Does social media have negative or positive effect on our mental health?

Does social media have negative or positive effect on our mental health?

I think that social media has both negative and positive effect on mental health because it really depends on how you use it. Some of most people abuse social media by staying online for 20 hours or more a day. Other people use it to study or watch movies. All of that affects us in both positive and negative way. Most teenagers these days stay on social media sites (facebook, twitter, snapchat, Instagram, tumblr etc) and the reasons are mostly that we want to chat with friends, post pictures, like posts from other people but we do not realize we are getting nothing out of this. Social media is a addiction to most people these days because every day we go on these sites multiple times without any reason. We stay up all night on these sites, we do not do our homework, or care about school, and we do not listen to our parents either.

Social media made us humans a total different person in a total different world. It made us forget who we are and what our goal is. It made us forget what useful things we could be doing in the amount of time we waste every day. The only positive effects of social media are probably that it helps you stay connected with family and people you don’t often see or find out what homework you have missed on a day you were absent at school. But there are several negative effects of social media like anyone can take others pictures and track them down with it, or cyberbully someone with a different username, or post rude comments. It also effects the way you write for example “IDK, SMH, LOL, DKM”, and staying up all night on these social media sites are the causes for bad eye site, unfinished homework, bad grades, negative attitude and rude behaviour, talking back to elders and swearing.
A person chooses to either get trapped in the social media world, or stay away from it. Although I think most teenagers would rather have themselves trapped in it because they feel like there’s nothing they can do without devices or internet. When they go home after school, they watch movies, text their friends, listen to music for the rest of the day instead of spending at least 2 hours to do their homework or study for a test or exercise. They choose to lock themselves in their room and do absolutely non-useful work. Parents who work for a lot of hours
every day, think that their child probably does some work while they are away, but they never really check what they have been doing or what they do in school.

Facebook, twitter, snapchat, Instagram, are most of the social media sites that everyone uses now a day. They do not realize how much time they waste doing nothing every day, and from my experience, when you take away their device, they feel like there’s nothing to do, or have no idea where they are, it’s like they are lost without social media. I, myself sometimes stays on messenger or Instagram to look at pictures and text my friends and sometimes I do it for hours without realizing and when I get up after a long time of sitting, I feel dizzy and weak and useless. I use to be so addicted to Facebook that I would sometimes stay up till 12:00 to do my homework and I would not have time to study for tests. But now as I have grown, I've realized that I need to use my time more wisely because social media is not going to help me in life or going to be useful at any time and I also realized in what kind of negatives ways it changed me.

If you really think about it, social media is not as bad as we think it is. It just depends on which ways you use, how much you use it and for what reasons. And to me it seems like that the negative effect only comes from what you do yourself. There could be positive effects towards social media but it only depends on the way you use it.

-Natisha