Oral Communication

Hi, good day. Did you know that the number of social media users around the world
now equates to almost 75% of the eligible global population? That’s a lot, right?
Nowadays whether you’re a child or someone in their fifties, you probably have a
facebook account, don’t you? Now, I’m here to talk about one of the greatest
controversies our world is facing, the negative effects of social media. But today I am
here to focus on teenagers because we all know that almost every teenager that you
know, probably use facebook, twitter, tiktok, instagram, or any other social media app.
Some of the topics that I will be discussing were probably based on my experience as a
normal teenager who has more than 8 hours of screen time on social media daily. Now
let’s cover three negative effects that I noticed not only to myself but also to other
teenagers that I encountered. Note that I also did some research on whether the topics I
would discourse are factual or not. One, a lot of teenagers, especially girls, has
experienced low self-confidence due to the fake “perfect body” social media has
introduced to us. Two, I encountered a lot of teenagers who lack sleep due to their time
scrolling through their social media and completely losing track of time. And lastly, a lot
of teenagers have been exposed to contents that are inappropriate for their age. Did
you notice that all of these ‘negative’ effects that I noted down can result in the same
bad effects on our body? All of the three things I discussed can lead to bad mental
health. Let’s talk about the first one. During the early stages of the pandemic, or even
now, a lot of fitness instructors or models appeared on social media. They are
encouraging a lot of people to do their workout plan to achieve the same body they
have which isn’t wrong because they are just spreading body fitness to stay healthy
during this pandemic but a lot of people have overlooked the fact that the pictures these
fitness gurus have on their thumbnail or Instagram post are the best version of
themselves. This leads to a lot of people the pressure that you can have the ideal body
type in a short period of time which is somewhat unrealistic because these fitness gurus
have spent their time in the gym for years before they achieved that perfectly toned
body. One more thing that affects their social confidence is how social media has
implanted to us that the skinny tiny waist big butt is the perfect body for a girl. Let’s take
this, for example, a young girl is scrolling through her timeline and she saw two
self-appreciation posts, the first one is a skinny looking girl who has the ‘perfect’
features and the other is a woman who has features that don’t suit the social media
audience. She noticed that the first post has more likes and the second one has the
same number of likes but the comments are filled with “omg I love your confidence”. As
a naive girl, you would obviously think that the first one is the ideal look right? Now she
craves attention like the first girl has and would do anything to have that ‘perfect’ body
which is very unhealthy for a teenage girl because she’s still in the progress of growing.
The second negative effect that I noted down is, a lot of teenagers have unhealthy
sleeping habits. Your phone emits blue light which is good for productivity and keeping
us focussed. This is ideal during daytime but it is the opposite for nighttime. During the
nighttime, as the daylight decreases, our body releases melatonin which helps us to dip
down and sleep for the rest of the day. But due to the blue light that our phones
releases, it signals our brain that it is still daytime and the melatonin backs out of our
body. One of the things that I also noticed based on my experience is that lack of sleep
is completely normalized now on social media that it makes you ‘weird’ if you have a
healthy sleep schedule. There are teenagers who can’t sleep due to their mental health
problems and they’re obviously not what I’m pertaining to. The last effect I noted down
is the early exposure of teenagers to content that aren’t appropriate to their age.
Although some social media apps have age restriction, we all know that most of the
time, people lie about their current age so they can access to the said social media app.
Let’s take this common app called Tiktok for example. The recommendable age limit for
this app is 13 years old and above due to privacy issues and mature content. As you
know, a lot of kids below 13 years old have access to this application which is
completely normalized because they said that there’s no harm in it. But even this app
can give them harm because it can show you extreme gore/harm/explicit content even
though you don’t follow accounts who have those content. I have seen teenagers doing
“thirst-trap” challenges where the creator would do a sexy pose to attract an audience
which is inappropriate for teenagers because the internet is swarming with pedophiles.
There are some who learned their lesson when you called them out nicely but there are
some who refuse to listen. I am not stating that social media only brings harm to
teenagers because I, myself, found joy in using them but it certainly does bring you
harm if you’re not mature enough to know the consequences of your actions while doing
these trends. There are also positive effects for using social media, especially now that
we are in a pandemic where it is hard to hang out with your friends outside. I simply
chose to discuss the negative effects as these are the commonly heard and talked
about these days. Overall, there’s nothing in this world that can only bring you joy and
positive effects as they always have a negative side, you just need to follow the rules
and be mature enough to know the consequences of your own action.