’t all be randomized control trials.”

Haidt comes across in conversation as searching and sincere, and, during our exchange, he paused several times to suggest that I include a quote from John Stuart Mill on the importance of good-faith debate to moral progress. In that spirit, I asked him what he thought of the argument, elaborated by some of Haidt’s critics, that the problems he described are fundamentally political, social, and economic, and that to blame social media is to search for lost keys under the streetlamp, where the light is better. He agreed that this was the steelman opponent: there were predecessors for cancel culture in de Tocqueville, and anxiety about new media that went back to the time of the printing press. “This is a perfectly reasonable hypothesis, and it’s absolutely up to the prosecution—people like me—to argue that, no, this time it’s different. But it’s a civil case! The evidential standard is not ‘beyond a reasonable doubt,’ as in a criminal case. It’s just a preponderance of the evidence.”

The way scholars weigh the testimony is subject to their disciplinary orientations. Economists and political scientists tend to believe that you can’t even begin to talk about causal dynamics without a randomized controlled trial, whereas sociologists and psychologists are more comfortable drawing inferences on a correlational basis. Haidt believes that conditions are too dire to take the hardheaded, no-reasonable-doubt view. “The preponderance of the evidence is what we use in public health. If there’s an epidemic—when COVID started, suppose all the scientists had said, ‘No, we gotta be so certain before you do anything’? We have to think about what’s actually happening, what’s likeliest to pay off.” He continued, “We have the largest epidemic ever of teen mental health, and there is no other explanation,” he said. “It is a raging public-health epidemic, and the kids themselves say Instagram did it, and we have some evidence, so is it appropriate to say, ‘Nah, you haven’t proven it’?”

This was his attitude across the board. He argued that social media seemed to aggrandize inflammatory posts and to be correlated with a rise in violence; even if only small groups were exposed to fake news, such beliefs might still proliferate in ways that were hard to measure. “In the post-Babel era, what matters is not the average but the dynamics, the contagion, the exponential amplification,” he said. “Small things can grow very quickly, so arguments that Russian disinformation didn’t matter are like COVID arguments that people coming in from China didn’t have contact with a lot of people.” Given the transformative effects of social media, Haidt insisted, it was important to act now, even in the absence of dispositive evidence. “Academic debates play out over decades and are often never resolved, whereas the social-media environment changes year by year,” he said. “We don’t have the luxury of waiting around five or ten years for literature reviews.”

Haidt could be accused of question-begging—of assuming the existence of a crisis that the research might or might not ultimately underwrite. Still, the gap between the two sides in this case might not be quite as wide as Haidt thinks. Skeptics of his strongest claims are not saying that there’s no there there. Just because the average YouTube user is unlikely to be led to Stormfront videos, Nyhan told me, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t worry that some people are watching Stormfront videos; just because echo chambers and foreign misinformation seem to have had effects only at the margins, Gentzkow said, doesn’t mean they’re entirely irrelevant. “There are many questions here where the thing we as researchers are interested in is how social media affects the average person,” Gentzkow told me. “There’s a different set of questions where all you need is a small number of people to change—questions about ethnic violence in Bangladesh or Sri Lanka, people on YouTube mobilized to do mass shootings. Much of the evidence broadly makes me skeptical that the average effects are as big as the public discussion thinks they are, but I also think there are cases where a small number of people with very extreme views are able to find each other and connect and act.” He added, “That’s where many of the things I’d be most concerned about lie.”

The same might be said about any phenomenon where the base rate is very low but the stakes are very high, such as teen suicide. “It’s another case where those rare edge cases in terms of total social harm may be enormous. You don’t need many teen-age kids to decide to kill themselves or have serious mental-health outcomes in order for the social harm to be really big.” He added, “Almost none of this work is able to get at those edge-case effects, and we have to be careful that if we do establish that the average effect of something is zero, or small, that it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be worried about it—because we might be missing those extremes.” Jaime Settle, a scholar of political behavior at the College of William & Mary and the author of the book “ Frenemies: How Social Media Polarizes America ,” noted that Haidt is “farther along the spectrum of what most academics who study this stuff are going to say we have strong evidence for.” But she understood his impulse: “We do have serious problems, and I’m glad Jon wrote the piece, and down the road I wouldn’t be surprised if we got a fuller handle on the role of social media in all of this—there are definitely ways in which social media has changed our politics for the worse.”

It’s tempting to sidestep the question of diagnosis entirely, and to evaluate Haidt’s essay not on the basis of predictive accuracy—whether social media will lead to the destruction of American democracy—but as a set of proposals for what we might do better. If he is wrong, how much damage are his prescriptions likely to do? Haidt, to his great credit, does not indulge in any wishful thinking, and if his diagnosis is largely technological his prescriptions are sociopolitical. Two of his three major suggestions seem useful and have nothing to do with social media: he thinks that we should end closed primaries and that children should be given wide latitude for unsupervised play. His recommendations for social-media reform are, for the most part, uncontroversial: he believes that preteens shouldn’t be on Instagram and that platforms should share their data with outside researchers—proposals that are both likely to be beneficial and not very costly.

It remains possible, however, that the true costs of social-media anxieties are harder to tabulate. Gentzkow told me that, for the period between 2016 and 2020, the direct effects of misinformation were difficult to discern. “But it might have had a much larger effect because we got so worried about it—a broader impact on trust,” he said. “Even if not that many people were exposed, the narrative that the world is full of fake news, and you can’t trust anything, and other people are being misled about it—well, that might have had a bigger impact than the content itself.” Nyhan had a similar reaction. “There are genuine questions that are really important, but there’s a kind of opportunity cost that is missed here. There’s so much focus on sweeping claims that aren’t actionable, or unfounded claims we can contradict with data, that are crowding out the harms we can demonstrate, and the things we can test, that could make social media better.” He added, “We’re years into this, and we’re still having an uninformed conversation about social media. It’s totally wild.”

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6 Example Essays on Social Media | Advantages, Effects, and Outlines

Got an essay assignment about the effects of social media we got you covered check out our examples and outlines below.

Social media has become one of our society's most prominent ways of communication and information sharing in a very short time. It has changed how we communicate and has given us a platform to express our views and opinions and connect with others. It keeps us informed about the world around us. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn have brought individuals from all over the world together, breaking down geographical borders and fostering a genuinely global community.

However, social media comes with its difficulties. With the rise of misinformation, cyberbullying, and privacy problems, it's critical to utilize these platforms properly and be aware of the risks. Students in the academic world are frequently assigned essays about the impact of social media on numerous elements of our lives, such as relationships, politics, and culture. These essays necessitate a thorough comprehension of the subject matter, critical thinking, and the ability to synthesize and convey information clearly and succinctly.

But where do you begin? It can be challenging to know where to start with so much information available. Jenni.ai comes in handy here. Jenni.ai is an AI application built exclusively for students to help them write essays more quickly and easily. Jenni.ai provides students with inspiration and assistance on how to approach their essays with its enormous database of sample essays on a variety of themes, including social media. Jenni.ai is the solution you've been looking for if you're experiencing writer's block or need assistance getting started.

So, whether you're a student looking to better your essay writing skills or want to remain up to date on the latest social media advancements, Jenni.ai is here to help. Jenni.ai is the ideal tool for helping you write your finest essay ever, thanks to its simple design, an extensive database of example essays, and cutting-edge AI technology. So, why delay? Sign up for a free trial of Jenni.ai today and begin exploring the worlds of social networking and essay writing!

Want to learn how to write an argumentative essay? Check out these inspiring examples!

We will provide various examples of social media essays so you may get a feel for the genre.

6 Examples of Social Media Essays

Here are 6 examples of Social Media Essays:

The Impact of Social Media on Relationships and Communication

Introduction:.

The way we share information and build relationships has evolved as a direct result of the prevalence of social media in our daily lives. The influence of social media on interpersonal connections and conversation is a hot topic. Although social media has many positive effects, such as bringing people together regardless of physical proximity and making communication quicker and more accessible, it also has a dark side that can affect interpersonal connections and dialogue.

Positive Effects:

Connecting People Across Distances

One of social media's most significant benefits is its ability to connect individuals across long distances. People can use social media platforms to interact and stay in touch with friends and family far away. People can now maintain intimate relationships with those they care about, even when physically separated.

Improved Communication Speed and Efficiency

Additionally, the proliferation of social media sites has accelerated and simplified communication. Thanks to instant messaging, users can have short, timely conversations rather than lengthy ones via email. Furthermore, social media facilitates group communication, such as with classmates or employees, by providing a unified forum for such activities.

Negative Effects:

Decreased Face-to-Face Communication

The decline in in-person interaction is one of social media's most pernicious consequences on interpersonal connections and dialogue. People's reliance on digital communication over in-person contact has increased along with the popularity of social media. Face-to-face interaction has suffered as a result, which has adverse effects on interpersonal relationships and the development of social skills.

Decreased Emotional Intimacy

Another adverse effect of social media on relationships and communication is decreased emotional intimacy. Digital communication lacks the nonverbal cues and facial expressions critical in building emotional connections with others. This can make it more difficult for people to develop close and meaningful relationships, leading to increased loneliness and isolation.

Increased Conflict and Miscommunication

Finally, social media can also lead to increased conflict and miscommunication. The anonymity and distance provided by digital communication can lead to misunderstandings and hurtful comments that might not have been made face-to-face. Additionally, social media can provide a platform for cyberbullying , which can have severe consequences for the victim's mental health and well-being.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the impact of social media on relationships and communication is a complex issue with both positive and negative effects. While social media platforms offer many benefits, such as connecting people across distances and enabling faster and more accessible communication, they also have a dark side that can negatively affect relationships and communication. It is up to individuals to use social media responsibly and to prioritize in-person communication in their relationships and interactions with others.

The Role of Social Media in the Spread of Misinformation and Fake News

Social media has revolutionized the way information is shared and disseminated. However, the ease and speed at which data can be spread on social media also make it a powerful tool for spreading misinformation and fake news. Misinformation and fake news can seriously affect public opinion, influence political decisions, and even cause harm to individuals and communities.

The Pervasiveness of Misinformation and Fake News on Social Media

Misinformation and fake news are prevalent on social media platforms, where they can spread quickly and reach a large audience. This is partly due to the way social media algorithms work, which prioritizes content likely to generate engagement, such as sensational or controversial stories. As a result, false information can spread rapidly and be widely shared before it is fact-checked or debunked.

The Influence of Social Media on Public Opinion

Social media can significantly impact public opinion, as people are likelier to believe the information they see shared by their friends and followers. This can lead to a self-reinforcing cycle, where misinformation and fake news are spread and reinforced, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

The Challenge of Correcting Misinformation and Fake News

Correcting misinformation and fake news on social media can be a challenging task. This is partly due to the speed at which false information can spread and the difficulty of reaching the same audience exposed to the wrong information in the first place. Additionally, some individuals may be resistant to accepting correction, primarily if the incorrect information supports their beliefs or biases.

In conclusion, the function of social media in disseminating misinformation and fake news is complex and urgent. While social media has revolutionized the sharing of information, it has also made it simpler for false information to propagate and be widely believed. Individuals must be accountable for the information they share and consume, and social media firms must take measures to prevent the spread of disinformation and fake news on their platforms.

The Effects of Social Media on Mental Health and Well-Being

Social media has become an integral part of modern life, with billions of people around the world using platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to stay connected with others and access information. However, while social media has many benefits, it can also negatively affect mental health and well-being.

Comparison and Low Self-Esteem

One of the key ways that social media can affect mental health is by promoting feelings of comparison and low self-esteem. People often present a curated version of their lives on social media, highlighting their successes and hiding their struggles. This can lead others to compare themselves unfavorably, leading to feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem.

Cyberbullying and Online Harassment

Another way that social media can negatively impact mental health is through cyberbullying and online harassment. Social media provides a platform for anonymous individuals to harass and abuse others, leading to feelings of anxiety, fear, and depression.

Social Isolation

Despite its name, social media can also contribute to feelings of isolation. At the same time, people may have many online friends but need more meaningful in-person connections and support. This can lead to feelings of loneliness and depression.

Addiction and Overuse

Finally, social media can be addictive, leading to overuse and negatively impacting mental health and well-being. People may spend hours each day scrolling through their feeds, neglecting other important areas of their lives, such as work, family, and self-care.

In sum, social media has positive and negative consequences on one's psychological and emotional well-being. Realizing this, and taking measures like reducing one's social media use, reaching out to loved ones for help, and prioritizing one's well-being, are crucial. In addition, it's vital that social media giants take ownership of their platforms and actively encourage excellent mental health and well-being.

The Use of Social Media in Political Activism and Social Movements

Social media has recently become increasingly crucial in political action and social movements. Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have given people new ways to express themselves, organize protests, and raise awareness about social and political issues.

Raising Awareness and Mobilizing Action

One of the most important uses of social media in political activity and social movements has been to raise awareness about important issues and mobilize action. Hashtags such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter, for example, have brought attention to sexual harassment and racial injustice, respectively. Similarly, social media has been used to organize protests and other political actions, allowing people to band together and express themselves on a bigger scale.

Connecting with like-minded individuals

A second method in that social media has been utilized in political activity and social movements is to unite like-minded individuals. Through social media, individuals can join online groups, share knowledge and resources, and work with others to accomplish shared objectives. This has been especially significant for geographically scattered individuals or those without access to traditional means of political organizing.

Challenges and Limitations

As a vehicle for political action and social movements, social media has faced many obstacles and restrictions despite its many advantages. For instance, the propagation of misinformation and fake news on social media can impede attempts to disseminate accurate and reliable information. In addition, social media corporations have been condemned for censorship and insufficient protection of user rights.

In conclusion, social media has emerged as a potent instrument for political activism and social movements, giving voice to previously unheard communities and galvanizing support for change. Social media presents many opportunities for communication and collaboration. Still, users and institutions must be conscious of the risks and limitations of these tools to promote their responsible and productive usage.

The Potential Privacy Concerns Raised by Social Media Use and Data Collection Practices

With billions of users each day on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, social media has ingrained itself into every aspect of our lives. While these platforms offer a straightforward method to communicate with others and exchange information, they also raise significant concerns over data collecting and privacy. This article will examine the possible privacy issues posed by social media use and data-gathering techniques.

Data Collection and Sharing

The gathering and sharing of personal data are significant privacy issues brought up by social media use. Social networking sites gather user data, including details about their relationships, hobbies, and routines. This information is made available to third-party businesses for various uses, such as marketing and advertising. This can lead to serious concerns about who has access to and uses our personal information.

Lack of Control Over Personal Information

The absence of user control over personal information is a significant privacy issue brought up by social media usage. Social media makes it challenging to limit who has access to and how data is utilized once it has been posted. Sensitive information may end up being extensively disseminated and may be used maliciously as a result.

Personalized Marketing

Social media companies utilize the information they gather about users to target them with adverts relevant to their interests and usage patterns. Although this could be useful, it might also cause consumers to worry about their privacy since they might feel that their personal information is being used without their permission. Furthermore, there are issues with the integrity of the data being used to target users and the possibility of prejudice based on individual traits.

Government Surveillance

Using social media might spark worries about government surveillance. There are significant concerns regarding privacy and free expression when governments in some nations utilize social media platforms to follow and monitor residents.

In conclusion, social media use raises significant concerns regarding data collecting and privacy. While these platforms make it easy to interact with people and exchange information, they also gather a lot of personal information, which raises questions about who may access it and how it will be used. Users should be aware of these privacy issues and take precautions to safeguard their personal information, such as exercising caution when choosing what details to disclose on social media and keeping their information sharing with other firms to a minimum.

The Ethical and Privacy Concerns Surrounding Social Media Use And Data Collection

Our use of social media to communicate with loved ones, acquire information, and even conduct business has become a crucial part of our everyday lives. The extensive use of social media does, however, raise some ethical and privacy issues that must be resolved. The influence of social media use and data collecting on user rights, the accountability of social media businesses, and the need for improved regulation are all topics that will be covered in this article.

Effect on Individual Privacy:

Social networking sites gather tons of personal data from their users, including delicate information like search history, location data, and even health data. Each user's detailed profile may be created with this data and sold to advertising or used for other reasons. Concerns regarding the privacy of personal information might arise because social media businesses can use this data to target users with customized adverts.

Additionally, individuals might need to know how much their personal information is being gathered and exploited. Data breaches or the unauthorized sharing of personal information with other parties may result in instances where sensitive information is exposed. Users should be aware of the privacy rules of social media firms and take precautions to secure their data.

Responsibility of Social Media Companies:

Social media firms should ensure that they responsibly and ethically gather and use user information. This entails establishing strong security measures to safeguard sensitive information and ensuring users are informed of what information is being collected and how it is used.

Many social media businesses, nevertheless, have come under fire for not upholding these obligations. For instance, the Cambridge Analytica incident highlighted how Facebook users' personal information was exploited for political objectives without their knowledge. This demonstrates the necessity of social media corporations being held responsible for their deeds and ensuring that they are safeguarding the security and privacy of their users.

Better Regulation Is Needed

There is a need for tighter regulation in this field, given the effect, social media has on individual privacy as well as the obligations of social media firms. The creation of laws and regulations that ensure social media companies are gathering and using user information ethically and responsibly, as well as making sure users are aware of their rights and have the ability to control the information that is being collected about them, are all part of this.

Additionally, legislation should ensure that social media businesses are held responsible for their behavior, for example, by levying fines for data breaches or the unauthorized use of personal data. This will provide social media businesses with a significant incentive to prioritize their users' privacy and security and ensure they are upholding their obligations.

In conclusion, social media has fundamentally changed how we engage and communicate with one another, but this increased convenience also raises several ethical and privacy issues. Essential concerns that need to be addressed include the effect of social media on individual privacy, the accountability of social media businesses, and the requirement for greater regulation to safeguard user rights. We can make everyone's online experience safer and more secure by looking more closely at these issues.

In conclusion, social media is a complex and multifaceted topic that has recently captured the world's attention. With its ever-growing influence on our lives, it's no surprise that it has become a popular subject for students to explore in their writing. Whether you are writing an argumentative essay on the impact of social media on privacy, a persuasive essay on the role of social media in politics, or a descriptive essay on the changes social media has brought to the way we communicate, there are countless angles to approach this subject.

However, writing a comprehensive and well-researched essay on social media can be daunting. It requires a thorough understanding of the topic and the ability to articulate your ideas clearly and concisely. This is where Jenni.ai comes in. Our AI-powered tool is designed to help students like you save time and energy and focus on what truly matters - your education. With Jenni.ai , you'll have access to a wealth of examples and receive personalized writing suggestions and feedback.

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Just How Harmful Is Social Media? Our Experts Weigh-In.

A recent investigation by the Wall Street Journal revealed that Facebook was aware of mental health risks linked to the use of its Instagram app but kept those findings secret. Internal research by the social media giant found that Instagram worsened body image issues for one in three teenage girls, and all teenage users of the app linked it to experiences of anxiety and depression. It isn’t the first evidence of social media’s harms. Watchdog groups have identified Facebook and Instagram as avenues for cyberbullying , and reports have linked TikTok to dangerous and antisocial behavior, including a recent spate of school vandalism .

As social media has proliferated worldwide—Facebook has 2.85 billion users—so too have concerns over how the platforms are affecting individual and collective wellbeing. Social media is criticized for being addictive by design and for its role in the spread of misinformation on critical issues from vaccine safety to election integrity, as well as the rise of right-wing extremism. Social media companies, and many users, defend the platforms as avenues for promoting creativity and community-building. And some research has pushed back against the idea that social media raises the risk for depression in teens . So just how healthy or unhealthy is social media?

Two experts from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia Psychiatry share their insights into one crucial aspect of social media’s influence—its effect on the mental health of young people and adults. Deborah Glasofer , associate professor of psychology in psychiatry, conducts psychotherapy development research for adults with eating disorders and teaches about cognitive behavioral therapy. She is the co-author of the book Eating Disorders: What Everyone Needs to Know. Claude Mellins , Professor of medical psychology in the Departments of Psychiatry and Sociomedical Sciences, studies wellbeing among college and graduate students, among other topics, and serves as program director of CopeColumbia, a peer support program for Columbia faculty and staff whose mental health has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. She co-led the SHIFT research study to reduce sexual violence among undergraduates. Both use social media.

What do we know about the mental health risks of social media use?

Mellins : Facebook and Instagram and other social media platforms are important sources of socialization and relationship-building for many young people. Although there are important benefits, social media can also provide platforms for bullying and exclusion, unrealistic expectations about body image and sources of popularity, normalization of risk-taking behaviors, and can be detrimental to mental health. Girls and young people who identify as sexual and gender minorities can be especially vulnerable as targets. Young people’s brains are still developing, and as individuals, young people are developing their own identities. What they see on social media can define what is expected in ways that is not accurate and that can be destructive to identity development and self-image. Adolescence is a time of risk-taking, which is both a strength and a vulnerability. Social media can exacerbate risks, as we have seen played out in the news. 

Although there are important benefits, social media can also provide platforms for bullying and exclusion, unrealistic expectations about body image and sources of popularity, normalization of risk-taking behaviors, and can be detrimental to mental health. – Claude Mellins

Glasofer : For those vulnerable to developing an eating disorder, social media may be especially unhelpful because it allows people to easily compare their appearance to their friends, to celebrities, even older images of themselves. Research tells us that how much someone engages with photo-related activities like posting and sharing photos on Facebook or Instagram is associated with less body acceptance and more obsessing about appearance. For adolescent girls in particular, the more time they spend on social media directly relates to how much they absorb the idea that being thin is ideal, are driven to try to become thin, and/or overly scrutinize their own bodies. Also, if someone is vulnerable to an eating disorder, they may be especially attracted to seeking out unhelpful information—which is all too easy to find on social media.

Are there any upsides to social media?

Mellins : For young people, social media provides a platform to help them figure out who they are. For very shy or introverted young people, it can be a way to meet others with similar interests. During the pandemic, social media made it possible for people to connect in ways when in-person socialization was not possible.  Social support and socializing are critical influences on coping and resilience. Friends we couldn’t see in person were available online and allowed us important points of connection. On the other hand, fewer opportunities for in-person interactions with friends and family meant less of a real-world check on some of the negative influences of social media.

Whether it’s social media or in person, a good peer group makes the difference. A group of friends that connects over shared interests like art or music, and is balanced in their outlook on eating and appearance, is a positive. – Deborah Glasofer

Glasofer : Whether it’s social media or in person, a good peer group makes the difference. A group of friends that connects over shared interests like art or music, and is balanced in their outlook on eating and appearance, is a positive. In fact, a good peer group online may be protective against negative in-person influences. For those with a history of eating disorders, there are body-positive and recovery groups on social media. Some people find these groups to be supportive; for others, it’s more beneficial to move on and pursue other interests.

Is there a healthy way to be on social media?

Mellins : If you feel social media is a negative experience, you might need a break. Disengaging with social media permanently is more difficult­—especially for young people. These platforms are powerful tools for connecting and staying up-to-date with friends and family. Social events, too. If you’re not on social media then you’re reliant on your friends to reach out to you personally, which doesn’t always happen. It’s complicated.

Glasofer : When you find yourself feeling badly about yourself in relation to what other people are posting about themselves, then social media is not doing you any favors. If there is anything on social media that is negatively affecting your actions or your choices­—for example, if you’re starting to eat restrictively or exercise excessively—then it’s time to reassess. Parents should check-in with their kids about their lives on social media. In general, I recommend limiting social media— creating boundaries that are reasonable and work for you—so you can be present with people in your life. I also recommend social media vacations. It’s good to take the time to notice the difference between the virtual world and the real world.

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How Does Social Media Affect Your Mental Health?

Facebook has delayed the development of an Instagram app for children amid questions about its harmful effects on young people’s mental health. Does social media have an impact on your well-being?

By Nicole Daniels

What is your relationship with social media like? Which platforms do you spend the most time on? Which do you stay away from? How often do you log on?

What do you notice about your mental health and well-being when spending time on social networks?

In “ Facebook Delays Instagram App for Users 13 and Younger ,” Adam Satariano and Ryan Mac write about the findings of an internal study conducted by Facebook and what they mean for the Instagram Kids app that the company was developing:

Facebook said on Monday that it had paused development of an Instagram Kids service that would be tailored for children 13 years old or younger, as the social network increasingly faces questions about the app’s effect on young people’s mental health. The pullback preceded a congressional hearing this week about internal research conducted by Facebook , and reported in The Wall Street Journal , that showed the company knew of the harmful mental health effects that Instagram was having on teenage girls. The revelations have set off a public relations crisis for the Silicon Valley company and led to a fresh round of calls for new regulation. Facebook said it still wanted to build an Instagram product intended for children that would have a more “age appropriate experience,” but was postponing the plans in the face of criticism.

The article continues:

With Instagram Kids, Facebook had argued that young people were using the photo-sharing app anyway, despite age-requirement rules, so it would be better to develop a version more suitable for them. Facebook said the “kids” app was intended for ages 10 to 12 and would require parental permission to join, forgo ads and carry more age-appropriate content and features. Parents would be able to control what accounts their child followed. YouTube, which Google owns, has released a children’s version of its app. But since BuzzFeed broke the news this year that Facebook was working on the app, the company has faced scrutiny. Policymakers, regulators, child safety groups and consumer rights groups have argued that it hooks children on the app at a younger age rather than protecting them from problems with the service, including child predatory grooming, bullying and body shaming.

The article goes on to quote Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram:

Mr. Mosseri said on Monday that the “the project leaked way before we knew what it would be” and that the company had “few answers” for the public at the time. Opposition to Facebook’s plans gained momentum this month when The Journal published articles based on leaked internal documents that showed Facebook knew about many of the harms it was causing. Facebook’s internal research showed that Instagram, in particular, had caused teen girls to feel worse about their bodies and led to increased rates of anxiety and depression, even while company executives publicly tried to minimize the app’s downsides.

But concerns about the effect of social media on young people go beyond Instagram Kids, the article notes:

A children’s version of Instagram would not fix more systemic problems, said Al Mik, a spokesman for 5Rights Foundation, a London group focused on digital rights issues for children. The group published a report in July showing that children as young as 13 were targeted within 24 hours of creating an account with harmful content, including material related to eating disorders, extreme diets, sexualized imagery, body shaming, self-harm and suicide. “Big Tobacco understood that the younger you got to someone, the easier you could get them addicted to become a lifelong user,” Doug Peterson, Nebraska’s attorney general, said in an interview. “I see some comparisons to social media platforms.” In May, attorneys general from 44 states and jurisdictions had signed a letter to Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, asking him to end plans for building an Instagram app for children. American policymakers should pass tougher laws to restrict how tech platforms target children, said Josh Golin, executive director of Fairplay, a Boston-based group that was part of an international coalition of children’s and consumer groups opposed to the new app. Last year, Britain adopted an Age Appropriate Design Code , which requires added privacy protections for digital services used by people under the age of 18.

Students, read the entire article , then tell us:

Do you think Facebook made the right decision in halting the development of the Instagram Kids app? Do you think there should be social media apps for children 13 and younger? Why or why not?

What is your reaction to the research that found that Instagram can have harmful mental health effects on teenagers, particularly teenage girls? Have you experienced body image issues, anxiety or depression tied to your use of the app? How do you think social media affects your mental health?

What has your experience been on different social media apps? Are there apps that have a more positive or negative effect on your well-being? What do you think could explain these differences?

Have you ever been targeted with inappropriate or harmful content on Instagram or other social media apps? What responsibility do you think social media companies have to address these issues? Do you think there should be more protections in place for users under 18? Why or why not?

What does healthy social media engagement look like for you? What habits do you have around social media that you feel proud of? What behaviors would you like to change? How involved are your parents in your social media use? How involved do you think they should be?

If you were in charge of making Instagram, or another social media app, safer for teenagers, what changes would you make?

Want more writing prompts? You can find all of our questions in our Student Opinion column . Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate them into your classroom.

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Nicole Daniels joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2019 after working in museum education, curriculum writing and bilingual education. More about Nicole Daniels

Is social media use bad for young people’s mental health? It’s complicated.

July 17, 2023 – On May 23, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory warning about the potential dangers of social media for the mental health of children and teens . Laura Marciano , postdoctoral research fellow at the Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness and in the  Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, says that social media use might be detrimental for young people’s well-being but can also have positive effects.

Q: What are your thoughts on the Surgeon General’s advisory?

A: The advisory highlighted compelling evidence published during the last decade on the potential harmful impact of social media on children and adolescents. Some of what young people experience online—including cyberbullying, online harassment and abuse, predatory behaviors, and exposure to violent, sexual, and hate-based content—can undoubtedly be negative. But social media experiences are not limited to these types of content.

Much of the scientific literature on the effects of social media use has focused on negative outcomes. But the link between social media use and young people’s mental health is complicated. Literature reviews show that study results are mixed: Associations between social media use and well-being can be positive, negative, and even largely null when advanced data analyses are carried out, and the size of the effects is small. And positive and negative effects can co-exist in the same individual. We are still discovering how to compare the effect size of social media use with the effects of other behavioral habits—such as physical activity, sleep, food consumption, life events, and time spent in offline social connections—and psychological processes happening offline. We are also still studying how social media use may be linked positively with well-being.

It’s important to note that many of the existing studies relied on data from people living in so-called WEIRD countries (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic), thus leaving out the majority of the worldwide population living in the Global South. In addition, we know that populations like minorities, people experiencing health disparities and chronic health conditions , and international students can find social media extremely helpful for creating and maintaining social communities to which they feel they belong.

A number of large cohort studies have measured social media use according to time spent on various platforms. But it’s important to consider not just time spent, but whether that time is displacing time for other activities promoting well-being, like physical activity and sleep. Finally, the effects of social media use are idiosyncratic, meaning that each child and adolescent might be affected differently, which makes it difficult to generalize about the effects.

Literature reviews on interventions limiting social media use present a more balanced picture. For example, one comprehensive review on the effects of digital detox—refraining from using devices such as smartphones—wasn’t able to draw any clear conclusions about whether such detox could be effective at promoting a healthy way of life in the digital era, because the findings were mixed and contradictory.

Q: What has your research found regarding the potential risks and benefits of social media use among young people?

A: In my work with Prof. Vish Viswanath , we have summarized all the papers on how social media use is related to positive well-being measures, to balance the ongoing bias of the literature on negative outcomes such as depression and anxiety. We found both positive and negative correlations between different social media activities and well-being. The most consistent results show a link between social media activities and hedonic well-being (positive emotions) and social well-being. We also found that social comparison—such as comparing how many likes you have with how many someone else has, or comparing yourself to digitally enhanced images online—drives the negative correlation with well-being.

Meanwhile, I am working on the “ HappyB ” project, a longitudinal project based in Switzerland, through which I have collected data from more than 1,500 adolescents on their smartphone and social media use and well-being. In a recent study using that cohort, we looked at how social media use affects flourishing , a construct that encompasses happiness, meaning and purpose, physical and mental health, character, close social relationships, and financial stability. We found that certain positive social media experiences are associated with flourishing. In particular, having someone to talk to online when feeling lonely was the item most related to well-being. That is not surprising, considering that happiness is related to the quality of social connections.

Our data suggest that homing in on the psychological processes triggered during social media use is key to determining links with well-being. For example, we should consider if a young person feels appreciated and part of a group in a particular online conversation. Such information can help us shed light on the dynamics that shape young people’s well-being through digital activities.

In our research, we work to account for the fact that social media time is a sedentary behavior. We need to consider that any behavior that risks diminishing the time spent on physical activity and sleep—crucial components of brain development and well-being—might be detrimental. Interestingly, some studies suggest that spending a short amount of time using social media, around 1-2 hours, is beneficial, but—as with any extreme behavior—it can cause harm if the time spent online dominates a child’s or adolescent’s day.

It’s also important to consider how long the effects of social media last. Social media use may have small ephemeral effects that can accumulate over time. A step for future research is to disentangle short- versus long-term effects and how long each last. In addition, we should better understand how digital media usage affects the adolescent brain. Colleagues and I have summarized existing neuroscientific studies on the topic, but more multidisciplinary research is needed.

Q: What are some steps you’d recommend to make social media use safer for kids?

A: I’ll use a metaphor to answer this question. Is a car safe for someone that is not able to drive? To drive safely, we need to learn how to accelerate, recognize road signs, make safe decisions according to certain rules, and wear safety belts. Similarly, to use social media safely, I think we as a society—including schools, educators, and health providers—should provide children and families with clear, science-based information on both its positive and negative potential impacts.

We can also ask social media companies to pay more attention to how some features—such as the number of “likes”—can modulate adolescent brain activity, and to think about ways to limit negative effects. We might even ask adolescents to advise designers on how to create social media platforms specifically for them. It would be extremely valuable to ask them which features would be best for them and which ones they would like to avoid. I think that co-designing apps and conducting research with the young people who use the platforms is a crucial step.

For parents, my suggestion is to communicate with your children and promote a climate of safety and empathy when it comes to social media use. Try to use these platforms along with them, for example by explaining how a platform works and commenting on the content. Also, I would encourage schools and parents to collaborate on sharing information with young people about social media and well-being.

Also, to offset children’s sedentary time spent on social media, parents could offer them alternative extracurricular activities to provide some balance. But it’s important to remember that social well-being depends on the quality of social connections, and that social media can help to promote this kind of well-being. So I’d recommend trying to keep what is good—according to my research that would include instant messaging, the chance to talk to people when someone is feeling lonely, and funny or inspirational content—and minimizing what’s negative, such as too much sedentary time or too much time spent on social comparison.

– Karen Feldscher

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Argumentative Essays About Social Media

This is a comprehensive resource to help you find the perfect social media essay topic. Whether you're navigating the complexities of digital communication, exploring the impact of social media on society, or examining its effects on personal identity, the right topic can transform your essay into a captivating and insightful exploration. Remember, selecting a topic that resonates with your personal interests and academic goals not only makes the writing process more enjoyable but also enriches your learning experience. Let's dive into a world of creativity and critical thinking!

Essay Types and Topics

Below, you'll find a curated list of essay topics organized by type. Each section includes diverse topics that touch on technology, society, personal growth, and academic interests, along with introduction and conclusion paragraph examples to get you started.

Argumentative Essays

Introduction Example: "In the digital age, social media platforms have become central to our daily interactions and self-perception, particularly among teenagers. This essay explores the impact of social media on teen self-esteem, arguing that while it offers a space for expression and connection, it also presents significant challenges to self-image. "

Conclusion Example: "Having delved into the complex relationship between social media and teen self-esteem, it is clear that the digital landscape holds profound effects on individual self-perception. This essay reaffirms the thesis that social media can both uplift and undermine teen self-esteem, calling for a balanced approach to digital engagement."

Introduction Example: "As political landscapes evolve, social media has emerged as a powerful tool for political mobilization and engagement. This essay investigates the role of social media in shaping political movements, positing that it significantly enhances communication and organizational capabilities, yet raises questions about information authenticity. "

Conclusion Example: "Through examining the dual facets of social media in political mobilization, the essay concludes that while social media is a pivotal tool for engagement, it necessitates critical scrutiny of information to ensure a well-informed public discourse."

Compare and Contrast Essays

Introduction Example: "In the competitive realm of digital marketing, Instagram and Twitter stand out as leading platforms for brand promotion. This essay compares and contrasts their effectiveness, revealing that each platform caters to unique marketing strengths due to its specific user engagement and content dissemination strategies. "

Conclusion Example: "The comparative analysis of Instagram and Twitter highlights distinct advantages for brands, with Instagram excelling in visual storytelling and Twitter in real-time engagement, underscoring the importance of strategic platform selection in digital marketing."

Descriptive Essays

Introduction Example: "Today's social media landscape is a vibrant tapestry of platforms, each contributing to the digital era's social fabric. This essay describes the characteristics and cultural significance of current social media trends, illustrating that they reflect and shape our societal values and interactions. "

Conclusion Example: "In portraying the dynamic and diverse nature of today's social media landscape, this essay underscores its role in molding contemporary cultural and social paradigms, inviting readers to reflect on their digital footprints."

Persuasive Essays

Introduction Example: "In an era where digital presence is ubiquitous, fostering positive social media habits is essential for mental and emotional well-being. This essay advocates for mindful social media use, arguing that intentional engagement can enhance our life experiences rather than detract from them. "

Conclusion Example: "This essay has championed the cause for positive social media habits, reinforcing the thesis that through mindful engagement, individuals can navigate the digital world in a way that promotes personal growth and well-being."

Narrative Essays

Introduction Example: "Embarking on a personal journey with social media has been both enlightening and challenging. This narrative essay delves into my experiences, highlighting how social media has influenced my perception of self and community. "

Conclusion Example: "Reflecting on my social media journey, this essay concludes that while it has significantly shaped my interactions and self-view, it has also offered invaluable lessons on connectivity and self-awareness, affirming the nuanced role of digital platforms in our lives."

Engagement and Creativity

As you explore these topics, remember to approach your essay with an open mind and creative spirit. The purpose of academic writing is not just to inform but to engage and provoke thought. Use this opportunity to delve deep into your topic, analyze different perspectives, and articulate your own insights.

Educational Value

Each essay type offers unique learning outcomes. Argumentative essays enhance your analytical thinking and ability to construct well-founded arguments. Compare and contrast essays develop your skills in identifying similarities and differences. Descriptive essays improve your ability to paint vivid pictures through words, while persuasive essays refine your ability to influence and convince. Finally, narrative essays offer a platform for personal expression and storytelling. Embrace these opportunities to grow academically and personally.

Some Easy Argumentative Essay Topics on Social Media

• The Impact of Social Media: Advantages and Disadvantages
• Is Social Media Enhancing or Eroding Our Real-Life Social Skills?
• Should There Be Stricter Regulations on Social Media Content to Protect Youth?
• Social Media's Role in Relationships: Communication Enhancer or Barrier
• Does Social Media Contribute to Political Polarization?
• The Role of Social Media in Shaping Perceptions of Divorce
• The Impact of Social Media on Mental Health: Benefit or Harm?
• Can Social Media Be Considered a Reliable Source of News and Information?
• Is Social Media Responsible for the Rise in Cyberbullying?
• Impact of Social Media on Mental Health
• Does Social Media Promote Narcissism and Self-Centered Behaviors?
• The Role of Social Media in Business Marketing: Is It Indispensable?

The Impact of Social Media: Causes and Effects

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Social Media Engagement on Brand Loyalty in Millennials

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Pros and Cons of Social Media: Social Networking

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Social Media Cons and Prons: Evaluating Its Advantages and Disadvantage

The importance of staying safe on social media, impact of social media on our lives, social media: negative effects and addiction, discussion on whether is social media beneficial or harmful for society, negative effects of social media: relationships and communication, social media pros and cons, social media - good and bad sides, a study of the role of social media concerning confidentiality of personal data, how social media causes stereotyping, social media addiction: consequences and strategies for recovery, the role of social media in making us more narcissistic, the effect social media is having on today's society and political atmosphere, digital/social media, censorship in social media, why teenagers are addicted to social media and how it affects them, advantages and disadvantages of social media for society, enormous impact of mass media on children, the role of social media in the current business world, social media is the reason for many of the world’s problems and solutions.

Social media refers to dynamic online platforms that enable individuals to actively engage in the generation and dissemination of various forms of content, including information, ideas, and personal interests. These interactive digital channels foster virtual communities and networks, allowing users to connect, communicate, and express themselves. By harnessing the power of technology, social media platforms provide a space for individuals to share and exchange content, fostering connections and facilitating the flow of information in an increasingly digital world.

In a peculiar manner, the inception of social media can be traced back to May 24, 1844, when a sequence of electronic dots and dashes was manually tapped on a telegraph machine. Although the origins of digital communication have deep historical roots, most contemporary narratives regarding the modern beginnings of the internet and social media often point to the emergence of the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) in 1969. The year 1987 witnessed the establishment of the direct precursor to today's internet, as the National Science Foundation introduced the more robust and expansive NSFNET, a nationwide digital network. A significant milestone occurred in 1997 when Six Degrees, the first genuine social media platform, was launched.

Mark Zuckerberg is a notable figure in the realm of social media as the co-founder and CEO of Facebook. Zuckerberg played a pivotal role in transforming Facebook from a small networking platform for college students into a global social media giant with billions of users. His innovative ideas and strategic decisions have reshaped the way people connect and share information online, making him one of the most influential individuals in the digital age. Jack Dorsey is recognized as one of the key pioneers of social media, notably for co-founding Twitter. Dorsey's creation revolutionized online communication by introducing the concept of microblogging, allowing users to share short messages in real-time. Twitter quickly gained popularity, becoming a powerful platform for news dissemination, public conversations, and social movements. Dorsey's entrepreneurial spirit and vision have contributed significantly to the evolution of social media and its impact on society. Sheryl Sandberg is a prominent figure in the social media landscape, known for her influential role as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Facebook.Sandberg played a crucial part in scaling and monetizing Facebook's operations, transforming it into a global advertising powerhouse. She is also recognized for her advocacy of women's empowerment and leadership in the tech industry, inspiring countless individuals and promoting diversity and inclusion within the social media sphere. Sandberg's contributions have left an indelible mark on the growth and development of social media platforms worldwide.

Social Networking Sites: Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace. Microblogging Platforms: Twitter. Media Sharing Networks: Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat. Discussion Forums and Community-Based Platforms: Reddit and Quora. Blogging Platforms: WordPress and Blogger. Social Bookmarking and Content Curation Platforms: Pinterest and Flipboard. Messaging Apps: WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat.

Facebook (2004), Reddit (2005), Twitter (2006), Instagram (2010), Pinterest (2010), Snapchat (2011), TikTok (2016)

1. Increased Connectivity 2. Information Sharing and Awareness 3. Networking and Professional Opportunities 4. Creativity and Self-Expression 5. Supportive Communities and Causes

1. Privacy Concerns 2. Cyberbullying and Online Harassment 3. Information Overload and Misinformation 4. Time and Productivity Drain 5. Comparison and Self-Esteem Issues

The topic of social media holds significant importance for students as it plays a prominent role in their lives, both academically and socially. Social media platforms provide students with opportunities to connect, collaborate, and share knowledge with peers, expanding their learning networks beyond the confines of the classroom. It facilitates communication and access to educational resources, allowing students to stay updated on academic trends and research. Additionally, social media enhances digital literacy and prepares students for the realities of the digital age. However, it is crucial for students to develop critical thinking skills to navigate the potential pitfalls of social media, such as misinformation and online safety, ensuring a responsible and balanced use of these platforms.

The topic of social media is worthy of being explored in an essay due to its profound impact on various aspects of society. Writing an essay on social media allows for an in-depth examination of its influence on communication, relationships, information sharing, and societal dynamics. It offers an opportunity to analyze the advantages and disadvantages, exploring topics such as privacy, online identities, social activism, and the role of social media in shaping cultural norms. Additionally, studying social media enables a critical evaluation of its effects on mental health, politics, and business. By delving into this subject, one can gain a comprehensive understanding of the complex and ever-evolving digital landscape we inhabit.

1. Social media users spend an average of 2 hours and 25 minutes per day on social networking platforms. This amounts to over 7 years of an individual's lifetime spent on social media, highlighting its significant presence in our daily lives. 2. Instagram has over 1 billion monthly active users, with more than 500 million of them using the platform on a daily basis. 3. YouTube has over 2 billion logged-in monthly active users. On average, users spend over 1 billion hours watching YouTube videos every day, emphasizing the platform's extensive reach and the power of video content. 4. Social media has become a major news source, with 48% of people getting their news from social media platforms. This shift in news consumption highlights the role of social media in shaping public opinion and disseminating information in real-time. 5. Influencer marketing has grown exponentially, with 63% of marketers planning to increase their influencer marketing budget in the coming year. This showcases the effectiveness of influencers in reaching and engaging with target audiences, and the value brands place on leveraging social media personalities to promote their products or services.

1. Schober, M. F., Pasek, J., Guggenheim, L., Lampe, C., & Conrad, F. G. (2016). Social media analyses for social measurement. Public opinion quarterly, 80(1), 180-211. (https://academic.oup.com/poq/article-abstract/80/1/180/2593846) 2. Appel, G., Grewal, L., Hadi, R., & Stephen, A. T. (2020). The future of social media in marketing. Journal of the Academy of Marketing science, 48(1), 79-95. (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11747-019-00695-1?error=cookies_not_support) 3. Aichner, T., Grünfelder, M., Maurer, O., & Jegeni, D. (2021). Twenty-five years of social media: a review of social media applications and definitions from 1994 to 2019. Cyberpsychology, behavior, and social networking, 24(4), 215-222. (https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/cyber.2020.0134) 4. Ruths, D., & Pfeffer, J. (2014). Social media for large studies of behavior. Science, 346(6213), 1063-1064. (https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.346.6213.1063) 5. Hou, Y., Xiong, D., Jiang, T., Song, L., & Wang, Q. (2019). Social media addiction: Its impact, mediation, and intervention. Cyberpsychology: Journal of psychosocial research on cyberspace, 13(1). (https://cyberpsychology.eu/article/view/11562) 6. Auxier, B., & Anderson, M. (2021). Social media use in 2021. Pew Research Center, 1, 1-4. (https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2021/04/PI_2021.04.07_Social-Media-Use_FINAL.pdf) 7. Al-Samarraie, H., Bello, K. A., Alzahrani, A. I., Smith, A. P., & Emele, C. (2021). Young users' social media addiction: causes, consequences and preventions. Information Technology & People, 35(7), 2314-2343. (https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/ITP-11-2020-0753/full/html) 8. Bhargava, V. R., & Velasquez, M. (2021). Ethics of the attention economy: The problem of social media addiction. Business Ethics Quarterly, 31(3), 321-359. (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/business-ethics-quarterly/article/ethics-of-the-attention-economy-the-problem-of-social-mediaaddiction/1CC67609A12E9A912BB8A291FDFFE799)

Relevant topics

• Effects of Social Media
• Media Analysis
• Discourse Community
• Sex, Gender and Sexuality
• Cultural Appropriation
• Social Justice
• Sociological Imagination
• American Identity

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Is Social Media Bad for You?

Research links excessive facebook or instagram use to depression and loneliness..

Posted June 21, 2019 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

At any given moment, something like 40 percent of the world’s population—up to three billion people—are using Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, or another social media app or website. Most people spend an average of two hours a day on these platforms: sharing photos, commenting on those of others, tweeting their opinions, or simply checking in on what the people in their networks are doing.

And yet, it’s become something of a truism that too-frequent social media use is bad for one’s health. No less of a social media darling than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose upstart political campaign was buoyed by Facebook, has come out against the network, calling it a “public health risk.” Forget about the instances of rampant harassment on Twitter; for anecdotal data on the downside of social media, ask almost any Instagram user whether he or she has ever experienced FOMO— fear of missing out—after viewing the extravagant photos posted by a random acquaintance. Can we generalize from FOMO? Can social media really be bad for your psychological health?

First off, the use of social media has been shown to correlate with loneliness, with heavy users being twice as likely to report social isolation . On the other hand, even if these users aren't physically or emotionally separated from the important people in their lives, they may still feel that way: More time spent on the most commonly used social networks correlates to higher feelings of loneliness and isolation. Studies have also shown that higher social media use is associated with higher anxiety . It's important to note that these studies do not prove causation: It's possible that higher social media use is caused by loneliness and anxiety, and not the other way around.

Also, the ability to feel good about oneself—to have healthy self-esteem —may be compromised by social media use. Survey studies have suggested that Facebook use leaves over 60 percent of users feeling inadequate. A 2012 survey, billed as “ Sweden’s largest Facebook study ,” found an inverse correlation between Facebook use and self-confidence among female users, and suggested that Facebook use is associated with reduced happiness for women. In some studies , it looks as though some women often compare themselves to others on Facebook, and that they often believe that these people are more attractive. This affects their body image , chips away at their self-esteem, and contributes to weighing them down emotionally.

Generally speaking, Facebook provokes an awful lot of negative self-comparison just like this—that is, comparing oneself to others and deciding that their lives must be happier or better than yours. The problem is, even if you judge your life to be the better one, you’re still not likely to feel happy about this, because any kind of self-comparison has a negative effect on one’s moods. And if you feel some envy while you’re scrolling through your friends’ photos, you may be picking up on a real link between social media use and depressed mood. Feelings of envy may be the mediating link between Facebook use and depression : In studies that manage to control for envy by eliminating it as a factor, Facebook use doesn't correlate with depression in the same way.

The connection between social media use and clinical depression, broadly speaking, is real. Even brief Facebook use can make people feel bad, as a recent Austrian study has shown: Just checking out your feed for 20 minutes—rather than randomly browsing the internet—instigates sad or depressing feelings. (I unscientifically tested this effect while writing this article, and sure enough, it worked.)

Some evidence suggests the more time you spend on social media, the worse you’ll feel: The persons who use social media platforms most often have been shown to be three times as likely to harbor feelings of depression and anxiety. Its users tend to report feeling worse about themselves from one minute to the next, and increased Facebook use even correlates with reports of reduced life satisfaction overall.

So consider taking a break from social media. You won’t even have to quit entirely; studies show that just avoiding Facebook for a short time can provide a significant boost to a person’s sense of well-being.

If you’ve been feeling depressed lately, be aware that limiting one’s social media use to 30 minutes a day may significantly improve mood after three weeks. Taking time away from social media is likely to make you feel less lonely and less depressed. It should cut down on feelings of FOMO and unhealthy envy, and can reinvigorate the self-affirming belief that your own life is as worthy and enjoyable as the lives of others—no matter how photogenic they are.

(Author’s note: If you are aware of feeling seriously depressed or suicidal , please consider seeking immediate professional help .)

Brown, J. (2018, January 5). Is social media bad for you? The evidence and the unknowns. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180104-is-social-media-bad-for-you-th…

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Hogue, J. V. & Mills, J.S. (2019). The effects of active social media engagement with peers on body image in young women. Body Image, 28, pp. 1-5.

Kross E., et al. (2013) Facebook Use Predicts Declines in Subjective Well-Being in Young Adults. PLOS ONE 8(8): e69841.

Kuss, D. J. & Griffiths, M. D. (2011). Online Social Networking and Addiction—A Review of the Psychological Literature. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 8(9), pp. 3528-3552

Mai-Ly, N. et al. (2014). Seeing Everyone Else's Highlight Reels: How Facebook Usage is Linked to Depressive Symptoms. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology: 33(8) pp. 701-731.

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Mendoza, M. (2014, July 26). Social media make people feel inadequate, jealous: survey. Retrieved from https://www.techtimes.com/articles/11232/20140726/social-media-make-peo…

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Primack, B. A. (2017). Social Media Use and Perceived Social Isolation Among Young Adults in the U.S. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 53(1), pp. 1-8.

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The Effects of Social Media on Society Essay

The social networks broke into the everyday life of the majority of common people in the middle of 00s, first giving neglectful and suspicious attitude, as a tracking instrument of the government. Nevertheless, shortly, almost every individual including teenagers and elderly people, created a page on some kind of social media platform. Today it is hard to find anyone who does not have an account on Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, or another local network.

People post news, share impressions and pictures, follow their friends’ activity and the activity of the people they are interested in. The whole world seems to become broader, but at the same time closer, as you can track your best friend who moved to another part of the country a long time ago. However, these new opportunities also bear a certain amount of dangers. People get addicted, lose contact with reality, and unthoughtfully provide strangers with important details of their personal life.

Let us start with the advantages. Advocates claim that social media provide a connection with people, allow you to stay in touch even if you are far away from each other. That is a good point. The friend is always in the background, you might not have conversations often, but if he or she updates his or her status frequently enough, you might have an idea what is going on in his or her life.

Social networks carefully remind you of friend’s birthday or other important events of his or her life, and you do not have to keep this information in your mind. There is almost no risk to miss it. The dark side of this statement is that you lose a skill of conversation, because you do not have to ask questions. Your friend posts, you tap “Like” – everyone is happy.

You do not have to write long letters, choosing the most correct words; do not have to consider what questions to ask to find out more about the friend. Your interaction becomes kind of robotic. You start to expect post’s approval from your friend, and if there is no “Like” in response, you get upset and start developing prejudgments towards him or her. However, the friend might be far away or just have not noticed your post. A friend might be not involved in social networking that much. However, the networking has its own laws.

The second advantage claimed by advocates is that people are getting more informed, as they follow the sources with the most recent and reliable news, they choose. According to people’s point of view, of course. A person starts following a source that seems trustworthy, and thus, providing the source with the connection to own emotions, the ability to generate an own opinion.

As the information is updated constantly, and the individual consumes it regularly, the interaction starts to gain hypnotic features, and if the source is professional, it certainly knows how to make you think the way it wants.

Following celebrities and popular persons also has a negative side, as they tend to post some minor things from their everyday life. By paying too much attention to those posts, an individual starts to lose such minor things in his own life, wasting time on the activity of the person he or she will never see or will never have a chance of a personal talk.

Despite certain advantages, there are several serious dangers hidden within spreading and vast application of social networks. First, making their life look exciting and interesting, people post too much important personal information online, making it available to the vast majority of absolute strangers or envious and malevolent persons. These posts might evoke envy and anger. You never know what is going on in strangers’ head, and they already know where you live, what your parents look like and how many kids you have.

Stalking and cyberbullying are not a pleasant thing to deal with as well. Second, many people get addicted, and this addiction is similar to drug or alcohol dependence. Just compare – angriness, frustration, losing focus on real-life issues, bad temper, relationship problems, abandoning hobbies and usual interests, depression if the desired substance is beyond the reach (Robinson, Smith, and Saisan par. 8).

Does not it remind the symptoms of the frequent social media network user if the one cannot get online? Actually, there are certain official criteria for measuring internet addiction. They are the preoccupation with social networks, increasing an amount of on-line time to get satisfaction, staying online longer than planned, lying about the time spent online (Young 21).

Moreover, the National Poll states that 22% of teens check social networking sites more than ten times a day and 28% have shared personal information that they normally wouldn’t have shared in public (“Common Sense” par. 2).

As concluded on the basics of many researches, extracting “information from friends’ pages appears particularly pleasurable” and “may be linked to the activation of the appetitive system, which indicates that engaging in this particular activity may stimulate the neurological pathways known to be related to addiction experience” (Kuss and Griffiths 3532). Sounds frightening. Third, people are simply losing time they could spend on some useful activity.

Nowadays the enormous number of entertainment websites generates content that is widely spread all over the network. Users share funny pictures, quotes of famous people (frequently assigned to wrong authors), top 10 lists of the most stupid celebrities and the best places to visit from 4 p.m. till 8 p.m. The majority of this information does not even make sense, but people continue to repost it filling the online space with garbage content that takes your time as you are trying to get something important digging your way through.

The concept of friendship also shifts as people get closer to someone they have never met offline and lose their connection with offline friends. Friendship gains some new attributes and loses the old ones. People are starting to get too serious if their post was not approved, liked, or read by someone they consider as friends. People would rather provide some personal information to a complete stranger, who looks reliable online, than talk to a friend over the cup of coffee.

Thus, this behavioral pattern is more typical if the person has a lack of communication and understanding in real life (Mesch and Talmud 41). There is no correct answer if this way of acting is good or bad for the individual, but the access to online communication may cause losing individual’s ability of successful offline communication at all.

Social networks both have their advantages and disadvantages. The thoughtful application can provide people with important information. Inaccurate use may cause serious psychological, social and even criminal problems that might affect not only you but also your friends and your family members.

Works Cited

Common Sense: Is Social Networking Changing Childhood? 2009. Web.

Kuss, Daria J., and Mark D. Griffiths. “Online social networking and addiction—anreview of the psychological literature.” International journal of environmental research and public health 8.9 (2011): 3528-3552. Print.

Mesch, Gustavo S., and Ilan Talmud. “Online friendship formation, communication channels, and social closeness.” International Journal of Internet Science 1.1 (2006): 29-44. Print.

Robinson, Lawrence, Melinda Smith, and Joanna Saisan. Drug Abuse and Addiction . 2015. Web.

Young, Kimberly S. “Internet addiction: symptoms, evaluation and treatment.” Innovations in clinical practice: A source book 17.1 (1999): 19-31. Print.

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IvyPanda. (2020, May 11). The Effects of Social Media on Society. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-effects-of-social-media-on-society/

"The Effects of Social Media on Society." IvyPanda , 11 May 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/the-effects-of-social-media-on-society/.

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IvyPanda . 2020. "The Effects of Social Media on Society." May 11, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-effects-of-social-media-on-society/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Effects of Social Media on Society." May 11, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-effects-of-social-media-on-society/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Effects of Social Media on Society." May 11, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-effects-of-social-media-on-society/.

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• Entertainment

Persuasive Essay about Negative Effects of Social Media

With over 3.6 million individuals using social media, it's an expansive and active growing community around the world.  But social media is causing harm and distress to people's mental health. Social media is also manipulating people's thoughts and what they buy. Although young people appear to be increasingly using social media to communicate distress, particularly to peers, it is still harmful because some people don’t have the luxury of finding those types of people. Social media is quite harmful because “students who spent more time on Facebook were more likely to feel envious of others and worse about themselves” ( Bronfenbrenner center for translation research 1 ). Also, social platforms manipulate people, “YouTube videos were to convince me that ‘the Media is lying.’  people should respond by spending less time consuming ‘the media,’ and probably more time on YouTube. Since YouTube optimizes watch time, these videos will become highly recommended”(How Algorithms Can Learn to Discredit the Media pg 2). Although social media gives young people a place to communicate distress on social platforms, it is quite harmful because young people are manipulated into consuming more media and wanting a better body image.  

A distinct benefit of social media is its ability to develop care groups. Young teens around the world are using social media to aid other individuals, recent research shows, “Young people appear to be increasingly using social media to communicate distress, particularly to peers” (The good, the bad and the unknown 2). People construct communities to support each other on social media. In addition, social media’s ability to bring small groups of singled-out individuals who are dealing with similar problems to convene from around the world to assist each other with depression and feeling alone. To further my example of how social media benefits people is its ability to help youth seek out support and lessen the chance of self-harm.  The Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research states, “Social media can have a positive impact on help-seeking and support provision, efforts to understand how to best minimize potential harm and maximize potential benefits are important next steps” (The Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research 2). As a society people should take measures to minimize harm to others and maximize the benefits of social media. 

One of the biggest negatives about social media is how it manipulates people. Platforms like Youtube try to convince users to believe something, and then show people videos on it to maximize watch time. Some users report that social platforms were trying to manipulate them.  Guillaume Chaslot said  “YouTube videos were trying to convince me that the Media is lying. I would respond by spending less time consuming the media  and probably, more time on YouTube.” Since YouTube optimizes watch time, these videos will become highly recommended” (How Algorithms Can Learn to Discredit the Media pg 2). Algorithms make people spend more time on the platform by showing them what they want to see and hear. This is important to know because people are being shown one point of view and it narrows their minds. An additional example is that technology manipulates people's ideas of their bodies.  Sites like Instagram and Snapchat use filters to enhance nice facial features and make people look better while hiding imperfections. Jia Tolentino states “I told Smith that I couldn’t shake the feeling that technology is rewriting our bodies to correspond to its interests—rearranging our faces according to whatever increases engagement and likes. “Don’t you think it’s scary to imagine people doing this forever?”(The Age of Instagram Face 3) Technology is trying to make people look better in its internist.  It manipulates how we think people should look. It creates a standard people think they have to live up to, but can't, and it makes people feel bad.  Social media is manipulating people's minds and thoughts by using tools like algorithms and filters.  

Social media has shown that it severely affects people's mental health. The more time spent on social media the more envious and worse we will feel about ourselves. Facebook is making people feel worse about themselves, causing their mental health to deteriorate.  Combined with social platforms’ impact on mental health it’s no coincidence suicide and suicidal thoughts have been going up. As is shown the “Number of young people admitted to the hospital for attempting suicide or having suicidal thoughts has doubled in the past 10 years”(The Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research 3). Technology is connected with higher suicide rates. It heavily affects people's mental health and body imagery causing suicide and depression.

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• Social Issues

Argumentative Essay on Social Media

Today our world is full of a whole lot of opinionated people. Everyone loves to share what they think about almost any topic. Whether the topic is very important or completely irrelevant. Although everyone has opinions on things that are somewhat unimportant, some topics are worth discussing our opinions on. One of which that most definitely has some of the most diverse opinions on is social media. Many people think that social media is distracting, negative, and harmful, while others think it is one of the best things that has ever happened and are addicted to it. Some people love to scroll through Instagram or talk to people on Snapchat; However, they still think that the majority of the time social media is much more harmful than helpful. While Social media can provide a place to catch up with friends and things going on in the world, it also has the ability to completely tear lives apart and in some cases lead to depression or anxiety. People with social media should limit their time on these apps or even in some cases, delete the apps altogether due to the negative effects and all of the drama. 

How It Really Is

In contrast to what some people think, Social media is far more harmful than helpful. There are numerous reasons as to why social media is harmful, to start with, there is entirely too much drama and false information that spreads quickly all over social media apps. As a result of this, a whole lot of people are substantially more unhappy with themselves and with their lives. In some cases, social media is even likely to encourage people to do things they should not do and will regret later on in their lives. 

One example of this could be whenever somebody is bullying someone through Instagram and the pressure of being like everyone else could possibly make someone go along with it just because everyone else is doing it. Although a great deal of people claim they would never bully anyone, it is surprising how quickly social media can change a person and cause them to do things they wouldn’t expect to ever do. In the article “Social media websites can harm and help kids” by Nanci Hellmich, she states that “Facebook and other social media websites can enrich children’s lives, but they could also be hazardous to their mental and physical health” (Hellmich). 

This statement is completely agreeable because at first social media can be fun, but eventually it can become addictive and affect people negatively without them even realizing it. In quite a few instances, social media gets so awful to the point where people should delete it, however, it can be remarkably addicting, so people want to stay on it just to continue to see the drama and negative things happening instead of simply deleting the apps.

Not only does social media cause unhappiness and even depression in some cases, it can also be extremely distracting. For many people, social media is the most distracting out of everything in their lives. Not only does it prevent several important things, like doing chores or homework, it can even prevent spending time with friends and family, or even getting enough sleep at night. To start out, being on social media is mostly fun, however, the more time spent on it the more it gets to the point of taking over a tremendous part of people's lives. One example of this being a distraction is stated in the article “Social Networking: Helpful or Harmful”, “A lot of my friends and I spend a lot of time on Facebook, and it is often a big distraction from our work.” (Winkler), This is one of the various instances of somebody being distracted by and affected negatively by social media apps. This shows that social media being distracting is a problem many people with the apps face. 

Social media is quite a controversial topic in the world today. Some people believe it truly does have a negative impact on the world, while others may argue that social media is very entertaining and allows an opportunity to maintain connections with friends and family. Reports even say these sites and other technology can be useful to kids for staying in touch, socializing, entertainment, and even doing homework and that they can enhance kids’ creativity and help them develop technical skills (Hellmich). Although technology can be useful in some ways like for homework, it is more common that people will become distracted and end up on some other app while trying to do homework, which can lead to too much time spent online can squeeze out other important activities (Hellmich).

In conclusion, people with social media who believe that it is good for them should look around and see all of the various other ways it negatively affects others. Maybe if people who think social media is good and are not addicted to it start to encourage others to limit their time on the apps, our world today could become somewhat better with the relief of a little less negative effects caused by social media. With social media being as big of a deal as it is in our society, it is obvious that it is in all probability not going to come to an end. Although this will not happen, our society can prevent things like bullying and drama caused by social media by limiting our time on apps such as Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter. 

Works cited

Hellmich, Nanci. “Social Media Websites Can Help and Harm Kids.” USA Today 

28 March 2011, pg. 1.

Winkler, Travis. “Social Networking: Helpful or Harmful.” The Daily 

Pennsylvania, 17 March 2009, pg. 2.

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• 12 May 2024

Is the Internet bad for you? Huge study reveals surprise effect on well-being

• Carissa Wong

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

People who had access to the Internet scored higher on measures of life satisfaction in a global survey. Credit: Ute Grabowsky/Photothek via Getty

A global, 16-year study 1 of 2.4 million people has found that Internet use might boost measures of well-being, such as life satisfaction and sense of purpose — challenging the commonly held idea that Internet use has negative effects on people’s welfare.

US TikTok ban: how the looming restriction is affecting scientists on the app

“It’s an important piece of the puzzle on digital-media use and mental health,” says psychologist Markus Appel at the University of Würzburg in Germany. “If social media and Internet and mobile-phone use is really such a devastating force in our society, we should see it on this bird’s-eye view [study] — but we don’t.” Such concerns are typically related to behaviours linked to social-media use, such as cyberbullying, social-media addiction and body-image issues. But the best studies have so far shown small negative effects, if any 2 , 3 , of Internet use on well-being, says Appel.

The authors of the latest study, published on 13 May in Technology, Mind and Behaviour , sought to capture a more global picture of the Internet’s effects than did previous research. “While the Internet is global, the study of it is not,” said Andrew Przybylski, a researcher at the University of Oxford, UK, who studies how technology affects well-being, in a press briefing on 9 May. “More than 90% of data sets come from a handful of English-speaking countries” that are mostly in the global north, he said. Previous studies have also focused on young people, he added.

To address this research gap, Pryzbylski and his colleagues analysed data on how Internet access was related to eight measures of well-being from the Gallup World Poll , conducted by analytics company Gallup, based in Washington DC. The data were collected annually from 2006 to 2021 from 1,000 people, aged 15 and above, in 168 countries, through phone or in-person interviews. The researchers controlled for factors that might affect Internet use and welfare, including income level, employment status, education level and health problems.

Like a walk in nature

The team found that, on average, people who had access to the Internet scored 8% higher on measures of life satisfaction, positive experiences and contentment with their social life, compared with people who lacked web access. Online activities can help people to learn new things and make friends, and this could contribute to the beneficial effects, suggests Appel.

The positive effect is similar to the well-being benefit associated with taking a walk in nature, says Przybylski.

However, women aged 15–24 who reported having used the Internet in the past week were, on average, less happy with the place they live, compared with people who didn’t use the web. This could be because people who do not feel welcome in their community spend more time online, said Przybylski. Further studies are needed to determine whether links between Internet use and well-being are causal or merely associations, he added.

The study comes at a time of discussion around the regulation of Internet and social-media use , especially among young people. “The study cannot contribute to the recent debate on whether or not social-media use is harmful, or whether or not smartphones should be banned at schools,” because the study was not designed to answer these questions, says Tobias Dienlin, who studies how social media affects well-being at the University of Vienna. “Different channels and uses of the Internet have vastly different effects on well-being outcomes,” he says.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01410-z

Vuorre, M. & Przybylski, A. K. Technol. Mind Behav . https://doi.org/10.1037/tmb0000127 (2024).

Article   Google Scholar  

Heffer, T. et al. Clin. Psychol. Sci. 7 , 462–470 (2018).

Coyne, S. M., Rogers, A. A., Zurcher, J. D., Stockdale, L. & Booth, M. Comput. Hum. Behav . 104 , 106160 (2020).

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Teens and social media use: What's the impact?

Social media is a term for internet sites and apps that you can use to share content you've created. Social media also lets you respond to content that others post. That can include pictures, text, reactions or comments on posts by others, and links to information.

Online sharing within social media sites helps many people stay in touch with friends or connect with new ones. And that may be more important for teenagers than other age groups. Friendships help teens feel supported and play a role in forming their identities. So, it's only natural to wonder how social media use might affect teens.

Social media is a big part of daily life for lots of teenagers.

How big? A 2022 survey of 13- to 17-year-olds offers a clue. Based on about 1,300 responses, the survey found that 35% of teens use at least one of five social media platforms more than several times a day. The five social media platforms are: YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.

Social media doesn't affect all teens the same way. Use of social media is linked with healthy and unhealthy effects on mental health. These effects vary from one teenager to another. Social media effects on mental health depend on things such as:

• What a teen sees and does online.
• The amount of time spent online.
• Psychological factors, such as maturity level and any preexisting mental health conditions.
• Personal life circumstances, including cultural, social and economic factors.

Here are the general pros and cons of teen social media use, along with tips for parents.

Healthy social media

Social media lets teens create online identities, chat with others and build social networks. These networks can provide teens with support from other people who have hobbies or experiences in common. This type of support especially may help teens who:

• Lack social support offline or are lonely.
• Are going through a stressful time.
• Belong to groups that often get marginalized, such as racial minorities, the LGBTQ community and those who are differently abled.
• Have long-term medical conditions.

Sometimes, social media platforms help teens:

• Express themselves.
• Connect with other teens locally and across long distances.
• Learn how other teens cope with challenging life situations and mental health conditions.
• View or take part in moderated chat forums that encourage talking openly about topics such as mental health.
• Ask for help or seek healthcare for symptoms of mental health conditions.

These healthy effects of social media can help teens in general. They also may help teens who are prone to depression stay connected to others. And social media that's humorous or distracting may help a struggling teen cope with a challenging day.

Unhealthy social media

Social media use may have negative effects on some teens. It might:

• Distract from homework, exercise and family activities.
• Disrupt sleep.
• Lead to information that is biased or not correct.
• Become a means to spread rumors or share too much personal information.
• Lead some teens to form views about other people's lives or bodies that aren't realistic.
• Expose some teens to online predators, who might try to exploit or extort them.
• Expose some teens to cyberbullying, which can raise the risk of mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression.

What's more, certain content related to risk-taking, and negative posts or interactions on social media, have been linked with self-harm and rarely, death.

The risks of social media use are linked with various factors. One may be how much time teens spend on these platforms.

In a study focusing on 12- to 15-year-olds in the United States, spending three hours a day using social media was linked to a higher risk of mental health concerns. That study was based on data collected in 2013 and 2014 from more than 6,500 participants.

Another study looked at data on more than 12,000 teens in England between the ages of 13 to 16. The researchers found that using social media more than three times a day predicted poor mental health and well-being in teens.

But not all research has found a link between time spent on social media and mental health risks in teens.

How teens use social media also might determine its impact. For instance, viewing certain types of content may raise some teens' mental health risks. This could include content that depicts:

• Illegal acts.
• Self-harm or harm to other people.
• Encouragement of habits tied to eating disorders, such as purging or restrictive eating.

These types of content may be even more risky for teens who already have a mental health condition. Being exposed to discrimination, hate or cyberbullying on social media also can raise the risk of anxiety or depression.

What teens share about themselves on social media also matters.

With the teenage brain, it's common to make a choice before thinking it through. So, teens might post something when they're angry or upset, and regret it later. That's known as stress posting.

Teens who post content also are at risk of sharing sexual photos or highly personal stories. This can lead to teens being bullied, harassed or even blackmailed.

Protecting your teen

You can take steps to help your teens use social media responsibly and limit some of the possible negative effects.

Use these tips:

Set rules and limits as needed. This helps prevent social media from getting in the way of activities, sleep, meals or homework.

For example, you could make a rule about not using social media until homework is done. Or you could set a daily time limit for social media use.

You also could choose to keep social media off-limits during certain times. These times might include during family meals and an hour before bed.

Set an example by following these rules yourself. And let your teen know what the consequences will be if your rules aren't followed.

• Manage any challenging behaviors. If your teen's social media use starts to challenge your rules or your sense of what's appropriate, talk with your teen about it. You also could connect with parents of your teen's friends or take a look at your teen's internet history.
• Turn on privacy settings. This can help keep your teen from sharing personal information or data that your teen didn't mean to share. Each of your teen's social media accounts likely has privacy setting that can be changed.

Monitor your teen's accounts. The American Psychological Association recommends you regularly review your child's social media use during the early teen years.

One way to monitor is to follow or "friend" your child's social accounts. As your teen gets older, you can choose to monitor your teen's social media less. Your teen's maturity level can help guide your decision.

Have regular talks with your teen about social media. These talks give you chances to ask how social media has been making your teen feel. Encourage your teen to let you know if something online worries or bothers your teen.

Regular talks offer you chances to give your child advice about social media too. For example, you can teach your teen to question whether content is accurate. You also can explain that social media is full of images about beauty and lifestyle that are not realistic.

• Be a role model for your teen. You might want to tell your child about your own social media habits. That can help you set a good example and keep your regular talks from being one-sided.

Explain what's not OK. Remind your teen that it's hurtful to gossip, spread rumors, bully or harm someone's reputation — online or otherwise.

Also remind your teen not to share personal information with strangers online. This includes people's addresses, telephone numbers, passwords, and bank or credit card numbers.

• Encourage face-to-face contact with friends. This is even more important for teens prone to social anxiety.

Talk to your child's healthcare professional if you think your teen has symptoms of anxiety, depression or other mental health concerns related to social media use. Also talk with your child's care professional if your teen has any of the following symptoms:

• Uses social media even when wanting to stop.
• Uses it so much that school, sleep, activities or relationships suffer.
• Often spends more time on social platforms than you intended.
• Lies in order to use social media.

Your teen might be referred to a mental healthcare professional who can help.

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• Hagan JF, et al., eds. Promoting the healthy and safe use of social media. In: Bright Futures: Guidelines for Health Supervision of Infants, Children, and Adolescents. 4th ed. https://publications.aap.org/pediatriccare. American Academy of Pediatrics; 2017. Accessed Oct. 3, 2023.
• Social media can help connect: Research-based tips from pediatricians for families. Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health. https://www.aap.org/en/patient-care/media-and-children/center-of-excellence-on-social-media-and-youth-mental-health/. Accessed Oct. 3, 2023.
• Health advisory on social media use in adolescence. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/topics/social-media-internet/health-advisory-adolescent-social-media-use. Accessed Oct. 3, 2023.
• Social media and teens. American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. https://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Facts_for_Families/FFF-Guide/Social-Media-and-Teens-100.aspx. Accessed Oct. 3, 2023.
• Social media and youth mental health: The U.S. surgeon general's advisory. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/priorities/youth-mental-health/social-media/index.html. Accessed Oct. 3, 2023.
• Teens, social media and technology 2022. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social-media-and-technology-2022/. Accessed Oct. 3, 2023.
• Popat A, et al. Exploring adolescents' perspectives on social media and mental health and well-being — A qualitative literature review. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 2023; doi:10.1177/13591045221092884.
• Valkenburg PM, et al. Social media use and its impact on adolescent mental health: An umbrella review of the evidence. Current Opinion in Psychology. 2022; doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.08.017.
• Berger MN, et al. Social media use and health and well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth: Systematic Review. Journal of Medical Internet Research. 2022; doi:10.2196/38449.
• Self-Harm. Pediatric Patient Education. https://publications.aap.org/patiented. Accessed Oct. 3, 2023.
• Liu M, et al. Time spent on social media and risk of depression in adolescents: A dose-response meta-analysis. 2022; doi:10.3390/ijerph19095164.
• Coyne SM, et al. Does time spent using social media impact mental health? An eight year longitudinal study. Computers in Human Behavior. 2020; doi:10.1016/j.chb.2019.106160.
• Viner RM, et al. Roles of cyberbullying, sleep, and physical activity in mediating the effects of social media use on mental health and wellbeing among young people in England: A secondary analysis of longitudinal data. The Lancet. Child & Adolescent Health. 2019; doi:10.1016/S2352-4642(19)30186-5.
• Riehm KE, et al. Associations between time spent using social media and internalizing and externalizing problems among US youth. JAMA Psychiatry. 2019; doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2019.2325.
• Hoge E, et al. Digital media, anxiety, and depression in children. Pediatrics. 2017; doi:10.1542/peds.2016-1758G.
• How to help kids navigate friendships and peer relationships. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/topics/parenting/navigating-friendships. Accessed Oct. 24, 2023.
• Hoecker JL (expert opinion). Mayo Clinic. Oct. 31, 2023.
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Essay on Social Media for School Students and Children

500+ words essay on social media.

Social media is a tool that is becoming quite popular these days because of its user-friendly features. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and more are giving people a chance to connect with each other across distances. In other words, the whole world is at our fingertips all thanks to social media. The youth is especially one of the most dominant users of social media. All this makes you wonder that something so powerful and with such a massive reach cannot be all good. Like how there are always two sides to a coin, the same goes for social media. Subsequently, different people have different opinions on this debatable topic. So, in this essay on Social Media, we will see the advantages and disadvantages of social media.

Advantages of Social Media

When we look at the positive aspect of social media, we find numerous advantages. The most important being a great device for education . All the information one requires is just a click away. Students can educate themselves on various topics using social media.

Moreover, live lectures are now possible because of social media. You can attend a lecture happening in America while sitting in India.

Furthermore, as more and more people are distancing themselves from newspapers, they are depending on social media for news. You are always updated on the latest happenings of the world through it. A person becomes more socially aware of the issues of the world.

In addition, it strengthens bonds with your loved ones. Distance is not a barrier anymore because of social media. For instance, you can easily communicate with your friends and relatives overseas.

Most importantly, it also provides a great platform for young budding artists to showcase their talent for free. You can get great opportunities for employment through social media too.

Another advantage definitely benefits companies who wish to promote their brands. Social media has become a hub for advertising and offers you great opportunities for connecting with the customer.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Disadvantages of Social Media

Despite having such unique advantages, social media is considered to be one of the most harmful elements of society. If the use of social media is not monitored, it can lead to grave consequences.

Thus, the sharing on social media especially by children must be monitored at all times. Next up is the addition of social media which is quite common amongst the youth.

This addiction hampers with the academic performance of a student as they waste their time on social media instead of studying. Social media also creates communal rifts. Fake news is spread with the use of it, which poisons the mind of peace-loving citizens.

In short, surely social media has both advantages and disadvantages. But, it all depends on the user at the end. The youth must particularly create a balance between their academic performances, physical activities, and social media. Excess use of anything is harmful and the same thing applies to social media. Therefore, we must strive to live a satisfying life with the right balance.

FAQs on Social Media

Q.1 Is social media beneficial? If yes, then how?

A.1 Social media is quite beneficial. Social Media offers information, news, educational material, a platform for talented youth and brands.

Q.2 What is a disadvantage of Social Media?

A.2 Social media invades your privacy. It makes you addicted and causes health problems. It also results in cyberbullying and scams as well as communal hatred.

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7 Negative Effects of Social Media on People and Users

If you're a heavy social media user, it's wise to think about the negative impacts of social media on you and your peers.

If you can't imagine your life without social media, you've probably fallen victim to the strong power that social networking sites have over the public. Chances are that you've also experienced some of the negative effects social media has on people.

Unfortunately, the bad effects of social media are all too real for a lot of us. Let's look at the negative impacts of social media on real people, so you can recognize these symptoms and get help if needed.

How Social Media Is Bad for You

You might be surprised to learn that the negative effects of social media are both physical and mental. They can change your perception of the world and yourself. While social media does have some positive effects , and there are certainly positive social media stories , it also has a lot in the drawback column.

Don't believe this? Read on for a list of social media's negative effects. If you recognize any of them as issues in your own life, it may be time to reduce your usage or even stop using social media altogether.

1. Depression and Anxiety

Do you spend several hours per day browsing through social media? Spending too long on social networking sites could adversely affect your mood. In fact, chronic social users are more likely to report poor mental health, including symptoms of anxiety and depression.

It doesn't take much thinking to figure out why. Social media lets you see the carefully selected best parts of everyone else's lives, which you then compare to the negatives in your own life (that only you see). Comparing yourself to other people is a sure path to anxiety and unhappiness, and social media has made this much easier to do.

So how do you use social media without causing yourself psychological distress? If you turn to the same research (and common sense), the recommended amount of time you should spend on social networks is around half an hour per day. As with many other potential ills in life, it's all about moderation.

If you find yourself upset after a social media session , also consider the networks you use and the people you follow. You're much more likely to feel anxious after reading political arguments and doomsday news than you are after seeing fun updates from your favorite musicians or photos of your friends' pets.

2. Cyberbullying

Before social media, bullying was something that was only possible to do face-to-face. However, now people can bully others online—anonymously or not. Today everyone knows what cyberbullying is , and most of us have seen what it can do to a person.

While social media makes it easier to meet new people and make friends, it also enables cruel people to tear into others with little effort. Perpetrators of bullying can use the anonymity that (some) social networks provide to gain people's trust and then terrorize them in front of their peers. For instance, they might create a fake profile and act friendly to a classmate, then later betray and embarrass them online.

These online attacks often leave deep mental scars and even drive people to hurt themselves or take their own lives, in some cases. And as it turns out, cyberbullying doesn't just affect kids. Adults can become victims of online abuse, too. Since screens hide our faces, you can end up being a jerk on social media and other websites without even realizing it.

Learn how to make your Instagram profile more private , and apply the same advice to other social networks, if you suffer from this issue.

3. FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)

Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is a phenomenon that became prominent around the same time as the rise of social media. Unsurprisingly, it's one of the most widespread negative effects of social media on society.

FOMO is just what it sounds like: a form of anxiety that you get when you're scared of missing out on a positive experience that someone else is having. For example, you might constantly check your messages to see if anyone has invited you out, or focus on your Instagram feed all day to make sure that nobody is doing something cool without you. You may also see pictures of something fun that your friends were able to do, feeling left out that you couldn't go because you had another responsibility.

This fear receives constant fuel from what you see on social media. With increased social network use, there's a better chance for you to see that someone is having more fun than you are right now. That's exactly what causes FOMO, so if you're prone to this, know how to prevent FOMO when using social media (or cut back on using it altogether).

4. Unrealistic Expectations

As most people are probably aware, social media forms unrealistic expectations of life and friendships in our minds.

Most social media sites have a severe lack of online authenticity. People use Snapchat to share their exciting adventures, post about how much they love their significant other on Facebook, and load up their Instagram page with heavily staged photos.

But in reality, you have no way of knowing whether this is all a farce. While it looks great on the surface, that person could be in massive debt, on bad terms with their significant other, or desperate for Instagram likes as a form of validation.

One simple way out of this mess is for everyone to quit lying on social media. But in the era of Instagram influencers and YouTubers who earn millions from being inauthentic, that isn't going to happen anytime soon.

Remember an important adage: you should not judge your everyday life against the highlights of someone else's.

5. Negative Body Image

Speaking of Instagram celebrities, if you look at popular Instagram accounts, you'll find unbelievably beautiful people wearing expensive clothes on their perfectly shaped bodies.

And to nobody's surprise, body image is now an issue for almost everyone. Of course, seeing so many people who are supposedly perfect (according to society's standards) on a daily basis makes you conscious of how different you look from those pictures. And not everyone comes to healthy conclusions in this situation.

It's really important to remember that everybody is human. No one wakes up every day looking like a supermodel, and while many people have gone to great lengths to train their bodies, that's not the case for everyone who looks fit. Many people, in search of social media fame, have definitely taken unhealthy routes to appear more attractive.

Surround yourself with people who love you for who you are, and you won't have to stress about fake Instagram beauty.

6. Unhealthy Sleep Patterns

On top of increasing the cases of anxiety and depression, another bad thing about social media is that spending too much time on it can lead to poor sleep. Numerous studies have shown that increased use of social media has a negative effect on your sleep quality.

If you feel that your sleep patterns have become irregular, leading to a drop in productivity, try to cut down on the amount of time you browse social media.

This is especially the case when using your phone in bed at night. It's all too easy to tell yourself that you'll spend five minutes checking your Facebook notifications, only to realize an hour later that you've been mindlessly scrolling through some nonsense on Twitter you don't even care about.

Don't let social media algorithms, which are designed to keep your attention for as long as possible, steal your valuable sleep too. Getting less sleep, combined with that sleep being lower quality, is a dangerous, unhealthy combination.

7. General Addiction

Social media can be more addictive than cigarettes and alcohol. It has a powerful draw for many people that leads to them checking it all the time without even thinking about it.

If you're not sure whether you're addicted to social networks, try to remember the last time you went a full day without checking any social media accounts. Do you feel rejected if someone unfollows you? And if your favorite social networks completely disappeared tomorrow, would the absence make you feel empty and depressed?

At the end of the day, social media sites want to keep you scrolling for as long as possible so they can show you lots of ads and make more money. Because of the attention economy , these sites need your eyes on them for as long as possible. Apps like TikTok feed you a constant barrage of quick videos that destroy your attention span over time.

Just because you've been going overboard on social media use doesn't mean you necessarily need to wipe out all your social networking accounts. However, if you think quitting is the best solution for you, it isn't a bad idea. See our guide to quitting social media for good if you'd like help.

How to Handle the Negative Effects of Social Media

As with everything else, there are good and bad aspects of social media. We've discussed some of the negative impacts social media has for many, but you're the one who must decide whether there's more help or harm in it for you personally.

If you find that social media is having a negative impact on your life, stop using it. However, if you decide to stay, there are ways to waste less time on social media, and thus maintain a healthier relationship with it.

Investigating social media harm is a good idea, but parliament is about to see how complicated it is to fix

Senior research associate, University of Sydney

Professor of Digital Communications and Culture, The University of Sydney, University of Sydney

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Rob Nicholls receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Terry Flew receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

University of Sydney provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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Barely a day has gone by this month without politicians or commentators talking about online harms.

There have been multiple high-profile examples spurring on the conversation. There was the circulation of videos of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel being stabbed in the Sydney church attack. The normalisation of violent content online has also been central to the discussion of the domestic violence crisis.

Then, of course, there’s the expressions of disdain for the Australian legal system by X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk.

Inevitably, there are calls to “do something” and broad public appetite for changes in regulations . A new parliamentary committee will explore what that change should look like, but will have to contend with a range of legal, practical and ethical obstacles along the way.

Read more: Elon Musk is mad he's been ordered to remove Sydney church stabbing videos from X. He'd be more furious if he saw our other laws

Ten busy days

On May 1 and May 10, the government made two major announcements.

The first was a Commonwealth response to some of the online harms identified by National Cabinet . At the May 1 meeting, the Commonwealth promised to deliver new measures to address violent online pornography and misogynistic content targeting children and young people. This included promised new legislation to ban deepfake pornography and to fund a pilot project on age-assurance technologies.

The second was an announcement establishing a Joint Parliamentary Select Committee to look into the influence and impacts of social media on Australian society. The government wants the committee to examine and report on four major issues:

The decision of Meta to abandon deals under the News Media and Digital Platforms Bargaining Code

the important role of Australian journalism, news and public-interest media in countering misinformation and disinformation on digital platforms

the algorithms, systems and corporate decision-making of digital platforms in influencing what Australians see, and the impacts of this on mental health

other issues in relation to harmful or illegal content disseminated over social media, including scams, age-restricted content, child sexual abuse and violent extremist material.

However, the final terms of reference will be drafted after consultation with both the Senate crossbench and the opposition, so they may change a bit.

Why would they do this?

Asking the committee to review the Meta decision is an odd move.

In practice, Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones can “designate” Meta without a referral to the parliament. That is, the minister can decide all of the obligations of the News Media Bargaining Code apply to Meta.

However, a sounding by the committee may help to ensure Meta keeps concentrating on the issue. It also provides the opportunity to restate the underlying principles behind the code and the parlous state of much of the Australian news media.

In relation to harmful or illegal content disseminated over social media, there is already a review of the Online Safety Act underway. The terms of reference seem to ask the committee to provide input into the review.

Read more: This week's changes are a win for Facebook, Google and the government — but what was lost along the way?

The issue of misinformation and disinformation has also been the subject of review. The government released a draft of a proposed bill to combat misinformation and disinformation in June 2023. It would give the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) power to enforce an industry code, or to make one if the industry cannot.

That draft was criticised by the opposition at the time. However, there have been shifts since then and the committee might be a vehicle for the introduction of an amended version of the bill.

An age-old issue

Online age verification is a simple idea that is hard to implement unless there are significant consequences for non-compliance on a service provider.

Work in this area by the UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, and the UK Information Commissioner’s Office are often cited as leading practice. However, the commissioner’s website notes “age assurance is a complex area with technology developing rapidly”.

One approach is for the minor to identify themselves to a platform by uploading a video or to send a photograph of their ID. This is entirely contrary to the eSafety Commissioner’s messaging on online safety. The Commissioner advises parents to make sure children do not share images or videos of themselves and to never share their ID.

In practice, the most effective age identification for minors requires parents to intervene. This can be done by using software to limit access or by supervising screentime. If children and teenagers can get around the rules simply by borrowing a device from a school friend, age verification might not do much.

As the International Association of Privacy Professionals has found , age verification and data protection are far harder than they look. It is particularly difficult if the age barrier is not one already in place – such as the adult rights that those over the age of 18 possess – but rather a seemingly arbitrary point in the mid-teens. Other than online, the most important age to verify is 18 for things such as alcohol sales and credit. It is also the age at which contracts can be enforced.

Countries vs companies

One issue that is often raised about social media platforms is how Australia can deal with a global business.

Here, the European approach in the Digital Markets Act provides some ideas. The act defines companies with a strong market position as “gatekeepers” and sets out rules they must follow. Under the act, important data must be shared as directed by the user to make the internet fairer and to ensure different sites and software can communicate with each other. It also calls for algorithms to be made more transparent, though these rules are a bit more limited.

In doing so, it limits the power of gatekeeper companies, including Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, ByteDance (TikTok), Meta and Microsoft.

Obviously, Australia can’t harness the collective power of a group of nations in the same way the European Union does, but that doesn’t preclude some of the measures from being useful here.

There is considerable public support for governments to “ do something ” about online content and social media access, but there are both legal and practical obstacles to imposing new laws.

There is also the difficulty of getting political consensus on such measures, as seen with the debate surrounding the misinformation bill.

But it’s clear in Australia, both citizens and governments have been losing patience with letting tech companies regulate themselves and shifting responsibility to parents.

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Why is Social Media Bad for Kids

This essay about the potential negative effects of social media on children discusses several key concerns. It highlights how social media can impact psychological development by creating an overreliance on digital validation and distorting perceptions of normal life through exposure to curated content. The essay also addresses the dangers of children encountering inappropriate material online, which can influence their understanding of social norms and personal expectations. Additionally, it covers the issue of cyberbullying and its potential to cause significant emotional distress. Another major point is the risk of impaired social skills development due to reduced face-to-face interactions and reliance on digital communication. The essay concludes by acknowledging that while social media has its benefits, careful management and responsible use are crucial to mitigate its negative impacts on the younger generation.

How it works

In today’s hyper-connected world, social media has become a ubiquitous presence, shaping how we interact and view the world around us. While it offers numerous benefits such as instant communication and broadened horizons, its impact on children is a growing concern. This exploration into why social media might be bad for kids delves into its effects on their psychological development, exposure to inappropriate content, experiences with cyberbullying, and the development of social skills.

Starting with psychological development, social media platforms are engineered to captivate and engage users.

For children, whose self-esteem and identities are still in formative stages, this can lead to a dependency on digital validation. The ‘likes’ and comments can become more than just digital thumbs-ups; they can start to dictate a child’s self-worth, creating pressure to meet or maintain certain online standards. This pressure can manifest as anxiety or depression when they fail to receive the approval they’ve come to rely on. Furthermore, the constant barrage of curated perfection they see in their feeds—from peers and celebrities alike—can skew their understanding of normal life, making them feel inadequate or less successful by comparison.

Moreover, the range of content children are exposed to on social media platforms is staggering. From images promoting unrealistic beauty standards to videos containing violent or adult content, the internet can be a wild west of information. Younger users are particularly vulnerable as they might not yet possess the critical thinking skills necessary to differentiate between what’s real and what’s staged or harmful. This exposure can shape their perceptions and behaviors in detrimental ways, influencing everything from body image to understanding of social and cultural norms. The commercial content, too, is often masked so subtly as entertainment that children might not realize they’re being marketed to, impacting their material desires and consumption behaviors.

Cyberbullying is another dark facet of social media use. The digital sphere can often feel like an extension of the schoolyard, where bullies can extend their reach beyond school hours into what should be the safe sanctuary of a child’s home. Thanks to the anonymity afforded by the internet, bullies can operate with impunity, launching attacks that feel both inescapable and more aggressive than those that might occur in person. The emotional toll of being harassed online can leave deep psychological scars, affecting a child’s mental health, their social life, and their academic performance.

Social skills development is also at risk in a world where digital interactions overshadow face-to-face conversations. Communicating via screens can severely limit a child’s ability to read and express nonverbal cues such as facial expressions, gestures, and body language—all of which are crucial for effective communication. As kids spend more time interacting online, their ability to engage in real-life social situations can become stunted. They might find themselves feeling awkward or anxious in social settings, or struggle to make and maintain friendships without the buffer of a screen.

Despite these issues, it’s important to note that social media is not inherently evil. It’s a tool, and like any tool, its impact is dependent on how it’s used. The key lies in moderation and supervision. Parents and educators have a critical role in guiding children on how to use social media responsibly. Setting limits on usage, discussing the content they encounter, and teaching them about the value of offline relationships are all strategies that can help mitigate the negative impacts of social media.

In conclusion, while social media reshapes our social landscape, its influence on children requires careful consideration and action. The risks it poses—such as harm to mental health, exposure to inappropriate content, cyberbullying, and impaired social skills—are significant. However, with thoughtful engagement and appropriate boundaries, we can help ensure that our youngest generation reaps the benefits of digital connectivity without falling prey to its pitfalls. This balanced approach is essential to fostering a safe and healthy environment where children can grow and thrive in both the virtual and real world.

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Home » Perspective » Why removing protections on social media – in the name of free speech – is bad for peacebuilding

Why removing protections on social media – in the name of free speech – is bad for peacebuilding

By Paul Reilly, the Conversation, published on May 13, 2024

On May 16 the world will mark the U.N. International Day of Living Together in Peace. It is a rallying call for people to  listen respectfully  to others and promote tolerance and understanding. 

Perhaps someone should tell tech entrepreneurs Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. The online platforms they head up – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X – have become synonymous with fake news, hate speech, misinformation and other online harms. 

Social media has been widely blamed for destabilizing democracies and fomenting civil unrest in Europe and North America. In July 2023, the French president, Emmanuel Macron,  proposed  restricting access to online platforms in order to quell rioting. 

This is a far cry from 2009, when Facebook  proudly claimed  it had created “friendships” between seemingly irredeemably rival groups: Sunni and Shia Muslims, Muslims and Jews, Pakistanis and Indians, Greeks and Turks, conservatives and liberals. 

“Peace on Facebook” was a classic example of what social scientist Nicholas John  refers  to as “social media bulls–t.” Such PR blurbs are designed to convince the public these tech companies are a force for good. They purposefully describe themselves as “platforms” – rather than commercial entities – to emphasize how benign they are. 

In reality, these companies financially benefit from every click, like, share and comment users on their platforms make. The more inflammatory the content, the more profitable it is.  My research  shows that such online incivility only makes it harder to promote peaceful coexistence.

Divisive content

There appears little chance of social media platforms taking stronger action to remove divisive content. Since tech entrepreneur Elon Musk’s acquisition of the X (formerly Twitter) microblogging platform in October 2022, the guardrails designed to protect minorities have, in fact, been dismantled. 

Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council was dissolved in December 2022. This move, among many other policy changes, prompted an insider to go public with fears  that the site could no longer protect users from trolling, disinformation and sexual exploitation.

Musk has reportedly described himself as a  “free-speech absolutist.” This is particularly problematic for those whose real job it is to promote peace in deeply divided societies.

There is already  extensive evidence  that online platforms such as Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) have been used to spread hate speech. They have been used to incite sectarian violence, too, in countries including  India  and  Myanmar . 

In Sri Lanka, following anti-Muslim rioting in 2018, Facebook  issued an apology  for its role in the unrest. The company hired Article One, the human-rights consultancy, to investigate what had happened. It concluded that the hate speech and misinformation that was amplified by Facebook users online “may have led” to violence offline.

Amplified rumors

My research  shows that rumors, misinformation and disinformation have frequently been amplified by social media during contentious parades and protests in Northern Ireland. There is little evidence that such online activity inevitably leads to sectarian rioting. The indirect effects of online incivility, however, is that it makes it harder to promote reconciliation between former antagonists. 

In effect, online platforms at present focus more attention on what divides rather than unites different communities. 

Research shows that  unsupervised intergroup contact , both on and offline, is unlikely to foster positive peace in societies that are transitioning out of conflict. Reducing prejudices against outgroups is much easier when there are rules in place to respond to content that inflames tensions between different communities. In other words, rival groups are unlikely to find common ground in unregulated online spaces where hate speech flourishes. 

Clearly, frequent exposure to the online hate speech amplified by social media platforms is unlikely to aid peacebuilding. Communities who do not typically share the same physical space are unlikely to think differently about each other when they see such negative stereotypes being perpetuated online.

Social media such as Facebook and X might not be the best place to promote peace. These platforms are designed to generate profit, not improve community relations. 

For intergroup dialogue in contemporary societies to be effective, minorities and vulnerable communities need stronger protections, not less. A  public service internet , guardrails included, might be a better way to promote reconciliation in divided societies. Paul Reilly is senior lecturer in communications, media and democracy at the University of Glasgow. The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.

The Free Speech Center newsletter offers a digest of First Amendment- and news media-related news every other week. Subscribe for free here:  https://bit.ly/3kG9uiJ

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