In the beginning, social media seemed great. It was an easier way to connect with your friends and family and helped to keep in touch with those you have not seen in a while. It helped to update everyone on how you were doing and what you have been up to recently. Despite this innocent start of the use of social media, as it expanded it began to influence people negatively.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, even MySpace has affected people in a drastic manner constantly creating updates on new trends, as well as showing off the hottest celebrities. This created a way for younger generations to be greatly influenced by social media.
People began to post for likes and views, instead of for their own enjoyment or to update their friends. Many started editing their pictures to look unrealistic to fit today's beauty standards.
Social Media has started to consume people's lives in an unhealthy way. At the beginning of 2018 around three billion people around the world use social media and spend at least two hours on it every day. That is around 40% of the world's population.
That means 40% of the population is affected by the negative effects social media has to offer. It is proven that social media affects both a person's physical and mental health, depending on how much time one spends online a day. If one spends more than two hours a day on social networking sites they are more likely to report poor mental health, with common symptoms of both depression and anxiety.
Social Media has created unrealistic expectations of life, and in turn, this has created FOMO (Fear of missing out). This has sparked a problem in younger generations because they feel as though their life should be more exciting than it actually is. They look at all of the edited pictures on their Instagram feed and wonder why they can't be that pretty or how could someone look so perfect.
Social Networking Sites have skyrocketed with young adults posting every little update that goes on in their life. The lack of privacy is ridiculous; everyone wants to look like they are having fun even if they are not. It creates a place to allow cyberbullying and decreases the normality of sleep patterns in regular users.
Social media continues to affect people's mood on a daily basis when originally, it was only meant to be a place for people to catch up with their friends and family.
