Abiodun Apoeso
3 min readJun 12, 2021

Is Social Media Bad For You?

around 40% of the world’s population, use online social media — and we’re spending an average of two hours every day sharing, liking, tweeting and updating on these platforms, according to some reports. That breaks down to around half a million tweets and Snapchat photos shared every minute.

With social media playing such a big part in our lives, could we be sacrificing our mental health and well-being as well as our time? so its social media bad?

This are some of the effects of social media;

STRESS

People use social media to vent about everything from customer service to politics, but the downside to this is that our feeds often resemble an endless stream of stress.

A survey of 1,800 people was conducted, women reported being more stressed than men. Twitter was found to be a “significant contributor” because it increased their awareness of other people’s stress.

But Twitter also acted as a coping mechanism — and the more women used it, the less stressed they were. The same effect wasn’t found for men, whom the researchers said had a more distant relationship with social media. Overall, the researchers concluded that social media use was linked to “modestly lower levels” of stress.

ANXIETY

Researchers have looked at general anxiety provoked by social media, characterised by feelings of restlessness and worry, and trouble sleeping and concentrating.

A study published in the journal Computers and Human Behavior found that people who report using seven or more social media platforms were more than three times as likely as people using 0–2 platforms to have high levels of general anxiety symptoms.

SLEEP

Humans used to spend their evenings in darkness, but now we’re surrounded by artificial lighting all day and night. Research has found that this can inhibit the body’s production of the hormone melatonin, which facilitates sleep — and blue light, which is emitted by smartphone and laptop screens, is said to be the worst culprit. In other words, if you lie on the pillow at night checking Facebook and Twitter, you’re headed for restless slumber.

SELF-ESTEEM

Women’s magazines and their use of underweight and Photoshopped models have been long maligned for stirring self-esteem issues among young women. But now, social media, with its filters and lighting and clever angles, is taking over.

Social media sites make more than half of its users feel inadequate, according to a survey of 1,500 people, half of the people between the age of 18- to 34-year-olds say it makes them feel unattractive.

Social media affects people differently, depending on pre-existing conditions and personality traits.

As with food, gambling and many other temptations of the modern age, excessive use for some individuals is probably inadvisable. But at the same time, it would be wrong to say social media is a universally bad thing, because clearly it brings myriad benefits to our lives.

Abiodun Apoeso

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