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Effects of Social Media

Gina Davis

Kilgore College

PSYC 2314: Lifespan Growth and Development

Dr. Jamie Allsop

February 13, 2023

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Effects of Social Media

Social media has found its way into people’s everyday lives. Whether it be good or bad,

social media can make a huge impact on people’s mental health based on how they perceive it.

Social media can make people feel like they belong and help people form relationships. However

it can also become addicting and can even lead to anxiety and depression for some people.

Everyone can post and use social media for just about any reason. This can be a good

thing for some people that feel left out in the real world. For example if a person is struggling

with fitting into social norms they start to doubt themselves and try changing themselves so they

can “fit in”. However if that person goes onto social media and sees a person doing, wearing or

basically not “fitting in” then they will find a sort of comfort in that person. If that person they

find on social media is seen as famous or has a lot of followers then people start to think they

finally have a place or a group that they belong to (All Psychology Schools, 2022). That sense of

belonging can have a huge positive impact on a person's mental health. It helps relieve the stress

of not fitting into the social norms as well as just overall happiness because that person no longer

feels like they are alone. Along with having a sense of belonging, people can also form

relationships through social media (All Psychology Schools, 2022). One way for a person to

form a relationship on social media is by reaching out to someone from their past. Another way

would be through followers or other people’s followers. When people have common interests it

makes it easier for them to bond a friendship or even more than a friendship. People have the

opportunity to form a relationship with someone they probably would have never met or talked

to without social media. As well as strengthen former relationships. By being able to post and

talk through social media, family members and friends are able to keep up and stay connected to

each other even if they are across the nation or in a completely different part of the world.
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With everything being said, social media is not always a place to be when looking for a

positive headspace. Social media can become addicting and pull people away from the real world

or even keep people from living in the moment. A person can get addicted to the attention that

they receive through social media meaning they will do just about anything to keep that

attention. This leads to people changing their appearances or morals often so they stand out

more. Which can cause them to get “bad attention” meaning that people are starting to just see

them as someone who has to be the center of attention or drama starter. This also leads to people

not living in the moment anymore. For example when something happens to them or around

them they have to put it on social media for the world to see instead of just taking a second and

taking in the moment. This is considered a bad thing because a person who is addicted to social

media starts to lose connections with the people they know outside social media like family

members and childhood friends. They also can very easily be motivated by social media meaning

that if a new trend comes along they are most likely going to partake in the trend even if it does

go against their morals. Before they know it all they have is social media and if they get to a

point to where they are not “socially relevant” anymore then they will struggle to find those real

relationships that they had previously had.

My last point is that social media can lead to anxiety and/or depression. Social media in a

way creates standards for people. The biggest one that most people pay attention to is beauty

standards. The problem with some of the beauty standards is that they are unrealistic (Fardouly

& Vartanian, 2016). This leads adolescents to start questioning why they do not look like the

people they see on social media (Keles et al., 2019). Which causes them to start developing an

anxiety from not fitting in and that leads to either them trying to change their body or hide their

body (Fardouly & Vartanian, 2016). The next is the feeling of being left out. When a person can
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not relate to a trend or is not seen as someone who is popular it can cause them to feel depressed

because they feel like they are a nobody. It also causes people to hide the things that they like or

enjoy because people on social media perceive it as strange or abnormal (Keles et al., 2019).

This can lead to a person to have anxiety about people finding out who they really are and

judging them.

Social media is full of ups and downs. It can bring a person happiness and give them a

sense of belonging. This can make a person feel like they do belong and that they are not worth

any less because they do not do the same things that fit into the social norms. Not to mention

gives people the opportunity to form relationships with people they probably would have never

talked to if it was not through social media. Along with bringing families and friends closer

together because distance is no longer an issue when it comes to staying connected. However it

can become addicting and destroy some relationships that people have outside of social media,

because people can get lost in social media and forget that sometimes they just need to be present

in the real world. It can also bring a person depression and anxiety because they do not fit in or

match up to society’s standards. It can cause people to try to hide who they really are because

they do not want to get judged harshly especially by people they do not know personally. In the

end comes down to how people perceive social media. Social media can affect everyone in a

different way whether it be good or bad.

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References

All Psychology Schools. (2022). Social Media's Effects on Our Mental Health. All Psychology

Schools. Retrieved February 12, 2023, from

https://www.allpsychologyschools.com/blog/social-media-psychology/

Fardouly, J., & Vartanian, L. R. (2016, June). Social Media and Body Image Concerns: Current

Research and Future Directions. Current Opinion in Psychology, 9.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X15002249

Keles, B., McCrae, N., & Grealish, A. (2019, March 21). A systematic review: the influence of

social media on depression, anxiety and psychological distress in adolescents.

International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 25(1).

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02673843.2019.1590851