16/05/2021
Negative Effect of Social Media on Kids
1. The most well-known downside of social media is the addiction it creates. Constantly checking the news feed of the different social media sites becomes an addictive habit. Experts think that some features such as ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ activate the reward centre in the brain. This reward circuitry is highly sensitive during adolescence and may partly explain why teenagers are more into social media than adults. These features further influence our moods. Being social creatures, we value interaction and connection, both of which determine how we think of ourselves. This drives a lot of our behaviour on a day-to-day basis, which is centred around social media.
2. Youngsters addicted to social media end up spending hours, each day, watching videos, photos, and other content posted in the accounts they follow. This addiction disrupts other activities, such as school work, sports, study, and other productive routines. They end up wasting a substantial amount of time, every day, resulting in poor grades in school. Some heavy users of social media admit to checking their feeds as many as 100 times a day, and sometimes, during school hours too. Some of the kids also realise that they are wasting a lot of time on social media, which affects their mood negatively. It also builds in them a defeatist attitude.
3. Psychologists have long observed bad effects of social media on the mental health of children. One finding suggests that children spending more than three hours a day on social media are twice as likely to suffer from poor mental health. Their immersion in a virtual world delays their emotional and social development. The effects on teens is much stronger. One report by the IZA Institute of Labour Economics suggests that spending only an hour a day on social media can make a teen miserable. It could be due to the influence of social comparisons, cyber bullying, and decreased person to person interactions.
4. Using Facebook is also known to lead to a decline in the subjective well-being of youngsters. The more they use Facebook, the more they feel dissatisfied with their lives, in general. Teens are also observed to be suffering from “Facebook depression” after spending too much time on it or other social networking sites. Some also become anxious and moody, as they see that the lives of their friends are better than their’s, even though they may know that their representation is idealised. However, vulnerable teens are more prone to this than their confident counterparts.
5. Screen relationships also detract real-life relationships and social skills in children and teenagers. This happens because they grow up without learning how to read non-verbal cues and facial gestures of people. Social interaction is critical to developing the skills needed to understand other people’s moods and emotions. Hence, children growing up interacting mostly with social media may turn out non-empathetic and also become poor at communicating verbally and non-verbally.
