How does social media negatively affect overall health?

Introduction

As technology advances, there has been a drastic increase in the amount of people who

use online networks. Recently, the largest and most used online networks are social media apps

like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. According to Pew Research Center,

“today around seven in ten Americans use social media to connect with one another, engage with

news content, share information, and entertain themselves.” When looking from a business

perspective, social media provides a way to advertise products or skills in mass amounts so that

millions of people can be influenced at once. Social media has completely changed the

marketing, sales, and business industries in a positive way. From the perspective of an average

teenager, however, social media isn’t viewed the same. Social media has many effects on

teenagers both positive and negative. Recently, however, more negative effects have been found

as social media has become a staple part of people's lives. For instance, TikTok recently became

one of the biggest social media platforms through the videos that different creators and

influencers make. According to Baltrusaitis, “TikTok became the world's highest-grossing social

app by in-app purchases with over $2.5 million in daily revenue.” With the app's increase in

popularity, the amount of depression and anorexia cases has also increased as more and more

kids have begun to change their daily habits to be like others. In a comment below from a Reddit

community, it states, “People are constantly comparing themselves to others and feeling

inadequate. Studies have shown that the more time you spend on social media, the worse your

mental health becomes.” With the increase in purchases of image-based apps like TikTok, there is

an increase in the amount of people being negatively affected by social media. In this paper, I
examine the subreddit r/socialmedia, finding that this online space provides personal stories and

comments from people who have experienced the negative effects of social media and have

shared why they made certain decisions with the online world. This paper provides much insight

into the feelings many teenagers have felt after being consumed with social media and will

answer the question of how social media negatively affects overall health.

Methods

I used Reddit to search “social media effects on health” to collect the primary sources I

used to support this analysis. This gave me a variety of different communities to sort through that

discussed both the positive and negative impacts that social media has had on people. Within

each community are several comment spaces that allow people to share things they have in

common with one another and provide their thoughts, views, and opinions on numerous topics.

To narrow down the options, I used the search bar to search the words, “harm”, “mental”, “body

image”, “depression”, and “confidence”. All these terms that I searched were used to help me

find specific primary evidence of people who have experienced only the negative effects of

social media. Using these terms to search through different communities made it easy to find the

communities I needed to support this analysis. The term “harm” was used to find anyone casting

social media in a negative light so that way I could see only the negative effects of social media.

I searched the word “mental” because many teenagers are affected by social media through

mindset. These image-focused apps can trigger a negative mindset as people begin to compare

and focus on features they don’t have but wish they had. Comparing oneself to influencers and

creators creates mental blocks and destructive emotions which can lead to issues like depression

and lack of self-confidence. The terms “mental”, “depression”, and “confidence” were all
searched to locate comments that shared personal stories of people being affected by these terms.

Last, the term “body image” was used to also find people who may have been physically affected

by social media as they may have changed their body types to look like others or changed their

eating habits. Through the search terms, I found a couple of communities that were very helpful

allowing for strong primary evidence on this topic. The first community was r/videos which was

Reddit's main subreddit for all different types of videos. This community had 26.8 million

members and was ranked 14th in size. This was beneficial because due to the large amount of

people within the community, there are a lot of comments from people who can relate to the

posts. The other community that I found through the search terms was r/changemyview where

anyone can post their opinions allowing for online conversation. This community has 3.4 million

members and was ranked in the top 1% by size. After analyzing many different comments within

various communities, I began to categorize the responses that I saw to find common themes. For

example, I categorized the comments into different subjects like body image issues, mental

health struggles, depression, and lack of confidence. This was very beneficial as it allowed me to

engage with the comments and it gave me a better look as to how people are affected most by

social media. I found that after interpreting many of these comments a lot of these online users

said that they were most heavily affected by body image issues and lack of confidence. In

addition, I found that the common emotions upon these users within these communities were of

disappointment and insecurity.

Results

This section goes over the findings from the 2 subreddits I found under the search “social

media effect on health”. These 2 subreddits r/video and r/changemyview both have many
members which is better because there are more shared perspectives and opinions within the

community. I first found a video of Christina Aguilera's release of her new music video

“Beautiful” addressing how social media affects self-image and mental health. Many members of

this community took this video very personally and chose to share their thoughts:

1. Frankly, it’s depressing that this is the world we’ve created for future generations

2. Def just cried

3. Yep! Plus the message she delivers in the song is more relevant, and needed, than ever.

Social media really is damaging society in ways I don’t think we ever anticipated.

The first comment responds to the video by showing disappointment with how the world has

changed. People are now more and more affected by self-image and mental health because they

aren't content with how they look. In this current generation, it is common for individuals to

compare themselves to others because they are happy with what they have been given. Society

has built a figure for what people should look like and many feel that they need to replicate this

ideal image of a person. The second comment is just agreeing with the first on an emotional

level. This shows that this is a sensitive subject and that people do have feelings toward the way

social media has altered mindsets. Comment 3 describes how the song has been needed for

society to hear as many aren't aware of the issues social media has generated for people due to

creating a standard for what people should look like. Social media has encouraged people to

change their ways of living to be like others. All 3 of these responses to the video are negatively

connotated as they show the disappointment they have with society and how sad it is to see

society react to social media in such poor ways.

4. Women on there especially, there’s so many of those insta model type influencers and half of

their pics, their bodies don’t even resemble what a human can look like, then there’s weird

stuff like Koreans being obsessed with photoshopping their heads to be ludicrously tiny on

their bodies. Then all the filters and everything. It’s super out of control. I’d argue it’s just as

bad if not worse than porn. This whole generation coming up has a crazy amount of

dysmorphia, look at all the subreddits on here like am I ugly, all that kind of shit. Perfectly

normal-looking or even attractive people asking what kinds of surgeries they need etc. It’s

just sad.

This comment shows how people negatively view these famous influencers. This commenter

argues that the media portrays perfect human beings that don’t even represent a real-life human

being. With this, people then become unsatisfied with the way they look and want different

surgeries and procedures done to change their body figures to look like people online. This can

be unhealthy because everyone is made with their own set of DNA and while some are blessed

with certain features, others are blessed in other ways. The problem with society is that people

find what they don’t have as a disadvantage and try to change what they look like to be someone

else instead of accepting their traits and admiring the way they look.

5. I got rid of all social except Reddit. Messed around and got in the best shape of my life at

37yo. Not sure what that says, but I did it the right way (exercise and healthy eating) and just

made it part of how I live. No desire to take a million selfies or influence others.

Quitting (most) social media is the best thing I’ve done.

This comment is a little different because in this case the commenter has deleted social media

and has noticed life change for the better while not having it. Social media focuses on

appearance, and this makes society care about little things that shouldn’t be important like how

people look. This commenter specifically mentions that he got in the best shape “the right way”

hinting that many don’t. This is mainly because oftentimes people stop eating to lose weight and

hurt their body or get surgeries done. Today, society tries to reach results or goals way too fast

for their body, which can really damage the human body if it doesn’t get the proper nutrients it

needs to survive.

In a different community discussing how social media is causing more harm than good, people

comment on the different issues social media has created within society.

6. Social media is a breeding ground for mental health issues like anxiety, depression, and

FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). People are constantly comparing themselves to others and

feeling inadequate. Studies have shown that the more time you spend on social media, the

worse your mental health becomes. That can't be a good thing, right?

As social media becomes more and more popular, people start to become addicted, and it

causes different mental issues like anxiety and depression. People start to think of themselves

differently and become unhappy with how they look and feel. It starts to become unhealthy

when people begin to not eat to look a certain way because they feel they aren’t skinny

enough.
Reflection:

While social media has many benefits in society, many issues have brought upon

society as well. Due to the ideal image that our society has created, people begin to feel

insecure about themselves and take extreme routes to look a certain way. Usually, the people

who are affected by social media either become depressed with how they look and feel and get

anxious or they begin to stop eating. By not eating, this can turn into having eating disorders

like anorexia or bulimia nervosa which can really hurt one's body as they aren’t getting the

proper nutrients to stay healthy. When technology wasn’t as big, there were fewer people with

these issues, but as more and more people become addicted to technology there's been an

increased number of people that have these eating disorders. The National Eating Disorder

Association claims, “an ongoing study in Minnesota has found the incidence of anorexia

increasing over the last 50 years only in females aged 15-24.” This makes sense as people who

have social media tend to fall in that age group. After looking through many comments on this

topic, this statistic strongly correlates with a comment mentioned above as they say, “Women

on there especially, there's so many of those insta model type influencers and half of their pics,

their bodies don’t even resemble what a human can look like.” This comment helps prove the

statistic made by the National Eating Disorder as many women these days are heavily affected

by the body images seen on social media. In addition, as more social media apps are created,

this drives people to want to become an influencer or be like someone they aren’t. While many

people are aware of the issues social media has produced, there is a good portion of society

that isn’t aware of this issue. In these online spaces, people feel comfortable sharing how they

feel about the issues going on in society in hopes that other people will agree and comment
back. Regarding this issue, many people agree that social media has begun to cause an issue

with the way people view themselves as everyone is made differently and people shouldn’t

feel like they have to change to look good or be viewed a certain way. Society has made little

things like looks and appearance a big part of who someone is, and this can make or break

someone. All the influencers that social media promotes have the perfect and ideal looks and

body figures that encourage the audience to look just like them. With this, people begin to

change their sleeping habits, eating schedules, and daily life routines to reach a specific goal.

Since today’s generation has begun to use technology for everything, these issues with social

media may only get worse as more social media apps are created and as more and more people

become addicted to how social media makes them feel. People become obsessed with social

status which encourages them to act and want to portray a certain look.
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Baltrusaitis, Justinas. “Tiktok Becomes the World’s Highest-Grossing Social App by in-App
Purchases with over $2.5M in Daily Revenue.” Finbold, 9 June 2023, finbold.com/tiktok-
becomes-the-worlds-highest-grossing-social-app-with-over-2-5-million-in-daily-revenue/.

“Christina Aguilera Releases New Video for ‘Beautiful’ Addressing How Social Media Has
Affected Our Self Image and Mental Health.” Reddit,
www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/y8xz43/christina_aguilera_releases_new_video_for/.
Accessed 10 Oct. 2023.

“CMV: Social Media Is Causing More Harm than Good.” Reddit,

www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/12p29qz/cmv_social_media_is_causing_mor
e_harm_than_good/. Accessed 10 Oct. 2023.

“Cohen, Rachel, Toby Newton-John, and Amy Slater.” “The Relationship Between Facebook
and Instagram Appearance-Focused Activities and Body Image Concerns in Young
Women.” Body Image 23 (2017): 183–187. Web.

“Dutta, Dr. Sanchari Sinha. “Eating Disorders and Social Media.” News, 28 Mar. 2022,
www.news-medical.net/health/Eating-Disorders-and-Social-Media.aspx.

“Social Media Fact Sheet.” Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech, Pew Research
Center, 7 Apr. 2021, www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/social-media/.

“Statistics & Research on Eating Disorders.” National Eating Disorders Association, 14 July
2021, www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/statistics-research-eating-disorders?
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