By Joy Banks, Owen Barth, Madison Clark, Ian Davis
On average, about 3.8 billion people use online social media, spending about two hours and twenty-four minutes updating statuses, tweeting, or even sending a Snapchat. With this being said, it is no question that social media has become a crucial part of everyday life for people all over the world. We now have Tik Tok, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and many other applications that control how we think and act each day. Originally being used as a way of communication and enjoyment amongst friends, social media has evolved into a place of competition, judgment, and perfectionism. From privacy invasion to body shaming, to catfishing, social media has created a destructive atmosphere.
Personal Privacy and Companies Morals:
It is no doubt that social media has had an extreme effect on today’s society. Many choose to only see the good side of the story, like being able to connect with people all over the world, share personal accomplishments, and give and receive help to people that need it. However, some of humanity can look deeper into social media and have begun questioning companies and their motives.
Are you one to only see the good side of social media? Do you spend hours per day on these apps and think nothing is wrong with that? If you said yes to those questions, that is exactly how these companies want you to think. Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Tik Tok, and many other of the biggest social media apps are free to download for anyone. Yet, the companies that own these apps are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. How are they able to make money off of these free apps? The answer is that these major companies keep track of everything you look at and do on their apps and they give that information to other companies that are willing to pay for advertisements. They use your data to figure out what ads you are more likely to view and buy the product, which helps them get more sales and make more money. These companies also track what you watch and what you like so that they can recommend you more videos that are similar to them so that they can keep you in their app spending more time and viewing more ads. “B2B companies embrace marketing automation to manage leads, nurture them with content, and deliver more sales revenue.” (Segal) This explains how businesses like Apple and Google give your data to other businesses who are willing to pay to get their product advertised.
Some people argue that social media does more good for us rather than it negatively affects us. Furthermore, they say that as long as the businesses are not selling our information then, it is okay to use it. Some more positives that social media creates for society include awareness of problems around the world, creating jobs for influencers, promoting businesses, and more. While I agree that social media does a lot of good, I do not think it is okay for businesses to invade our privacy to make money off of us. Although supposedly they do not sell our data, it is still wrong that they can track it and use it against us to keep us addicted and to profit from other companies.
Overall, the positives of social media do not outweigh the negatives or justify the immoral acts that businesses use against us as users. These major companies know they are doing the wrong thing as well; that is why they try to hide the fact that you are not truly getting privacy when you use their apps.
Impacts of Body-Shaming and Hate Comments:
Social media is a great place to keep in contact with your friends and also meet new people. Want to know how social media works on a basic level? Post a picture or video of yourself and wait. How many likes will you get? Will someone new and exciting comment on the post? Will someone send you a private message? When we post something about ourselves, we only imagine what good will happen from it. When you are feeling sad, social media can help by talking to a friend. Nothing beats talking in person, but that isn’t always possible. What we don’t expect is for people to react negatively to what we post. People can post comments under secret user names and say mean and hurtful things. When you leave your posts open for anyone to comment on, you leave yourself open to the good comments and the hate comments. Hate is a very easy thing to spread through social media, especially on platforms that offer anonymity. The veil of the internet acts as protection for those who wish to spread hateful messages and comments. Instead of waiting for something good to happen with our post, we also have to police it for anything bad. The people who make these comments have connection problems with the outside world. People who comment mean and hateful things are just seeking attention on any level. Social media give us a place to express our individuality but is it at the cost of our self-esteem?
Posting a picture of yourself can give someone the self-gratification they may be craving. When you see nice comments about what you post, it is like a boost to your self-esteem. But what happens when the comments are not so nice. There is a fine line between saying something fun and saying something offensive. What do hate comments have to do with self-esteem? If you realize there are internet trolls out there, then maybe you can keep your self-esteem in check. If you can not get past rude and hateful comments, it may make you think twice about posting again. Maybe next time you post something, you may use a filter to make yourself look better. From that point on, you are not being authentic. “Instagram has been tied to anxiety and depressive symptoms, but also to concerns such as anxiety related to physical appearance, increased body dissatisfaction, and lower self-esteem.”(Rodulfo,2020, para.3). It may seem harmless to filter what you look like, but in the end, is it worth it? By continually filtering your social media photos, you could develop an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Instead of putting filters on our photos, we need to filter out the negativity that these social media platforms bring.
Mental Effects of Social Media:
Picture this. You’re looking at yourself in the mirror, what do you see? Focus hard. What is it that you like about yourself or more importantly what is it that you don’t like about yourself? Look deeply and don’t take your eyes off of the mirror. Start to think about celebrities or people that are idolized. Oh, how perfect they are, how good looking; they have no flaws, or even if they do, it makes them all the more attractive. Now start thinking about how you look. How you can never have those features, how different you are. Isn’t that draining? Having to compare yourself and be that self-conscious. Social media doesn’t alleviate this way of thinking, it more so prompts people of all ages and genders.
Notably, as a society we can’t help but want to know everything about celebrities or about people that achieved fame off of social media because we want to be like them, we want to know how to get to that point. Having that mindset to want to be better isn’t terrible. But if it gets to the point of over-obsessing and making your sole purpose to know everything about the person you idolize or even want to physically change yourself to be like them, then that’s when it becomes a problem. Once that way of thinking begins it’s hard to stop because of the social pressure; the backlash and negativity that come if you don’t conform to society. As you get older the pressure isn’t as great, but for younger adults and teens the expectations and social pressure is heavy. It’s stressful. Even for those that aren’t naturally insecure, social media can weigh them down and eventually catch hold. In an article by Lawrence Robinson and Melinda Smith, M.A., in the HelpGuide, they found that:
Inadequacy about your life or appearance. Even if you know that images you’re viewing on social media are manipulated, they can still make you feel insecure about how you look or what’s going on in your own life. Similarly, we’re all aware that other people tend to share just the highlights of their lives, rarely the low points that everyone experiences. But that doesn’t lessen those feelings of envy and dissatisfaction when you’re scrolling through a friend’s airbrushed photos of their tropical beach holiday or reading about their exciting new promotion at work. (“Social Media and Mental Health” para. 6)
The authors continue to list more negative aspects of social media, like: fear of missing out (FOMO), isolation, depression and anxiety, and self-absorption. This is a world issue, social media is everywhere, Facebook has 1.8 billion users, Instagram has about 600 million monthly users, Snapchat’s 158 million daily users post some 2.8 billion snaps every day (Emerson Csorba and Noa Slaney, 2017). I for one, as soon as I wake up I go to my phone, I check on all my social media: Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Vsco, and Tik Tok. Before I go to bed I check it all again. There’s a study that shows that American teenagers (13- to 18-year-olds) average about nine hours of entertainment media use daily (Maggie Fox and Erika Edwards, 2020). Being on the phone comparing yourself, slowly changing yourself to fit trends, it all causes stress and anxiety to the brain. As well as, it has the ability to create change in behavior, it might not be self-recognized, but the people around will notice the change… That’s how toxic social media can be to your mind and will continue to be if we allow it the power to do so.
Catfishing- the Epidemic:
It is no question that since the introduction of the World Wide Web and mainstream use of the internet, the way people interact with one another has changed. Social media has opened the doors to new and creative ways for people to communicate. People like to tweet on Twitter or share a tik tok of them doing the latest dance trend, or maybe even post a selfie on Instagram. In the beginning, these applications were provided as a creative way to interact with friends and family, but times have changed. Social media is now a place where there are influencers to idolize, body shapes to dream for, and worst of all….catfishing.
One of the most basic definitions of catfishing is an individual lying about their identity in order to lure someone else into a relationship. The term “catfished” became popular after a 2010 MTV film called “Catfish: The TV Show,” started documenting stories of online catfishing. These individuals were seen as people who are “insecure about themselves,”(Meerts 2) who use the online community to “escape reality” (Meerts 2). From hindsight we question their motives, instantly asking ourselves “Why would someone trick another person like this?” Well… why would they? With social media, there are social standards, and in an online society where we can never be pretty enough, there is a constant desire to change who we are. In the show we see a lot of people fall for who the catfishers are as people, but hate their physical appearance. This same mindset is displayed all across social media. Guys only talk to the girls who are labeled attractive, and girls only go for the guys who are seen as hot. On social media personalities do not matter as much as looks do and catfishers are individuals who understand this to the fullest. Though their methods may be questionable, in the end they are just in search of love and acceptance just like the rest of us.
Catfishing is one of the main products of social media and its reach goes beyond impersonating someone else. In an era where you have to have an hourglass figure, clear skin, and long thick hair, catfishing has turned into a tool of reinventing how others see your beauty. Social media creates an environment where you are worshiped if you are beautiful and forgotten about if you have flaws. From this we get young people who are using filters, Photoshop, and different angles, to enhance their perceived flawed features. Catfishing is not simply pretending to be someone else, but in this case it is distorting your own personal image in order to conform to society’s beauty standards. This is where the issue of acceptance continues to play its role in the realm of social media. In times where equality is preached, the online community does not follow the same moral once they deem someone as being unattractive. As a result, social media is a place of nothing but fake realities, deception, and competition.
Why it all matters.
On a fundamental level, using social media is an easy way to keep yourself entertained. There is definitely more to the story than having fun. The companies that own these social media giants are invading your privacy by capturing your search data and selling it to companies at a premium. Innocent enough, people want to update the world with a post about themselves on their favorite social media page. They are quick to find out, a whole other world exists in social media today; hate comments, body shaming, addiction, and being catfished can lead to low self-esteem and body issues. If someone is not careful, social media can lead to mental and emotional problems. Social media should never have this much control over people’s lives, we shouldn’t allow it to have this much power, and it all starts with shortening time spent on social media.
The collaborative Op-Ed above was written by Nordonia High School seniors enrolled in College Writing 1, a dual-enrollment course with college credit awarded through Kent State University.