ABSTRACT
Technological advancements have brought about digital devices that have become an integral part of people’s lives. With younger generations growing up in a world that is heavily influenced by technology, social media has emerged as a platform for self-expression, identity formation, and social interaction. Adolescents are at a vulnerable stage in their lives, where they are still discovering their own identities. Adolescents take their social media presence seriously as it creates an environment for comparisons, online harassment, and cyberbullying, which can negatively impact their mental health. This paper aims to highlight the detrimental effects of social media on an adolescent’s mental health, false identity, and body dysmorphia.
INTRODUCTION
Online identity is a newly introduced concept, in how your identity is represented and portrayed. Social media has become an important aspect for adolescents as online identities have become an important way of showing others who you are. However, the accuracy of one’s depiction online doesn’t accurately depict one’s self identity and can lead to false identity in the long run. A study conducted by Tristan Harris, the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology and previous design ethicist for Google, stated that “an average person checks their phone as often as 150 times daily”. It has been revealed that the social media notifications ranging from likes, messages, comments, views activate a reward center within the brain, providing users with release of dopamine. As people find social interactives rewarding, it can also create negative views of comparing others to yourself (Thalin, 2020). The purpose of this conference paper is to investigate the negative relationship social media has with adolescents’ who use digital technology to share similar interests and views, and how this effects their identity formations.
EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON MENTAL HEALTH
Change and development is important when becoming an adolescent and is a phrase where mental health issues first tend to emerge. Good mental health is an important part of adolescent development, as it helps them create positive emotions, skills, behaviours, as well as social and communication skills. It also helps create a stronger foundation for a better mental health in the future (Lee, 2022). Adolescents are faced with hormonal and physiological changes in their body, whilst at the same time, many cognitive, social and neural changes are happening. Being an adolescent means having an increased importance of how others think of you and how you interact with others. Social media provides ways for adolescents to feel accepted by society. According to Thalin (2020), adolescents search for validation and acceptance on social media platforms, which leads to anxiety, depression and low self-esteem.
Depression and suicidal behaviours have been seen to be increasing amongst adolescents who use social media. Around 93% of adolescents own at least one social media platform, with over 84% of adolescents around the world owning their own devices (Rideout & Fox, 2018; Kamenetz, 2019). To understand how damaging social media can be, we need to be able to look at social media in the perspective of an adolescent. Adolescents face so many questions based off their identity. They question themselves with who they are, and often this thought of identity is diluted by unrealistic social media messages (Albano, 2021). There has been an increase in depression and suicidal behaviours over the last two decades, which coincidentally linked with the emergence of social media. In America, depression increased from 8.7% in 2005 to 11.3% in 2014 (Mojtabai, et al., 2016). According to Anne Marie Albano, PhD, director of the Colombia University Clinic for Anxiety and Related Disorders, there has been adolescents with social anxiety or depression, that spent more time on social media to avoid face to face engagement with people in real life. When an adolescent avoids interacting with others, speaking to others and avoids physical communication, this can create anxiety, depression and hopelessness in a teen who is discovering their own identity (Albano, 2021). A 2018 University of Pennsylvania study showed that spending 30 minutes on social media can improve anxiety and depression compared to someone who spends hours on social media (Hunt, et al., 2018). This is supported by another 2019 study that has found that adolescents that spend more than three hours on social media are susceptible to depression or anxiety (Riehm, et al., 2019). On the other hand, there has been a 47.5% increase of suicide being second leading cause of death amongst adolescents since 2000 and is suggested that the increased level of depression and suicide levels have a link to social media (Miron, et al., 2019; McGrae, et al., 2017).
EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON FALSE IDENTITY
The content we see in social media shapes the way we perceive ourselves and others. Adolescents are affected by values and are vulnerable to the influences portrayed in social media, as social media offers different interpretations of what attractive, beautiful, hot and the representation of what one’s ‘perfect’ life is like. Social media promotes false identity instead of one’s self-identity. Adolescent years are the most critical times for identity formation, as they develop their own identity through creating an impression they want others to see them (Manago et al., 2008). Adolescents heavily rely on social interactions to discover who they are. As digital media evolved, social interaction processes moved to online platforms. As social media became a platform adolescents rely on to find their identity, they often tend to construct a false presentation of themselves to gain a liking from their peers, which is often due to the media’s concept of what is appealing, cool and pretty (Manago et al., 2008). Adolescents compare themselves to unrealistic influencers and attempt to try and be like them. However, their self-identity is built from experiences that have been developed unconsciously, which define who they truly are and how they act. As adolescents are exposed to social media and unrealistic portrayals of other people’s lives, they try to shape their own identity to someone else’s identity, which prevents the ability to truly find their own identity and understand themselves (Whitworth, 2023).
Social media hides basic social cues we can identity from a person face-to-face, such as the way they communicate, what they wear and how they express themselves. As social media is a platform that can control how others perceive us, adolescents tend to be conscious with what they post, not wanting to show their flaws (Whitting, 2019). It can be something as small as posting lots of pictures at the gym because others think it’s cool, however, this may not necessarily define your true self- identity. According to research, 43% of adolescents feel the need to post content on social media that will make them look good for other people, and 37% of adolescents feel the need to share things that will gain lots of likes and comments (Anderson & Jiang, 2018). Self- identity has become meaningless on social media, despite the platform originally created to support that idea, and instead promoted the opposite, where people show a modified version of who they truly are.
EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON BODY DYSMORPHIA
Adolescents are at a stage where their bodies are physically changing, as they go through puberty and adapt to their new body size and shape. This change causes many discomforts and concern for adolescents (Hogan & Strasburger, 2008). Social media platforms are filled with images of people representing the “perfect” version of themselves, often using filters and editing pictures to create an unrealistic standard of beauty. This can create comparisons, unrealistic beauty standards, social isolation and cyberbullying. As adolescents want to feel accepted to social standards, social media creates a toxic culture, where adolescents will constantly compare themselves with others who have the “perfect” body or face. Social media creates an inaccurate representative of people’s appearances, leading to negative body image and insecurity for adolescents who are still learning to accept themselves (Pedersen, 2023). According to research published by the American Psychological Association, adolescents who stopped using their social medias for half the time they usually spend on social media for a few weeks, they were able to see major improvements to how they felt about their looks and weight, compared to adolescents who used social media as per normal (American Psychological Association, 2023). Another research showed that the more time an adolescent spent on social media, the more they were comparing themselves with others, becoming unsatisfied and unhappy with their bodies (Suciu, 2021). As social media promotes ideal depictions of people, adolescents are often faced with body shaming as one of the common forms of cyberbullying (Youth Legal Service, 2021).
Cyberbullying is a form of bullying in the digital world, which has been an increasing problem, as technology is widely used amongst adolescents. Adolescents who spend more time on social media are also more likely to participate in cyberbullying (Kao, 2021). A 2018 study reported 59% of adolescents in the U.S. have experienced cyberbullying (Anderson, 2018). This high percentage of cyberbullying is reflected by the fact that there is anonymity and no retaliation. As adolescents are still developing cognitive knowledge, social media isn’t the best platform for them to make good choices (Kao, 2021). The bully doesn’t get to see how much their bullying affects the other person and does not learn or receive the same consequences as they do from face-to-face bullying (Suciu, 2021). As cyberbullying is more publicised compared to traditional bullying, it becomes visible to many people, regardless of their involvement. This creates more helplessness and fear, as cyberbullying ends up being a longer-lasting torment and can damage one’s reputation (Lickteig, 2020).
As technology and social media has always been and is still developing, so has software and apps that have allowed people to change and alter their appearances, providing a flawless image to publish on social media. Whilst adolescents want to represent the best version of themselves, these alterations have further developed negative body image and self-esteem. According to a 2021 study by City University of London, researchers discovered 90% of adolescents reported on altering their image using filters or editing their pictures (Newport Institute, n.d.). Another study showed that 70% of people felt pressured to represent a “perfect” image of themselves (Newport Institute, n.d.). As social media is filled with influencers, models and celebrities who promote “perfect” images and promote the idea of hiding flaws, this creates an expectation amongst adolescents to be just like them, creating a satisfaction for one’s identity by creating an unrealistic representation of one online. This creates insecurity and unhappiness in adolescents, as they need to continue to strive to false identity and not discovering their own full potential.
CONCLUSION
The negative effects social media has on the formation of identities of adolescents cannot be neglected. Social media has become such an integral part of our lives, and whilst it provides a platform for adolescents to express themselves, it also creates an environment for cyberbullying and comparison to others. These negative experiences affect adolescents’ mental health, which results in low self-worth and discovery. Social media can also lead to false identity and body dysmorphia, creating an inaccurate representation online. With increased use of social media amongst adolescents, it is vital to recognise the potential harm it can cause and to take necessary steps to reduce it. As a result, we can provide adolescents with a healthy environment to explore their identities to grow into mentally healthy adults with individual self-identities.
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Hi L, The thing is the paper is mainly concentrated on the African continent particularly.If you make an analysis of…