Name: Paula Zavala

ESSAY INTRODUCTORY PAGE

Have you ever opened any social media app and saw something or someone that just
seemed so perfect that it made you feel even a little bad about yourself? How many times
have you been influenced to buy something that you didn’t really needed? It's not completely
your fault, so don't feel bad about it, we are all victims of the same problem. However, if we
become aware of this problematic and the things that cause it we can work on abolishing it
from our lives, and considering the increasing rates of depression in teenagers (11.5% of
youth (or over 2.7 million youth) are experiencing severe major depression) and in young
adults (50% of adults ages 18- 24 reported anxiety and depression symptoms in 2023). This
alarming increase in numbers I think (and with enough evidence supporting me) is directly
connected with this issue. Just by giving this small amount of information that surrounds this
topic we can start to see the importance of it.

But let’s not get carried off, first we have to ask some important questions. When does social
media and society as a whole starts to become an obstacle between us and our happiness?
When does a healthy relationship with social media starts to transform into a toxic one? Is
there a factor that makes things change so drastically? How closely related is this issue to
the increase in depression and anxiety in people nowadays? I know it seems like a lot of
overwhelming questions but this really is an extense topic, social media has so many faces
and information on it, with people uploading more and more content each day that it seems
almost impossible to summarize all of it. Before I say anything else I’d like to add a quick
disclaimer, I’m not saying social media or society is all bad, of course there are a lot of good
things that you can consume in social media.

There is a lot of useful information available in them and has become an essential tool that
comes in handy in almost every situation. This essay is made to inform people about some
of the bad effects of social media and their consequences on people, especially the younger
part of society. One of the bad effects of social media is the imposition of impossible
standards, usually these unattainable standards are related to physical appearance, it can
be the new image of a model, an “it girl” or the perfect body of the actor of the moment. It
doesn’t really matter what it is, what is disturbing are the ideas that these standards are
trying to make us believe: that anybody can obtain that type of body or face with the limited
resources that most people have. What people ignore is that these personalities live off their
looks and spend thousands of dollars to look the way they do, and most of us don’t have the
time or the money that it requires.

This is a very extense topic, in can include your favorite series and even the content that you
watch on Youtube. Nowadays we are surrounded by technology and social media and that
can affect and influence us in numerous ways, there is very toxic content on them and sadly
they the regulations that are necessary in order to keep safe the mental health of the people
that use their platforms. Society sells us this impossible image of being perfect and
pressures us to fit that image, by showing us photos of the perfect bodies of models that
have been edited, blogs of people that only show us the good parts of their day or
pressuring us to follow these impossible diets that can be bad for our health.