argumentative essay on does social media do more harm than good

Does Social Media Do More Harm Than Good for Society?

Social media has both positive and negative effects on society. But is it doing more harm than good?

Media has always had the power to influence our society, but it wasn't until the social media boom that we saw it on this scale and magnitude. While it has the potential for good, social media has been also been harmful to society because of how we use it.

Here's how social media is harming our mental health, self-image, communication skills, and society at large—potentially causing more harm than good overall.

Social Media Can Lead to Depression, Anxiety, and Loneliness

The uncontrollable urge to share everyday life with others on social media is starting to have long-term effects. Studies have shown that increased use of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok is leading to depression, anxiety, and loneliness.

The COVID-19 pandemic not only pushed more people to the platforms but also caused people to spend unusual amounts of time cruising their feeds. According to Statista , as of 2022, people spend an average of 147 minutes on social media daily. That's more than two hours.

More importantly, science has found that social media can make you sad . Social media platforms have become aware of how to manipulate your brain's reward response to increase engagement and time spent on apps. When you receive positive feedback on a post you made or a picture you uploaded, it releases endorphins. This is what keeps people on the platforms for hours. But it can also lead to increased feelings of anxiety, depression, and loneliness.

Casinos use the same types of tactics to get people to spend more time, and money, on their business. Giving out small wins to keep people coming back but never being able to fulfill their needs. If everyone had a full understanding of this concept, it could lead to healthier social media habits. Problem is, not very many people know how to create a healthy balance.

Communication on Social Media Has a Dark Side

While not everyone on the internet has a hard time communicating in real life, there is still a good portion of introverts who have an easier time talking online. Social media makes it easier for those people to connect with others and learn social cues that could have been missed. This can be especially helpful for people who live in smaller towns and have a deep desire to broaden their horizons.

While you can't exactly remain anonymous on social media without creating a fake profile, you can create a whole new persona. This can help people who have a hard time socializing to break out of their shells.

Where social media has gotten into trouble is when these personas get pulled to the dark side. According to Help Guide , about 10 percent of teens report being bullied on social media, and even more claim they have been the recipient of offensive remarks. Being on the receiving end can lead to lower self-esteem and self-image.

It's also hard to express clear and concise communication when only using a keyboard. Language gets lost in translation without more communication clues to give context, like body language. What could have been intended as an innocent remark could be taken personally. This could lead to an argument that could have been avoided if it had been made in person.

Communication on social media still has some maturing to do before it becomes a force for good.

Social Media's Divisive Effect

At no other time in the history of the world has it been easier to connect with someone from around the world as it is today. Social media has had a large part in getting more people in contact with each other. These connections have fostered a whole world of communities that wouldn't have existed without the invention of the internet and social media. To be fair, social media has some positive effects on society .

But at the same time, the ease of finding like-minded people through social media has shown to be just as dangerous as it has been positive. Since its inception, the public has become increasingly aware of just what types of groups were forming in the dark corners of social media. Groups that would threaten the well-being of others were allowed to assemble online.

The 2016 election was controversial for the use of foreign interference through Facebook ads to swing the opinions of the public. The continued disparity between political opinions is a big reason why Americans feel social media is doing more harm than good these days.

The power of social media to influence entire nations has come under the microscope with recent events and other forms of media, like movies. Documentaries like The Social Dilemma have shown exactly what kind of manipulation social media is capable of.

Our dependence on social media is causing large consequences on how we live our lives. Although, the same could potentially be said about any form of media. The only difference is the scale that social media operates on and the instantaneous effect of that power. As a result, we face a dilemma of disinformation, social division spurred by bad-faith actors, and massive influence campaigns driven by social media.

Self-Image Suffers Due to Social Media

We have all gone through periods of comparing ourselves to others, whether it be in school or work. Social media has taken that concept to a whole other level by putting the haves and the have-nots front and center. What started as an honest way to connect with like-minded communities and friends has become a way to sell and buy happiness. Social media has, essentially, turned into a marketing platform.

Facebook, Instagram, and even LinkedIn have all drastically reduced the organic reach of posts with algorithmic timelines. This means fewer and fewer people get to see what you post unless you want to pay for advertising. Only a handful of people, known as influencers, have a massive audience.

And many of them have financial reasons for their posts. They sell products by filling their social feeds with good experiences and amazing places. This leads to a majority of people on the platform trying to make their lives seem just as good. That, in turn, can lead to severe loneliness and pressure from always comparing your life to others without knowing the context behind the pictures.

The Future of Social Media in Society

Social media, in and of itself, is not bad or harmful to society. What makes it harmful is how we use it and how we feel about ourselves while using it.

Right now, that pendulum is swinging in the wrong direction, but all it takes is enough people choosing to use it for the right reasons.

Social Media Brings More Harm Than Good Essay

Does the social media bring more harm than good to you? “Social media is the collective of online communications channels dedicated to community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration” (Rouse,2016). There are many forms of social media ranging from websites, forums, blogs and many more. Although social media has been beneficial for us regardless of our age, it has brought about many consequences as well. Some people argue that social media is good for us because it has allowed us to widen our social circles. (Wallace)2014 said that “in the survey of more than 1,000 13- to 17-year-olds about how they view their digital lives, 28% said social networking made them feel more outgoing versus 5% who said it made them feel less so; and 29% said it made them feel less shy versus the 3% who said it made them feel more introverted.” To me, this is the case in our current generation. Nowadays, if we were to …show more content…

For instance, In Singapore, “those aged between 16 and 30 - spend an average of one day a week, or 3.4 hours per day, on their mobile phones, according to a study conducted by global research consultancy TNS.” (Lee ,2015). This shows that many people are being hooked to the social media. They just cannot seem to move away from it as they will tend to have a withdrawal symptoms after a short while. It is so bad to the extent that; social media has become a need in our lives. It feels as though something is missing in our lives without social media. Social media has become a priority over anything else. We will spend more time using social media instead of interacting with families and friends. This addiction could cause families and friendships to be broken due to the lack of interaction. When we are addicted to social media, we will tend to keep to ourselves and not talk to anybody which makes us antisocial. Therefore, social media is more harmful for us as it leads to an

Loneliness In David Ludden's Does Using Social Media Make You Lonely

To further convince the reader, Ludden uses a study referenced in a journal by the credible Duke University psychologist, Jenna Clark. The study addresses college students and how the more Facebook friends that freshman had, the less socially adjusted they felt, whereas with seniors, the more Facebook friends they had, the more socially adjusted they felt (Ludden). This was due to a majority of the freshmans' friends being friends from high school or back home, whereas most of the seniors' friends were friends that they had made in college, therefore they were more connected with them because they interacted with them both online and in person. This study makes it easier to understand how the effect that social media has on you fully depends on your use of it. It makes sense that one would feel isolated and less connected to their environment when they are spending their free time connecting with those who aren’t around them.

Why Is Social Media Good Or Bad

On most of these sites, users may establish informal bio profiles, keep in touch with friends and strangers, do research, share thoughts, music, photos, and more. Social media can harm us if used wrong but, on the alternative side we can use it to keep up with news, help young children and teenagers also, offer help to a few people in need. Social media can be good without a doubt but there are disadvantages to it as well. Around 41% of Americans stay-up-to-date with social media. 78.5% of conventional media journalists surveyed utilized web-based social networking to check for breaking news.

Persuasive Essay: Dangers Of Social Media

Dangers of Social Media Lots of people post on social media about their beliefs right? People post their oppian on the network everyday. Many people get in trouble because they forget that nothing goes away and anyone can look at it. Lots of people don't know that when they apply for a job their social media can be searched or checked.

Essay On Social Media Ruining Society

Thirty years ago, the concept of social media would have seemed impossible. A place where a person can show everyone they know what they are doing in two seconds from any city seems insane. Today, it is the daily ritual of the average teenager, including myself. I start my mornings looking at Instagram and end my nights looking at Snapchat. The middle of the day is for YouTube.

Negative Effects Of Social Media Essay

I. INTRODUCTION Social Networking Sites (SNSs) are online platforms that users use to create Personal profiles, associates with companion and fuss in different parts. Social networking sites exhibits individual profile and facilitates with various other activities such as sharing information with each other. Social networking sites grab million of people in the globe who are united these websites into their daily life style. Social networking sites will become famous all over the world.

Argumentative Impact Of Social Media On Society

As indicated by different research studies in the field of online social networks, it has been uncovered that these sites are impacting the societies in both positive and negative ways. So the “Impacts of social media on humanity” is a hot topic for discussion. Different people have different views about the impact of social media. Some people say that social media have played a beneficial role toward the progress of humanity and some people say that a deterrent role has been played by the social media towards the progress of humanity. Social media has more deterrent impact on progress of humanity.

Persuasive Essay On Social Media

So many people are on one network online, social media has essentially become a second world. That being said, social media should not be encouraged to the public. At first use, social media does not seem dangerous, but it is. These sites diminish its user’s privacy to the point that it is accepted (Anderson 1). Not only do social networks hurt us, but users use it in a way for emotional self-harm.

How Social Media Affects Relationships Essay

Social Media: Affects Relationships As technology progresses more and more, there have been great changes that have made our lives more easy and efficient. There are many advantages that technology has brought upon us, one in particular is the Internet. The Internet has allowed people to be connected quickly to information and be updated to the issues and happenings around us, but the social networks that have been invented to allow long distance connection have been resulting in negative outcomes for society and our generation. Social media gets in the way of building actual relationships, makes people become inauthentic about their lives and lowers their self-esteem, and has become a dangerous and threatening nature. During these days, it seems as if nobody can live without checking their social media accounts, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

Does Social Media Positive Impact On Society

Does social media have a positive impact on society Social media, a form of electronic communication channel which is useful for sharing information, pictures, personal texts, ideas, is one of the most popular technologies today. However, in recent years, the question of whether social media is a positive or negative trend has been raised. Although some people argue that social media has a negative impact on society, I believe that social media is beneficial for society in a number of ways. Firstly, social media makes communication a lot easier than before. In the past, most people used phones and letters for communicating with others; they were not an effective way of communication because they were time consuming and not instant.

Argumentative Essay On Social Media Advantages And Disadvantages

Imagine that 20 years ago the only way to stay in touch with a person was to mail a letter. In a modern world with the invention of social media, people can converse with someone using the internet and get a response within seconds. Although in the course of time all generations have started to take advantage of the novations that social media has brought about, teenagers and young adults are the most active users of these networks. According to numerous research studies in the area of online social networks, it has been shown that such sites are impacting the lives of the youth significantly. Understandably, there are a lot of different opinions about its positive and negative influence.

Causes And Effects Of Social Media Addiction

BODY 1. One of the effects for social networking addiction is spending too much time to online. People will use a lot of time in social network such as they will always post status and photo in Facebook and instagram, stalking others people status and so on. 1. Spending too much of time to social networking will cause people especially students poor in academic.

Essay On Impact Of Social Media On Students

With the internet being invented and undoubtedly taking huge precedence in our lives, there is inevitably going to be a way for people to waste their time on the internet. That time waster, also known as social media, is one of the most beneficial and also one of the worst things that has entered the lives of people as a result of the internet. People everywhere use social media. They use it to feel connected to people who are far away, to promote their businesses, and for a plethora of other reasons. Social media has begun to be increasing used in school, the workplace, and also just in peoples own homes.

Said “shannon Poppito, a phychologist at baylor medical university in Dallas”states that when people spend more time in social media, they break off the relationship from real life end up feeling less connected with them selves. According to myself as an example of anti-social make us not confident when showing ourselves in front of others and cause confidence to decline. This is because social media users become lazy to learn to communicate real , just share and interect in the virtual world. For example when someone is in the cafe opening social media sites they often forget the time.

Essay On Effects Of Social Media On Students

Chapter 1 Background of the Study Introduction In the contemporary world, most people use social media for news, entertainment, to seek information and to be updated every day. Nowadays, the use of social media has greatly changed how people interact with other people. Today, most people only consider the benefits that the social media brought to the people without thinking about the possible negative implications of using it.

Disadvantages Of Social Media Essay

Thus, social media just offer limited meeting. Psychologist, Aric Sigman says, “The use of social networking sites as opposed to face-to-face interaction could lead to major health problems.” He also claimed in the British Journal: The Biologist, “Spending too much time online could lead to social isolation, loneliness a negative outlook. These types of psychological symptoms could eventually lead to more serious health concerns, such as heart disease, cancer and

More about Social Media Brings More Harm Than Good Essay

Argumentative Essays About Social Media

This is a comprehensive resource to help you find the perfect social media essay topic. Whether you're navigating the complexities of digital communication, exploring the impact of social media on society, or examining its effects on personal identity, the right topic can transform your essay into a captivating and insightful exploration. Remember, selecting a topic that resonates with your personal interests and academic goals not only makes the writing process more enjoyable but also enriches your learning experience. Let's dive into a world of creativity and critical thinking!

Essay Types and Topics

Below, you'll find a curated list of essay topics organized by type. Each section includes diverse topics that touch on technology, society, personal growth, and academic interests, along with introduction and conclusion paragraph examples to get you started.

Argumentative Essays

Introduction Example: "In the digital age, social media platforms have become central to our daily interactions and self-perception, particularly among teenagers. This essay explores the impact of social media on teen self-esteem, arguing that while it offers a space for expression and connection, it also presents significant challenges to self-image. "

Conclusion Example: "Having delved into the complex relationship between social media and teen self-esteem, it is clear that the digital landscape holds profound effects on individual self-perception. This essay reaffirms the thesis that social media can both uplift and undermine teen self-esteem, calling for a balanced approach to digital engagement."

Introduction Example: "As political landscapes evolve, social media has emerged as a powerful tool for political mobilization and engagement. This essay investigates the role of social media in shaping political movements, positing that it significantly enhances communication and organizational capabilities, yet raises questions about information authenticity. "

Conclusion Example: "Through examining the dual facets of social media in political mobilization, the essay concludes that while social media is a pivotal tool for engagement, it necessitates critical scrutiny of information to ensure a well-informed public discourse."

Compare and Contrast Essays

Introduction Example: "In the competitive realm of digital marketing, Instagram and Twitter stand out as leading platforms for brand promotion. This essay compares and contrasts their effectiveness, revealing that each platform caters to unique marketing strengths due to its specific user engagement and content dissemination strategies. "

Conclusion Example: "The comparative analysis of Instagram and Twitter highlights distinct advantages for brands, with Instagram excelling in visual storytelling and Twitter in real-time engagement, underscoring the importance of strategic platform selection in digital marketing."

Descriptive Essays

Introduction Example: "Today's social media landscape is a vibrant tapestry of platforms, each contributing to the digital era's social fabric. This essay describes the characteristics and cultural significance of current social media trends, illustrating that they reflect and shape our societal values and interactions. "

Conclusion Example: "In portraying the dynamic and diverse nature of today's social media landscape, this essay underscores its role in molding contemporary cultural and social paradigms, inviting readers to reflect on their digital footprints."

Persuasive Essays

Introduction Example: "In an era where digital presence is ubiquitous, fostering positive social media habits is essential for mental and emotional well-being. This essay advocates for mindful social media use, arguing that intentional engagement can enhance our life experiences rather than detract from them. "

Conclusion Example: "This essay has championed the cause for positive social media habits, reinforcing the thesis that through mindful engagement, individuals can navigate the digital world in a way that promotes personal growth and well-being."

Narrative Essays

Introduction Example: "Embarking on a personal journey with social media has been both enlightening and challenging. This narrative essay delves into my experiences, highlighting how social media has influenced my perception of self and community. "

Conclusion Example: "Reflecting on my social media journey, this essay concludes that while it has significantly shaped my interactions and self-view, it has also offered invaluable lessons on connectivity and self-awareness, affirming the nuanced role of digital platforms in our lives."

Engagement and Creativity

As you explore these topics, remember to approach your essay with an open mind and creative spirit. The purpose of academic writing is not just to inform but to engage and provoke thought. Use this opportunity to delve deep into your topic, analyze different perspectives, and articulate your own insights.

Educational Value

Each essay type offers unique learning outcomes. Argumentative essays enhance your analytical thinking and ability to construct well-founded arguments. Compare and contrast essays develop your skills in identifying similarities and differences. Descriptive essays improve your ability to paint vivid pictures through words, while persuasive essays refine your ability to influence and convince. Finally, narrative essays offer a platform for personal expression and storytelling. Embrace these opportunities to grow academically and personally.

Some Easy Argumentative Essay Topics on Social Media

The Impact of Social Media: Advantages and Disadvantages
Is Social Media Enhancing or Eroding Our Real-Life Social Skills?
Should There Be Stricter Regulations on Social Media Content to Protect Youth?
Social Media's Role in Relationships: Communication Enhancer or Barrier
Does Social Media Contribute to Political Polarization?
The Role of Social Media in Shaping Perceptions of Divorce
The Impact of Social Media on Mental Health: Benefit or Harm?
Can Social Media Be Considered a Reliable Source of News and Information?
Is Social Media Responsible for the Rise in Cyberbullying?
Impact of Social Media on Mental Health
Does Social Media Promote Narcissism and Self-Centered Behaviors?
The Role of Social Media in Business Marketing: Is It Indispensable?

The Impact of Social Media: Causes and Effects

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Social Media Cons and Prons: Evaluating Its Advantages and Disadvantage

The importance of staying safe on social media, impact of social media on our lives, social media: negative effects and addiction, discussion on whether is social media beneficial or harmful for society, negative effects of social media: relationships and communication, social media pros and cons, social media - good and bad sides, a study of the role of social media concerning confidentiality of personal data, how social media causes stereotyping, social media addiction: consequences and strategies for recovery, the role of social media in making us more narcissistic, the effect social media is having on today's society and political atmosphere, digital/social media, censorship in social media, why teenagers are addicted to social media and how it affects them, advantages and disadvantages of social media for society, enormous impact of mass media on children, the role of social media in the current business world, social media is the reason for many of the world’s problems and solutions.

Social media refers to dynamic online platforms that enable individuals to actively engage in the generation and dissemination of various forms of content, including information, ideas, and personal interests. These interactive digital channels foster virtual communities and networks, allowing users to connect, communicate, and express themselves. By harnessing the power of technology, social media platforms provide a space for individuals to share and exchange content, fostering connections and facilitating the flow of information in an increasingly digital world.

In a peculiar manner, the inception of social media can be traced back to May 24, 1844, when a sequence of electronic dots and dashes was manually tapped on a telegraph machine. Although the origins of digital communication have deep historical roots, most contemporary narratives regarding the modern beginnings of the internet and social media often point to the emergence of the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) in 1969. The year 1987 witnessed the establishment of the direct precursor to today's internet, as the National Science Foundation introduced the more robust and expansive NSFNET, a nationwide digital network. A significant milestone occurred in 1997 when Six Degrees, the first genuine social media platform, was launched.

Mark Zuckerberg is a notable figure in the realm of social media as the co-founder and CEO of Facebook. Zuckerberg played a pivotal role in transforming Facebook from a small networking platform for college students into a global social media giant with billions of users. His innovative ideas and strategic decisions have reshaped the way people connect and share information online, making him one of the most influential individuals in the digital age. Jack Dorsey is recognized as one of the key pioneers of social media, notably for co-founding Twitter. Dorsey's creation revolutionized online communication by introducing the concept of microblogging, allowing users to share short messages in real-time. Twitter quickly gained popularity, becoming a powerful platform for news dissemination, public conversations, and social movements. Dorsey's entrepreneurial spirit and vision have contributed significantly to the evolution of social media and its impact on society. Sheryl Sandberg is a prominent figure in the social media landscape, known for her influential role as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Facebook.Sandberg played a crucial part in scaling and monetizing Facebook's operations, transforming it into a global advertising powerhouse. She is also recognized for her advocacy of women's empowerment and leadership in the tech industry, inspiring countless individuals and promoting diversity and inclusion within the social media sphere. Sandberg's contributions have left an indelible mark on the growth and development of social media platforms worldwide.

Social Networking Sites: Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace. Microblogging Platforms: Twitter. Media Sharing Networks: Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat. Discussion Forums and Community-Based Platforms: Reddit and Quora. Blogging Platforms: WordPress and Blogger. Social Bookmarking and Content Curation Platforms: Pinterest and Flipboard. Messaging Apps: WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat.

Facebook (2004), Reddit (2005), Twitter (2006), Instagram (2010), Pinterest (2010), Snapchat (2011), TikTok (2016)

1. Increased Connectivity 2. Information Sharing and Awareness 3. Networking and Professional Opportunities 4. Creativity and Self-Expression 5. Supportive Communities and Causes

1. Privacy Concerns 2. Cyberbullying and Online Harassment 3. Information Overload and Misinformation 4. Time and Productivity Drain 5. Comparison and Self-Esteem Issues

The topic of social media holds significant importance for students as it plays a prominent role in their lives, both academically and socially. Social media platforms provide students with opportunities to connect, collaborate, and share knowledge with peers, expanding their learning networks beyond the confines of the classroom. It facilitates communication and access to educational resources, allowing students to stay updated on academic trends and research. Additionally, social media enhances digital literacy and prepares students for the realities of the digital age. However, it is crucial for students to develop critical thinking skills to navigate the potential pitfalls of social media, such as misinformation and online safety, ensuring a responsible and balanced use of these platforms.

The topic of social media is worthy of being explored in an essay due to its profound impact on various aspects of society. Writing an essay on social media allows for an in-depth examination of its influence on communication, relationships, information sharing, and societal dynamics. It offers an opportunity to analyze the advantages and disadvantages, exploring topics such as privacy, online identities, social activism, and the role of social media in shaping cultural norms. Additionally, studying social media enables a critical evaluation of its effects on mental health, politics, and business. By delving into this subject, one can gain a comprehensive understanding of the complex and ever-evolving digital landscape we inhabit.

1. Social media users spend an average of 2 hours and 25 minutes per day on social networking platforms. This amounts to over 7 years of an individual's lifetime spent on social media, highlighting its significant presence in our daily lives. 2. Instagram has over 1 billion monthly active users, with more than 500 million of them using the platform on a daily basis. 3. YouTube has over 2 billion logged-in monthly active users. On average, users spend over 1 billion hours watching YouTube videos every day, emphasizing the platform's extensive reach and the power of video content. 4. Social media has become a major news source, with 48% of people getting their news from social media platforms. This shift in news consumption highlights the role of social media in shaping public opinion and disseminating information in real-time. 5. Influencer marketing has grown exponentially, with 63% of marketers planning to increase their influencer marketing budget in the coming year. This showcases the effectiveness of influencers in reaching and engaging with target audiences, and the value brands place on leveraging social media personalities to promote their products or services.

1. Schober, M. F., Pasek, J., Guggenheim, L., Lampe, C., & Conrad, F. G. (2016). Social media analyses for social measurement. Public opinion quarterly, 80(1), 180-211. (https://academic.oup.com/poq/article-abstract/80/1/180/2593846) 2. Appel, G., Grewal, L., Hadi, R., & Stephen, A. T. (2020). The future of social media in marketing. Journal of the Academy of Marketing science, 48(1), 79-95. (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11747-019-00695-1?error=cookies_not_support) 3. Aichner, T., Grünfelder, M., Maurer, O., & Jegeni, D. (2021). Twenty-five years of social media: a review of social media applications and definitions from 1994 to 2019. Cyberpsychology, behavior, and social networking, 24(4), 215-222. (https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/cyber.2020.0134) 4. Ruths, D., & Pfeffer, J. (2014). Social media for large studies of behavior. Science, 346(6213), 1063-1064. (https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.346.6213.1063) 5. Hou, Y., Xiong, D., Jiang, T., Song, L., & Wang, Q. (2019). Social media addiction: Its impact, mediation, and intervention. Cyberpsychology: Journal of psychosocial research on cyberspace, 13(1). (https://cyberpsychology.eu/article/view/11562) 6. Auxier, B., & Anderson, M. (2021). Social media use in 2021. Pew Research Center, 1, 1-4. (https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2021/04/PI_2021.04.07_Social-Media-Use_FINAL.pdf) 7. Al-Samarraie, H., Bello, K. A., Alzahrani, A. I., Smith, A. P., & Emele, C. (2021). Young users' social media addiction: causes, consequences and preventions. Information Technology & People, 35(7), 2314-2343. (https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/ITP-11-2020-0753/full/html) 8. Bhargava, V. R., & Velasquez, M. (2021). Ethics of the attention economy: The problem of social media addiction. Business Ethics Quarterly, 31(3), 321-359. (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/business-ethics-quarterly/article/ethics-of-the-attention-economy-the-problem-of-social-mediaaddiction/1CC67609A12E9A912BB8A291FDFFE799)

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Does social media impact mental health? What we really know

argumentative essay on does social media do more harm than good

Over the last 20 years, social media has risen from relative obscurity to become a fully accepted and integrated part of everyday life. However, despite social media’s ubiquity, the research on how it affects mental health remains inconclusive.

So far, most research investigating the effects of social media on mental health has focused on the potential negative aspects.

For instance, a 2019 study involving 6,595 teenagers from the United States concludes that those who spend more than 3 hours per day on social media may have a higher risk of mental health problems than those who do not.

But the degree to which social media actually harms mental health is debatable. A recent review, available as a preprint , found that most studies investigating the link between social media and mental health demonstrate “weak” or “inconsistent” associations.

Another review found that while there may be a small negative association between social media use and mental health, the link is complex and depends on exactly how researchers define mental health and social media use.

Meanwhile, other research suggests that social media may even benefit mental health, especially for people belonging to LGBTQIA+ communities and those living with mental health conditions.

These conflicting findings make it challenging to navigate the research investigating the effects of social media on mental health and how best to use social media. With this in mind, Medical News Today sought the input of seven psychology experts at the intersection of social media and mental health.

‘We simply don’t know about cause and effect’

“One promising area of research is the role of online peer networks, where it appears that connecting online with others who share similar mental health challenges can offer important benefits for feeling less alone, learning coping skills, and being able to offer/receive emotional or informational support from others,” Dr. John Naslund, Ph.D. , an instructor in global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School, told MNT.

Dr. Niklas Johannes , a postdoctoral researcher in the Adolescent Well-Being in the Digital Age program at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, agreed that social media might be linked to some mental health benefits. However, he added that more research is necessary to confirm the direction in which this connection lies.

“There’s a lot of research out there that suggests social media are a useful tool to stay connected to others. In fact, those who use social media more also report feeling more social support. However, all of this comes with a huge caveat: We simply don’t know about cause and effect. It’s just as plausible that heavy social media users make more friends or that those with a lot of friends use more social media. It’s also plausible that both are true,” he explained.

Other research suggests that “how” a person uses social media rather than “how much” may have a stronger association with mental health outcomes.

“There is evidence that routine social media use in the general population is positively associated with mental health and social well-being, as long as one is not ’emotionally invested’ in the media, in which case the outcomes are negative,” Dan-Mircea Mirea , a doctoral candidate in psychology at Princeton University, and project coordinator at Mental Health for Romania, told MNT.

Dr. Gonneke Stevens , associate professor of social and behavioral sciences at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, agreed that “emotional investment” in social media use may be more indicative of mental health outcomes than how much a person uses it.

“[O]ur research suggests that not so much the intense use of social media, but social media use problems — that is, addiction-like symptoms such as feeling bad when social media use is restricted, loss of control over and preoccupation with social media, and conflicts with others because of the social media use — are associated with mental health problems.” – Dr. Gonneke Stevens

“Indeed, we found that social media use problems predicted increases in mental health problems 1 year later — this was true for both depressive symptoms and ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder] symptoms,” she added.

Social media and mental health risk factors

“For children and teens, I think the most compelling evidence is the research regarding cyberbullying on social media,” said Dr. Kya Barounis , a senior mental health researcher at the University of California, San Diego. “Cyberbullying is associated with symptoms of depression and suicidality. It may be a particular problem for youth who identify as sexual or gender minorities.”

Dr. Barounis also noted that social media use could displace other behaviors, such as sleep and exercise, which are “important for maintaining good mental health.” Researchers study this process through what is known as “ displacement theory .”

To give an example, she said: “If a youth is staying up late each night on social media and not getting enough sleep, the lack of sleep can lead to feelings of irritability or depressed mood the next day.”

She cautioned, however, that this does not mean that social media use causes mental health conditions, noting that the relationship between chronic sleep problems and clinical depression in youth is complicated.

Dr. Naslund agreed that social media can perpetuate “targeted hate from others” or cyberbullying, which can have a negative effect.

He added that although research related to social media and mental health is generally mixed, “exposure to hateful content online — such as viewing or being targeted by derogatory content targeting race, ethnicity, or gender — is associated with poorer mental health and feelings of distress.”

Questionable data

Beyond the risk of cyberbullying and exposure to hate content, others say that it is important to interpret with caution any studies related to more generalized social media use because they are often based on unreliable data.

“There are multiple observational studies that find that social media use is negatively associated with mental health,” said Mirea.

“However,” he added, “there are also studies looking at similar datasets, or sometimes the same dataset with different methods, that find no effect. One study found only small negative associations between mental health and using digital/electronic technologies, including social media — about as large as regularly eating potatoes!”

“It seems that the conclusions are very much affected by how researchers analyze their data, which makes it hard to draw a concrete conclusion about to what extent social media has negative effects on mental health. A plausible explanation for these unclear findings is that social media use affects some people more and others less.” – Dan-Mircea Mirea

To give an example of how difficult it can be to interpret studies on the mental health effects of social media, Dr. Craig Sewall , a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pittsburgh, told MNT :

“The strongest evidence indicating that social media can have negative effects on mental health — that I am aware of — comes from a randomized experiment that examined the impact of Facebook deactivation on well-being among a large sample of U.S. adults. This study found that, overall, the group that deactivated their Facebook account experienced increased levels of subjective well-being compared with the group that did not.”

“However, there are a couple of important limitations to this study. First, the ‘treatment effect’ — that is, the effect of deactivating Facebook — was very small. Second, the sample of participants was older, so it’s not clear how these results would apply to younger people,” Dr. Sewall noted.

“And, finally, it’s unclear whether the effects observed for deactivating Facebook would be consistent across other social media platforms, as there are many differences between Facebook and TikTok, for example.”

Best to look at the different aspects of social media separately

For some people, it is also difficult to establish whether social media has positive or negative effects on mental health because it is unclear to which platform or platforms the terms “social media” refer.

Dr. Jacob T. Fisher , assistant professor at the Institute of Communications Research and the College of Media at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, told MNT :

“I just don’t really know that we have compelling evidence for ‘social media,’ in a general sense, having adverse effects on mental health. ‘Social media,’ as a descriptor, covers a vast range of platforms and services, each of which is very different from one another, enabling and incentivizing very different sorts of behaviors. To add to this, both social media platforms and how people use social media have changed drastically over the years.”

“In this sense,” he said, “trying to define the ‘effect [of] social media on well-being’ is a lot like trying to determine the ‘effect of food on health’ — the question is so broad so as to be essentially unanswerable.”

“In my opinion,” Dr. Fisher added, “a better approach would be to break apart the different features and design decisions that comprise social media platforms — how information is presented, how the algorithm amplifies or suppresses content, the behavioral engineering involved in how a platform solicits (or even demands) our attention — and start to investigate the influence of those things on well-being.”

“A central issue here is that social media platforms refuse to share data that can begin to answer these questions with researchers like my colleagues and me,” he explained.

Caution when interpreting research

“There are two completely different stories being told about the effects of social media on well-being,” said Dr. Sewall. “In the popular media — where the vast majority of people get their information on this subject — the story is often some version of ‘social media is bad, especially for younger people.'”

Yet, he cautioned, “[t]he evidence cited in these popular media pieces is often cherry-picked, oversimplified, and overinterpreted — giving the impression to readers that social media causes harm to well-being.”

“On the other hand, in the scientific literature — which has a much smaller, niche readership — the story is much more complicated . The fundamental complexity of the issue combined with a litany of methodological issues and contradictory findings make it difficult, if not impossible, to conclude anything with confidence,” Dr. Sewall added.

“If anything, our best evidence to date suggests that social media does not have a meaningful impact on well-being. However, this story — that it’s very complicated, and there’s a lot we don’t know — does not generate many clicks,” he explained.

Dr. Barounis added that much research on the topic is based on people having symptoms of mental health issues, as opposed to receiving a formal diagnosis. “It’s really important to distinguish between symptoms of mental health problems versus a diagnosis of a mental health problem,” he explained. “One can have a few symptoms without having a full diagnosis. So far, a lot of researchers have examined the relationship between social media use and symptoms of depression or anxiety (as measured on a survey) in typically developing youth.”

“It is a mistake to interpret a positive relationship in these studies’ results as evidence that social media use causes youth to meet all of the criteria for a diagnosis of clinical anxiety or depression. Also, there is a measurement issue. Self-reports of time spent on social media may not be very accurate,” she explained.

To help navigate through exaggerated claims and confusing literature, Mirea recommended four points to bear in mind when looking into the link between social media and mental health:

Follow trustworthy sources (academic journals or trusted outlets ) : You shouldn’t have to play the detective every time you see a scientific claim. Fortunately, if your sources are reputable, most of the work is being done for you.
Avoid clickbait-sounding headlines: Good reporting would never trade accuracy for the prospect of attracting your attention. Also, be cautious if an article uses words that a scientist (especially one in the social or clinical sciences) would never use — such as that something is “a fact” or that they “proved” something.
Be wary of ideological content [and] your own biases: Ask yourself: “Do I want this to be true, or the opposite?” If so, then be extra careful when assessing the information.
Ask an expert friend, if you have one: If you’re in doubt about the scientific aspects of a claim and you’re not sure how to assess it, think of someone you know that might be able to help (such as someone that majored in that field in college — e.g., biosciences for COVID-19 studies or psychology for mental health studies).

Social media use for better mental health

Dr. Barounis recommended that parents or caregivers of children and adolescents “talk with their children about cyberbullying and take steps to address it if it is occurring.”

She further explained: “Parents can also monitor their child’s use to see if it is displacing healthier behaviors, like sleep and exercise. Simple steps, like limiting use before bedtime and charging mobile devices outside the bedroom, can help prevent social media use from disrupting sleep.”

“In terms of the pandemic, parents should remind youth that a lot of their friends and followers on social media may be feeling slightly anxious or depressed during these uncertain times. Youth can support these friends and followers by refraining from posting content that could be misinterpreted in a negative way (i.e., a joking comment in reaction to someone’s post that might come across as mean-spirited) or content that could increase anxiety.” – Dr. Kya Barounis

Due to a lack of consensus on whether and how social media relates to mental health, some experts say that it is difficult to make specific recommendations.

“Unfortunately, the scientific evidence isn’t strong enough to make specific recommendations,” said Dr. Johannes. “I’d advise, just like with any other activity, to observe what’s good for the user. If I feel like I’m comparing myself with others and it isn’t good for me, then take more breaks and maybe focus on different functions of social media. If I feel lonely and know that going on social media makes me feel connected, go for it. It’s rather obvious advice, I’m afraid.”

For others, using social media with an intention clearly in mind is key to avoiding getting swept up in any of its potentially harmful effects — from wasting time to damaging mental well-being.

“I’d suggest that the best way for people to use social media is to use it intentionally ,” said Dr. Fisher. “Like lots of big businesses, social media platforms frequently incentivize mindlessness on the part of their users because it makes it easier for them to make money (both from showing you advertisements and collecting more data about you).”

“Curate who you follow, how much time you spend on the platform(s), etc., and do your best to cultivate a healthy relationship with the platforms you use,” he added.

“Something that is becoming clear from recent studies is that the effects of social media, or certain aspects of social media use, can differ significantly from person to person,” said Dr. Sewall. “So, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach.”

“However, in general, I’d say the best way to use social media is to make sure you are getting out of it what you are intending. That is, if you are intending to use social media as a way to stay connected with others, or as a form of entertainment, or whatever, try to be mindful about whether the way you are using social media in that instance is helping you meet that intention,” he concluded.

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Argumentative Essay Writing

Argumentative Essay About Social Media

Crafting a Winning Argumentative Essay on Social Media

Published on: Feb 27, 2023

Last updated on: Jan 31, 2024

Argumentative Essay- Explained

Before writing an argumentative essay about social media, it's important to understand what makes up a good argumentative essay.

An argumentative essay is an article that presents both sides of an issue or debate in order to reach a conclusion.

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Why Do We Write an Argumentative Essay About Social Media?

This type of essay can be difficult because it requires you to present both sides of the argument in a balanced and unbiased manner.

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Steps to Write an Argumentative Essay About Social Media

Writing an argumentative essay about social media requires research, facts, and evidence.

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Research To Collect Data and Material

The first step in writing an argumentative essay about social media is to do research and collect data .

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Form a Descriptive Outline

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Write an Introduction of an Argumentative Essay About Social Media

Your introduction should be engaging and introduce readers to the main topic of your paper.

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Write Connect The Body Paragraphs Of Your Essay

In each body paragraph, provide evidence or facts that prove why your opinion is correct.

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Write A Compelling Conclusion

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Argumentative Essay About Social Media Pdf

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Argumentative Essay About Social Media And Mental Health

Short Argumentative Essay About Social Media

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Argumentative Essay About Social Media Negative Impact

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Argumentative Essay About Social Media Topics

If youâre looking for topics to write about in your argumentative essay about social media, take a look at the list below for some ideas:

The Impact of Social Media on Human Interaction
How Can We Limit Social Media Use?
Is Social Media Harmful/Beneficial to Mental Health?
Social Media and Its Effect on the Education System
Is Social Media Really a Positive Influence on Young People?
The Impact of Social Media on Privacy
How Has Social Media Changed Society in Recent Years?
Should We Censor Content Posted on Social Media Platforms like Twitter and Facebook?
Does Social Media Make Us Feel More Alone?
Are Social Media Users Becoming Increasingly Narcissistic?
Should We Rely on Social Media for News Sources?
Is Social Media a Tool of Surveillance?

Check our comprehensive blog on argumentative essay topics to get more topic ideas!

The platform that you use to communicate with others can be a great tool or it can do more harm than good. It all depends on how you use it and what your intentions are.

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Can Social Media Have A Structure That Does More Good Than Harm?

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Professor Zeynep Tufekci of the University of North Carolina about how social media impacts people's social connections and private lives.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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How Harmful Is Social Media?

By Gideon Lewis-Kraus

In April, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt published an essay in The Atlantic in which he sought to explain, as the piece’s title had it, “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.” Anyone familiar with Haidt’s work in the past half decade could have anticipated his answer: social media. Although Haidt concedes that political polarization and factional enmity long predate the rise of the platforms, and that there are plenty of other factors involved, he believes that the tools of virality—Facebook’s Like and Share buttons, Twitter’s Retweet function—have algorithmically and irrevocably corroded public life. He has determined that a great historical discontinuity can be dated with some precision to the period between 2010 and 2014, when these features became widely available on phones.

“What changed in the 2010s?” Haidt asks, reminding his audience that a former Twitter developer had once compared the Retweet button to the provision of a four-year-old with a loaded weapon. “A mean tweet doesn’t kill anyone; it is an attempt to shame or punish someone publicly while broadcasting one’s own virtue, brilliance, or tribal loyalties. It’s more a dart than a bullet, causing pain but no fatalities. Even so, from 2009 to 2012, Facebook and Twitter passed out roughly a billion dart guns globally. We’ve been shooting one another ever since.” While the right has thrived on conspiracy-mongering and misinformation, the left has turned punitive: “When everyone was issued a dart gun in the early 2010s, many left-leaning institutions began shooting themselves in the brain. And, unfortunately, those were the brains that inform, instruct, and entertain most of the country.” Haidt’s prevailing metaphor of thoroughgoing fragmentation is the story of the Tower of Babel: the rise of social media has “unwittingly dissolved the mortar of trust, belief in institutions, and shared stories that had held a large and diverse secular democracy together.”

These are, needless to say, common concerns. Chief among Haidt’s worries is that use of social media has left us particularly vulnerable to confirmation bias, or the propensity to fix upon evidence that shores up our prior beliefs. Haidt acknowledges that the extant literature on social media’s effects is large and complex, and that there is something in it for everyone. On January 6, 2021, he was on the phone with Chris Bail, a sociologist at Duke and the author of the recent book “ Breaking the Social Media Prism ,” when Bail urged him to turn on the television. Two weeks later, Haidt wrote to Bail, expressing his frustration at the way Facebook officials consistently cited the same handful of studies in their defense. He suggested that the two of them collaborate on a comprehensive literature review that they could share, as a Google Doc, with other researchers. (Haidt had experimented with such a model before.) Bail was cautious. He told me, “What I said to him was, ‘Well, you know, I’m not sure the research is going to bear out your version of the story,’ and he said, ‘Why don’t we see?’ ”

Bail emphasized that he is not a “platform-basher.” He added, “In my book, my main take is, Yes, the platforms play a role, but we are greatly exaggerating what it’s possible for them to do—how much they could change things no matter who’s at the helm at these companies—and we’re profoundly underestimating the human element, the motivation of users.” He found Haidt’s idea of a Google Doc appealing, in the way that it would produce a kind of living document that existed “somewhere between scholarship and public writing.” Haidt was eager for a forum to test his ideas. “I decided that if I was going to be writing about this—what changed in the universe, around 2014, when things got weird on campus and elsewhere—once again, I’d better be confident I’m right,” he said. “I can’t just go off my feelings and my readings of the biased literature. We all suffer from confirmation bias, and the only cure is other people who don’t share your own.”

Haidt and Bail, along with a research assistant, populated the document over the course of several weeks last year, and in November they invited about two dozen scholars to contribute. Haidt told me, of the difficulties of social-scientific methodology, “When you first approach a question, you don’t even know what it is. ‘Is social media destroying democracy, yes or no?’ That’s not a good question. You can’t answer that question. So what can you ask and answer?” As the document took on a life of its own, tractable rubrics emerged—Does social media make people angrier or more affectively polarized? Does it create political echo chambers? Does it increase the probability of violence? Does it enable foreign governments to increase political dysfunction in the United States and other democracies? Haidt continued, “It’s only after you break it up into lots of answerable questions that you see where the complexity lies.”

Haidt came away with the sense, on balance, that social media was in fact pretty bad. He was disappointed, but not surprised, that Facebook’s response to his article relied on the same three studies they’ve been reciting for years. “This is something you see with breakfast cereals,” he said, noting that a cereal company “might say, ‘Did you know we have twenty-five per cent more riboflavin than the leading brand?’ They’ll point to features where the evidence is in their favor, which distracts you from the over-all fact that your cereal tastes worse and is less healthy.”

After Haidt’s piece was published, the Google Doc—“Social Media and Political Dysfunction: A Collaborative Review”—was made available to the public . Comments piled up, and a new section was added, at the end, to include a miscellany of Twitter threads and Substack essays that appeared in response to Haidt’s interpretation of the evidence. Some colleagues and kibbitzers agreed with Haidt. But others, though they might have shared his basic intuition that something in our experience of social media was amiss, drew upon the same data set to reach less definitive conclusions, or even mildly contradictory ones. Even after the initial flurry of responses to Haidt’s article disappeared into social-media memory, the document, insofar as it captured the state of the social-media debate, remained a lively artifact.

Near the end of the collaborative project’s introduction, the authors warn, “We caution readers not to simply add up the number of studies on each side and declare one side the winner.” The document runs to more than a hundred and fifty pages, and for each question there are affirmative and dissenting studies, as well as some that indicate mixed results. According to one paper, “Political expressions on social media and the online forum were found to (a) reinforce the expressers’ partisan thought process and (b) harden their pre-existing political preferences,” but, according to another, which used data collected during the 2016 election, “Over the course of the campaign, we found media use and attitudes remained relatively stable. Our results also showed that Facebook news use was related to modest over-time spiral of depolarization. Furthermore, we found that people who use Facebook for news were more likely to view both pro- and counter-attitudinal news in each wave. Our results indicated that counter-attitudinal exposure increased over time, which resulted in depolarization.” If results like these seem incompatible, a perplexed reader is given recourse to a study that says, “Our findings indicate that political polarization on social media cannot be conceptualized as a unified phenomenon, as there are significant cross-platform differences.”

Interested in echo chambers? “Our results show that the aggregation of users in homophilic clusters dominate online interactions on Facebook and Twitter,” which seems convincing—except that, as another team has it, “We do not find evidence supporting a strong characterization of ‘echo chambers’ in which the majority of people’s sources of news are mutually exclusive and from opposite poles.” By the end of the file, the vaguely patronizing top-line recommendation against simple summation begins to make more sense. A document that originated as a bulwark against confirmation bias could, as it turned out, just as easily function as a kind of generative device to support anybody’s pet conviction. The only sane response, it seemed, was simply to throw one’s hands in the air.

When I spoke to some of the researchers whose work had been included, I found a combination of broad, visceral unease with the current situation—with the banefulness of harassment and trolling; with the opacity of the platforms; with, well, the widespread presentiment that of course social media is in many ways bad—and a contrastive sense that it might not be catastrophically bad in some of the specific ways that many of us have come to take for granted as true. This was not mere contrarianism, and there was no trace of gleeful mythbusting; the issue was important enough to get right. When I told Bail that the upshot seemed to me to be that exactly nothing was unambiguously clear, he suggested that there was at least some firm ground. He sounded a bit less apocalyptic than Haidt.

“A lot of the stories out there are just wrong,” he told me. “The political echo chamber has been massively overstated. Maybe it’s three to five per cent of people who are properly in an echo chamber.” Echo chambers, as hotboxes of confirmation bias, are counterproductive for democracy. But research indicates that most of us are actually exposed to a wider range of views on social media than we are in real life, where our social networks—in the original use of the term—are rarely heterogeneous. (Haidt told me that this was an issue on which the Google Doc changed his mind; he became convinced that echo chambers probably aren’t as widespread a problem as he’d once imagined.) And too much of a focus on our intuitions about social media’s echo-chamber effect could obscure the relevant counterfactual: a conservative might abandon Twitter only to watch more Fox News. “Stepping outside your echo chamber is supposed to make you moderate, but maybe it makes you more extreme,” Bail said. The research is inchoate and ongoing, and it’s difficult to say anything on the topic with absolute certainty. But this was, in part, Bail’s point: we ought to be less sure about the particular impacts of social media.

Bail went on, “The second story is foreign misinformation.” It’s not that misinformation doesn’t exist, or that it hasn’t had indirect effects, especially when it creates perverse incentives for the mainstream media to cover stories circulating online. Haidt also draws convincingly upon the work of Renée DiResta, the research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, to sketch out a potential future in which the work of shitposting has been outsourced to artificial intelligence, further polluting the informational environment. But, at least so far, very few Americans seem to suffer from consistent exposure to fake news—“probably less than two per cent of Twitter users, maybe fewer now, and for those who were it didn’t change their opinions,” Bail said. This was probably because the people likeliest to consume such spectacles were the sort of people primed to believe them in the first place. “In fact,” he said, “echo chambers might have done something to quarantine that misinformation.”

The final story that Bail wanted to discuss was the “proverbial rabbit hole, the path to algorithmic radicalization,” by which YouTube might serve a viewer increasingly extreme videos. There is some anecdotal evidence to suggest that this does happen, at least on occasion, and such anecdotes are alarming to hear. But a new working paper led by Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth, found that almost all extremist content is either consumed by subscribers to the relevant channels—a sign of actual demand rather than manipulation or preference falsification—or encountered via links from external sites. It’s easy to see why we might prefer if this were not the case: algorithmic radicalization is presumably a simpler problem to solve than the fact that there are people who deliberately seek out vile content. “These are the three stories—echo chambers, foreign influence campaigns, and radicalizing recommendation algorithms—but, when you look at the literature, they’ve all been overstated.” He thought that these findings were crucial for us to assimilate, if only to help us understand that our problems may lie beyond technocratic tinkering. He explained, “Part of my interest in getting this research out there is to demonstrate that everybody is waiting for an Elon Musk to ride in and save us with an algorithm”—or, presumably, the reverse—“and it’s just not going to happen.”

When I spoke with Nyhan, he told me much the same thing: “The most credible research is way out of line with the takes.” He noted, of extremist content and misinformation, that reliable research that “measures exposure to these things finds that the people consuming this content are small minorities who have extreme views already.” The problem with the bulk of the earlier research, Nyhan told me, is that it’s almost all correlational. “Many of these studies will find polarization on social media,” he said. “But that might just be the society we live in reflected on social media!” He hastened to add, “Not that this is untroubling, and none of this is to let these companies, which are exercising a lot of power with very little scrutiny, off the hook. But a lot of the criticisms of them are very poorly founded. . . . The expansion of Internet access coincides with fifteen other trends over time, and separating them is very difficult. The lack of good data is a huge problem insofar as it lets people project their own fears into this area.” He told me, “It’s hard to weigh in on the side of ‘We don’t know, the evidence is weak,’ because those points are always going to be drowned out in our discourse. But these arguments are systematically underprovided in the public domain.”

In his Atlantic article, Haidt leans on a working paper by two social scientists, Philipp Lorenz-Spreen and Lisa Oswald, who took on a comprehensive meta-analysis of about five hundred papers and concluded that “the large majority of reported associations between digital media use and trust appear to be detrimental for democracy.” Haidt writes, “The literature is complex—some studies show benefits, particularly in less developed democracies—but the review found that, on balance, social media amplifies political polarization; foments populism, especially right-wing populism; and is associated with the spread of misinformation.” Nyhan was less convinced that the meta-analysis supported such categorical verdicts, especially once you bracketed the kinds of correlational findings that might simply mirror social and political dynamics. He told me, “If you look at their summary of studies that allow for causal inferences—it’s very mixed.”

As for the studies Nyhan considered most methodologically sound, he pointed to a 2020 article called “The Welfare Effects of Social Media,” by Hunt Allcott, Luca Braghieri, Sarah Eichmeyer, and Matthew Gentzkow. For four weeks prior to the 2018 midterm elections, the authors randomly divided a group of volunteers into two cohorts—one that continued to use Facebook as usual, and another that was paid to deactivate their accounts for that period. They found that deactivation “(i) reduced online activity, while increasing offline activities such as watching TV alone and socializing with family and friends; (ii) reduced both factual news knowledge and political polarization; (iii) increased subjective well-being; and (iv) caused a large persistent reduction in post-experiment Facebook use.” But Gentzkow reminded me that his conclusions, including that Facebook may slightly increase polarization, had to be heavily qualified: “From other kinds of evidence, I think there’s reason to think social media is not the main driver of increasing polarization over the long haul in the United States.”

In the book “ Why We’re Polarized ,” for example, Ezra Klein invokes the work of such scholars as Lilliana Mason to argue that the roots of polarization might be found in, among other factors, the political realignment and nationalization that began in the sixties, and were then sacralized, on the right, by the rise of talk radio and cable news. These dynamics have served to flatten our political identities, weakening our ability or inclination to find compromise. Insofar as some forms of social media encourage the hardening of connections between our identities and a narrow set of opinions, we might increasingly self-select into mutually incomprehensible and hostile groups; Haidt plausibly suggests that these processes are accelerated by the coalescence of social-media tribes around figures of fearful online charisma. “Social media might be more of an amplifier of other things going on rather than a major driver independently,” Gentzkow argued. “I think it takes some gymnastics to tell a story where it’s all primarily driven by social media, especially when you’re looking at different countries, and across different groups.”

Another study, led by Nejla Asimovic and Joshua Tucker, replicated Gentzkow’s approach in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and they found almost precisely the opposite results: the people who stayed on Facebook were, by the end of the study, more positively disposed to their historic out-groups. The authors’ interpretation was that ethnic groups have so little contact in Bosnia that, for some people, social media is essentially the only place where they can form positive images of one another. “To have a replication and have the signs flip like that, it’s pretty stunning,” Bail told me. “It’s a different conversation in every part of the world.”

Nyhan argued that, at least in wealthy Western countries, we might be too heavily discounting the degree to which platforms have responded to criticism: “Everyone is still operating under the view that algorithms simply maximize engagement in a short-term way” with minimal attention to potential externalities. “That might’ve been true when Zuckerberg had seven people working for him, but there are a lot of considerations that go into these rankings now.” He added, “There’s some evidence that, with reverse-chronological feeds”—streams of unwashed content, which some critics argue are less manipulative than algorithmic curation—“people get exposed to more low-quality content, so it’s another case where a very simple notion of ‘algorithms are bad’ doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. It doesn’t mean they’re good, it’s just that we don’t know.”

Bail told me that, over all, he was less confident than Haidt that the available evidence lines up clearly against the platforms. “Maybe there’s a slight majority of studies that say that social media is a net negative, at least in the West, and maybe it’s doing some good in the rest of the world.” But, he noted, “Jon will say that science has this expectation of rigor that can’t keep up with the need in the real world—that even if we don’t have the definitive study that creates the historical counterfactual that Facebook is largely responsible for polarization in the U.S., there’s still a lot pointing in that direction, and I think that’s a fair point.” He paused. “It can’t all be randomized control trials.”

Haidt comes across in conversation as searching and sincere, and, during our exchange, he paused several times to suggest that I include a quote from John Stuart Mill on the importance of good-faith debate to moral progress. In that spirit, I asked him what he thought of the argument, elaborated by some of Haidt’s critics, that the problems he described are fundamentally political, social, and economic, and that to blame social media is to search for lost keys under the streetlamp, where the light is better. He agreed that this was the steelman opponent: there were predecessors for cancel culture in de Tocqueville, and anxiety about new media that went back to the time of the printing press. “This is a perfectly reasonable hypothesis, and it’s absolutely up to the prosecution—people like me—to argue that, no, this time it’s different. But it’s a civil case! The evidential standard is not ‘beyond a reasonable doubt,’ as in a criminal case. It’s just a preponderance of the evidence.”

The way scholars weigh the testimony is subject to their disciplinary orientations. Economists and political scientists tend to believe that you can’t even begin to talk about causal dynamics without a randomized controlled trial, whereas sociologists and psychologists are more comfortable drawing inferences on a correlational basis. Haidt believes that conditions are too dire to take the hardheaded, no-reasonable-doubt view. “The preponderance of the evidence is what we use in public health. If there’s an epidemic—when COVID started, suppose all the scientists had said, ‘No, we gotta be so certain before you do anything’? We have to think about what’s actually happening, what’s likeliest to pay off.” He continued, “We have the largest epidemic ever of teen mental health, and there is no other explanation,” he said. “It is a raging public-health epidemic, and the kids themselves say Instagram did it, and we have some evidence, so is it appropriate to say, ‘Nah, you haven’t proven it’?”

This was his attitude across the board. He argued that social media seemed to aggrandize inflammatory posts and to be correlated with a rise in violence; even if only small groups were exposed to fake news, such beliefs might still proliferate in ways that were hard to measure. “In the post-Babel era, what matters is not the average but the dynamics, the contagion, the exponential amplification,” he said. “Small things can grow very quickly, so arguments that Russian disinformation didn’t matter are like COVID arguments that people coming in from China didn’t have contact with a lot of people.” Given the transformative effects of social media, Haidt insisted, it was important to act now, even in the absence of dispositive evidence. “Academic debates play out over decades and are often never resolved, whereas the social-media environment changes year by year,” he said. “We don’t have the luxury of waiting around five or ten years for literature reviews.”

Haidt could be accused of question-begging—of assuming the existence of a crisis that the research might or might not ultimately underwrite. Still, the gap between the two sides in this case might not be quite as wide as Haidt thinks. Skeptics of his strongest claims are not saying that there’s no there there. Just because the average YouTube user is unlikely to be led to Stormfront videos, Nyhan told me, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t worry that some people are watching Stormfront videos; just because echo chambers and foreign misinformation seem to have had effects only at the margins, Gentzkow said, doesn’t mean they’re entirely irrelevant. “There are many questions here where the thing we as researchers are interested in is how social media affects the average person,” Gentzkow told me. “There’s a different set of questions where all you need is a small number of people to change—questions about ethnic violence in Bangladesh or Sri Lanka, people on YouTube mobilized to do mass shootings. Much of the evidence broadly makes me skeptical that the average effects are as big as the public discussion thinks they are, but I also think there are cases where a small number of people with very extreme views are able to find each other and connect and act.” He added, “That’s where many of the things I’d be most concerned about lie.”

The same might be said about any phenomenon where the base rate is very low but the stakes are very high, such as teen suicide. “It’s another case where those rare edge cases in terms of total social harm may be enormous. You don’t need many teen-age kids to decide to kill themselves or have serious mental-health outcomes in order for the social harm to be really big.” He added, “Almost none of this work is able to get at those edge-case effects, and we have to be careful that if we do establish that the average effect of something is zero, or small, that it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be worried about it—because we might be missing those extremes.” Jaime Settle, a scholar of political behavior at the College of William & Mary and the author of the book “ Frenemies: How Social Media Polarizes America ,” noted that Haidt is “farther along the spectrum of what most academics who study this stuff are going to say we have strong evidence for.” But she understood his impulse: “We do have serious problems, and I’m glad Jon wrote the piece, and down the road I wouldn’t be surprised if we got a fuller handle on the role of social media in all of this—there are definitely ways in which social media has changed our politics for the worse.”

It’s tempting to sidestep the question of diagnosis entirely, and to evaluate Haidt’s essay not on the basis of predictive accuracy—whether social media will lead to the destruction of American democracy—but as a set of proposals for what we might do better. If he is wrong, how much damage are his prescriptions likely to do? Haidt, to his great credit, does not indulge in any wishful thinking, and if his diagnosis is largely technological his prescriptions are sociopolitical. Two of his three major suggestions seem useful and have nothing to do with social media: he thinks that we should end closed primaries and that children should be given wide latitude for unsupervised play. His recommendations for social-media reform are, for the most part, uncontroversial: he believes that preteens shouldn’t be on Instagram and that platforms should share their data with outside researchers—proposals that are both likely to be beneficial and not very costly.

It remains possible, however, that the true costs of social-media anxieties are harder to tabulate. Gentzkow told me that, for the period between 2016 and 2020, the direct effects of misinformation were difficult to discern. “But it might have had a much larger effect because we got so worried about it—a broader impact on trust,” he said. “Even if not that many people were exposed, the narrative that the world is full of fake news, and you can’t trust anything, and other people are being misled about it—well, that might have had a bigger impact than the content itself.” Nyhan had a similar reaction. “There are genuine questions that are really important, but there’s a kind of opportunity cost that is missed here. There’s so much focus on sweeping claims that aren’t actionable, or unfounded claims we can contradict with data, that are crowding out the harms we can demonstrate, and the things we can test, that could make social media better.” He added, “We’re years into this, and we’re still having an uninformed conversation about social media. It’s totally wild.”

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Don’t Believe What They’re Telling You About Misinformation

By Manvir Singh

By Rebecca Mead

Jonathan Haidt on “The Anxious Generation”

Social Media: Beneficial or Harmful? Essay

It is important to note that social media is a core element of the internet, and it reshaped how a modern human perceives information, communicates, socializes, and learns about the outside world. It became a primary lens through which one interacts with others, and thus, it is critical to properly evaluate whether or not such a state of affairs is beneficial or harmful to human wellbeing. The given assessment argues that social media, not the internet, is harmful to society and humanity in general because it reshapes the social fabric, causes loss of reason, logic, attentiveness, and memory, violates individual rights of all people as well as proliferates misinformation, which means that social media’s harms heavily outweigh its benefits.

Firstly, in order to fairly and properly assess the benefits or harms of social media, the latter should be distinguished from the internet. For example, it is stated that “the notion that the Internet is bad for you seems premised on the idea that the Internet is one thing—a monolith” (Goldsmith 597). In other words, the internet is not one thing but rather a collection of vastly different forms of communication, presentation, information exchange, entertainment, interactions, and other functions. Therefore, the internet is a source of many positive aspects of modernity because it not only brings more informational democracy but also prevents restriction and control of the free exchange of knowledge. However, the question is not about the internet as a whole but rather social media. Unlike the internet, which brings a number of benefits, which far outweigh the harms, social media does not bring a similar imbalance in favor of good. Social media was designed to simplify socialization and communication online, but the outcome is unchecked control of the flow of conversation in favor of a specific agenda, profit, and violation of individual rights.

Secondly, not all internet elements utilize artificial intelligence as extensively as social media platforms. The use of AI allows such companies to fine-tune one typology of information consumed, which means that it is social media that makes decisions for its users. While the internet is a library of knowledge, where a person makes a clear choice on what to read, watch, listen to, or interact with, social media uses AI and complex algorithms to influence its user. The underlying business model of all social media platforms is to learn about its user as much as possible and profit from them in a targeted manner. Such a design is not an inherent feature of the internet, which is not constrained to be profitable in this manner since many websites operate through subscriptions, direct sales, or other means. When it comes to such dangers, AI itself can also be a problem. It is stated that “there are indeed concerns about the near-term future of AI —algorithmic traders crashing the economy, or sensitive power grids overreacting to fluctuations and shutting down electricity for large swaths of the population” (Littman 314). In other words, social media’s extensive use of AI in combination with its problematic business model creates a host of issues that are not attributable to the internet.

Thirdly, in addition to social media-specific problems, they are also linked to harms associated with both devices and the internet in general. As stated before, the internet has its harms and benefits, but the latter usually outweighs the former. Similarly, devices come with harms as well as benefits, where the balance is tilted towards the positive aspects. However, not only social media has its inherent design flaws, but it also has problems with devices and the internet in general, which makes their harms far more abundant than benefits. For example, it is stated that “while our phones offer convenience and diversion, they also breed anxiety” (Carr 582). In addition, “as the brain grows dependent on the technology, the research suggests, the intellect weakens,” and “the division of attention impedes reasoning and performance” (Carr 583). Therefore, these device-related problems are multiplied a hundredfold by the fact that social media amplifies distraction and attention division through notifications. Social media is not a highly intellect-strengthening medium either, which further complicates the dependence factor.

Fourthly, social media companies are not properly regulated, and the nature of the business heavily favors oligopoly rather than a proper competitive environment because people want to have a unified platform for communication and audience-building. Therefore, the industry generates highly powerful companies with unchecked capabilities, where the national and even international discourse takes place exclusively on such mediums. For example, one cannot deny the influence of Twitter or Facebook as drivers of political or social discourse. Therefore, there is a conflict of interest among such big tech companies in regards to providing an open and fair platform versus making a profit, and the decision is clearly made in favor of the latter. The very structure of the business model of social media is to influence users to buy the advertisers’ products or services, and thus, it cannot be a just and fair place for discussion on important subjects by definition. Such a state of affairs threatens the fabric of society whether or not these companies intend to do so.

Fifthly, the conflict of interest described in the previous section brings its biggest harm when it comes to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, where private enterprises are not obliged to protect the freedom of speech and expression. Since the national and international discourse and communication are taking the place of social media, where the First Amendment is mandatory to have, these platforms are unable, unwilling, and not obliged to provide it. One can easily observe how such companies can become politically tilted towards one agenda over the other, where accounts of even the most influential individuals can be banned because they violated the terms of service of the company. In other words, a company’s rules override the Constitutional rules. It is important to note that only a better speech can be an answer to a bad speech and not a removal of that voice.

Sixthly, social media platforms are heavily engaged in data collection and privacy violations, which was demonstrated by well-known scandals and criticisms. Once again, the business model of social media companies is structured in such a manner that their primary customers are not users but advertisers. A former group is a form of product or service being sold to advertisers, which means that social media advances surveillance capitalism at its core. In a century where the right to privacy is constantly becoming a problem due to governmental antiterrorism interests, social media further threatens these fundamental rights. The problem is even more dangerous when one considers the ever-increasing cyber threat proliferation, which means a breach of security in a social media company endangers all of its users.

Seventhly, social media does not have a well-structured method of combatting misinformation since its primary incentive is to promote engagement and grab attention. Social media companies are conflicted between ensuring the accuracy of the information on their platform and boosting the interactivity with their users. Such companies want to have interesting pieces of information, which are better provided by misinformation since the truth is always more complex and intricate. Therefore, one can see how social media can become a breeding ground for people with agenda of public deception. In addition, these platforms would not have the capability to ensure the accuracy of information even if they were incentivized somehow. Public panic and political polarization are other phenomena that accompany social networks, and the catalyst for these occurrences is information received both directly by the subject and disseminated using modern social communication technologies.

In conclusion, social media is not the internet, and its harms are far more extensive than the latter because it affects memory, attention, and reason and violates individual rights for privacy, free expression, and fairness in discourse, as well as proliferates misinformation. In addition, social media inherits inherent problems associated with modern devices and the internet in general, which further compounds its harm. Therefore, the effects of social media hurt the social fabric by pretending that it serves its users while its actual customers are advertisers. It also pretends to provide an open and free platform for communication while its very business model implies targeted influence on the user’s preferences. The use of AI also adds to all of the concerns related to artificial intelligence safety.

Works Cited

Carr, Nicholas. “How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds.” They Say/I Say , edited by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, W.W. Norton & Norton Company, 2021, pp. 582-596.

Goldsmith, Kenneth. “Go Ahead: Waste Time on the Internet.” They Say/I Say , edited by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, W.W. Norton & Norton Company, 2021, pp. 597-602.

Littman, Michael. “Rise of the Machines” Is Not a Likely Future.” They Say/I Say , edited by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, W.W. Norton & Norton Company, 2021, pp. 311-314.

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IvyPanda. (2022, July 2). Social Media: Beneficial or Harmful? https://ivypanda.com/essays/social-media-beneficial-or-harmful/

"Social Media: Beneficial or Harmful?" IvyPanda , 2 July 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/social-media-beneficial-or-harmful/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Social Media: Beneficial or Harmful'. 2 July.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Social Media: Beneficial or Harmful?" July 2, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/social-media-beneficial-or-harmful/.

1. IvyPanda . "Social Media: Beneficial or Harmful?" July 2, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/social-media-beneficial-or-harmful/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Social Media: Beneficial or Harmful?" July 2, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/social-media-beneficial-or-harmful/.

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Science News

Social media harms teens’ mental health, mounting evidence shows. what now.

Understanding what is going on in teens’ minds is necessary for targeted policy suggestions

A teen scrolls through social media alone on her phone.

Most teens use social media, often for hours on end. Some social scientists are confident that such use is harming their mental health. Now they want to pinpoint what explains the link.

Carol Yepes/Getty Images

Increasing rigor

Concerns over the effects of social media use in children have been circulating for years, resulting in a massive body of scientific literature. But those mostly correlational studies could not show if teen social media use was harming mental health or if teens with mental health problems were using more social media.

Moreover, the findings from such studies were often inconclusive, or the effects on mental health so small as to be inconsequential. In one study that received considerable media attention, psychologists Amy Orben and Andrew Przybylski combined data from three surveys to see if they could find a link between technology use, including social media, and reduced well-being. The duo gauged the well-being of over 355,000 teenagers by focusing on questions around depression, suicidal thinking and self-esteem.

Digital technology use was associated with a slight decrease in adolescent well-being , Orben, now of the University of Cambridge, and Przybylski, of the University of Oxford, reported in 2019 in Nature Human Behaviour . But the duo downplayed that finding, noting that researchers have observed similar drops in adolescent well-being associated with drinking milk, going to the movies or eating potatoes.

Holes have begun to appear in that narrative thanks to newer, more rigorous studies.

In one longitudinal study, researchers — including Orben and Przybylski — used survey data on social media use and well-being from over 17,400 teens and young adults to look at how individuals’ responses to a question gauging life satisfaction changed between 2011 and 2018. And they dug into how the responses varied by gender, age and time spent on social media.

Social media use was associated with a drop in well-being among teens during certain developmental periods, chiefly puberty and young adulthood, the team reported in 2022 in Nature Communications . That translated to lower well-being scores around ages 11 to 13 for girls and ages 14 to 15 for boys. Both groups also reported a drop in well-being around age 19. Moreover, among the older teens, the team found evidence for the Goldilocks Hypothesis: the idea that both too much and too little time spent on social media can harm mental health.

“There’s hardly any effect if you look over everybody. But if you look at specific age groups, at particularly what [Orben] calls ‘windows of sensitivity’ … you see these clear effects,” says L.J. Shrum, a consumer psychologist at HEC Paris who was not involved with this research. His review of studies related to teen social media use and mental health is forthcoming in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research.

Cause and effect

That longitudinal study hints at causation, researchers say. But one of the clearest ways to pin down cause and effect is through natural or quasi-experiments. For these in-the-wild experiments, researchers must identify situations where the rollout of a societal “treatment” is staggered across space and time. They can then compare outcomes among members of the group who received the treatment to those still in the queue — the control group.

That was the approach Makarin and his team used in their study of Facebook. The researchers homed in on the staggered rollout of Facebook across 775 college campuses from 2004 to 2006. They combined that rollout data with student responses to the National College Health Assessment, a widely used survey of college students’ mental and physical health.

The team then sought to understand if those survey questions captured diagnosable mental health problems. Specifically, they had roughly 500 undergraduate students respond to questions both in the National College Health Assessment and in validated screening tools for depression and anxiety. They found that mental health scores on the assessment predicted scores on the screenings. That suggested that a drop in well-being on the college survey was a good proxy for a corresponding increase in diagnosable mental health disorders.

Compared with campuses that had not yet gained access to Facebook, college campuses with Facebook experienced a 2 percentage point increase in the number of students who met the diagnostic criteria for anxiety or depression, the team found.

When it comes to showing a causal link between social media use in teens and worse mental health, “that study really is the crown jewel right now,” says Cunningham, who was not involved in that research.

A need for nuance

The social media landscape today is vastly different than the landscape of 20 years ago. Facebook is now optimized for maximum addiction, Shrum says, and other newer platforms, such as Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok, have since copied and built on those features. Paired with the ubiquity of social media in general, the negative effects on mental health may well be larger now.

Moreover, social media research tends to focus on young adults — an easier cohort to study than minors. That needs to change, Cunningham says. “Most of us are worried about our high school kids and younger.”

And so, researchers must pivot accordingly. Crucially, simple comparisons of social media users and nonusers no longer make sense. As Orben and Przybylski’s 2022 work suggested, a teen not on social media might well feel worse than one who briefly logs on.

Researchers must also dig into why, and under what circumstances, social media use can harm mental health, Cunningham says. Explanations for this link abound. For instance, social media is thought to crowd out other activities or increase people’s likelihood of comparing themselves unfavorably with others. But big data studies, with their reliance on existing surveys and statistical analyses, cannot address those deeper questions. “These kinds of papers, there’s nothing you can really ask … to find these plausible mechanisms,” Cunningham says.

One ongoing effort to understand social media use from this more nuanced vantage point is the SMART Schools project out of the University of Birmingham in England. Pedagogical expert Victoria Goodyear and her team are comparing mental and physical health outcomes among children who attend schools that have restricted cell phone use to those attending schools without such a policy. The researchers described the protocol of that study of 30 schools and over 1,000 students in the July BMJ Open.

Goodyear and colleagues are also combining that natural experiment with qualitative research. They met with 36 five-person focus groups each consisting of all students, all parents or all educators at six of those schools. The team hopes to learn how students use their phones during the day, how usage practices make students feel, and what the various parties think of restrictions on cell phone use during the school day.

Talking to teens and those in their orbit is the best way to get at the mechanisms by which social media influences well-being — for better or worse, Goodyear says. Moving beyond big data to this more personal approach, however, takes considerable time and effort. “Social media has increased in pace and momentum very, very quickly,” she says. “And research takes a long time to catch up with that process.”

Until that catch-up occurs, though, researchers cannot dole out much advice. “What guidance could we provide to young people, parents and schools to help maintain the positives of social media use?” Goodyear asks. “There’s not concrete evidence yet.”

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Social Issues

Argumentative Essay on Social Media

Today our world is full of a whole lot of opinionated people. Everyone loves to share what they think about almost any topic. Whether the topic is very important or completely irrelevant. Although everyone has opinions on things that are somewhat unimportant, some topics are worth discussing our opinions on. One of which that most definitely has some of the most diverse opinions on is social media. Many people think that social media is distracting, negative, and harmful, while others think it is one of the best things that has ever happened and are addicted to it. Some people love to scroll through Instagram or talk to people on Snapchat; However, they still think that the majority of the time social media is much more harmful than helpful. While Social media can provide a place to catch up with friends and things going on in the world, it also has the ability to completely tear lives apart and in some cases lead to depression or anxiety. People with social media should limit their time on these apps or even in some cases, delete the apps altogether due to the negative effects and all of the drama.

How It Really Is

In contrast to what some people think, Social media is far more harmful than helpful. There are numerous reasons as to why social media is harmful, to start with, there is entirely too much drama and false information that spreads quickly all over social media apps. As a result of this, a whole lot of people are substantially more unhappy with themselves and with their lives. In some cases, social media is even likely to encourage people to do things they should not do and will regret later on in their lives.

One example of this could be whenever somebody is bullying someone through Instagram and the pressure of being like everyone else could possibly make someone go along with it just because everyone else is doing it. Although a great deal of people claim they would never bully anyone, it is surprising how quickly social media can change a person and cause them to do things they wouldn’t expect to ever do. In the article “Social media websites can harm and help kids” by Nanci Hellmich, she states that “Facebook and other social media websites can enrich children’s lives, but they could also be hazardous to their mental and physical health” (Hellmich).

This statement is completely agreeable because at first social media can be fun, but eventually it can become addictive and affect people negatively without them even realizing it. In quite a few instances, social media gets so awful to the point where people should delete it, however, it can be remarkably addicting, so people want to stay on it just to continue to see the drama and negative things happening instead of simply deleting the apps.

Not only does social media cause unhappiness and even depression in some cases, it can also be extremely distracting. For many people, social media is the most distracting out of everything in their lives. Not only does it prevent several important things, like doing chores or homework, it can even prevent spending time with friends and family, or even getting enough sleep at night. To start out, being on social media is mostly fun, however, the more time spent on it the more it gets to the point of taking over a tremendous part of people's lives. One example of this being a distraction is stated in the article “Social Networking: Helpful or Harmful”, “A lot of my friends and I spend a lot of time on Facebook, and it is often a big distraction from our work.” (Winkler), This is one of the various instances of somebody being distracted by and affected negatively by social media apps. This shows that social media being distracting is a problem many people with the apps face.

Social media is quite a controversial topic in the world today. Some people believe it truly does have a negative impact on the world, while others may argue that social media is very entertaining and allows an opportunity to maintain connections with friends and family. Reports even say these sites and other technology can be useful to kids for staying in touch, socializing, entertainment, and even doing homework and that they can enhance kids’ creativity and help them develop technical skills (Hellmich). Although technology can be useful in some ways like for homework, it is more common that people will become distracted and end up on some other app while trying to do homework, which can lead to too much time spent online can squeeze out other important activities (Hellmich).

In conclusion, people with social media who believe that it is good for them should look around and see all of the various other ways it negatively affects others. Maybe if people who think social media is good and are not addicted to it start to encourage others to limit their time on the apps, our world today could become somewhat better with the relief of a little less negative effects caused by social media. With social media being as big of a deal as it is in our society, it is obvious that it is in all probability not going to come to an end. Although this will not happen, our society can prevent things like bullying and drama caused by social media by limiting our time on apps such as Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter.

Works cited

Hellmich, Nanci. “Social Media Websites Can Help and Harm Kids.” USA Today

28 March 2011, pg. 1.

Winkler, Travis. “Social Networking: Helpful or Harmful.” The Daily

Pennsylvania, 17 March 2009, pg. 2.

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Social Media Is Doing More Harm Than Good

Much like Big Tobacco, Big Tech has realized that addicting kids -- whose brains and identities are still developing -- produces astronomical profits. For that reason, social media platforms are designed to exploit kids' and teens' attention and extract their data for the sake of advertising.

And it's working: For example, from Jan. 1 to Sept. 30 of this year, Facebook made $82.3 billion from advertising. During the same period, YouTube made $20.2 billion from advertising.

Keeping kids engaged and addicted is driving how these organizations design their platforms, and without regulation to change things, they will continue to do so. How does profit-driven, addictive design impact kids and teens? We have compiled a list of the ways in which social media's profit-driven, addictive design can harm kids and teens.

Design features such as emoji reactions and comments, autoplay and infinite scroll, push notifications, ephemeral content, and "beautifying" filters keep kids clicking, but they can also provoke social comparison, addiction, social pressure, fear of missing out, body image issues, and more.

The consequences of these design choices are tangible to students. We spoke with several high school students from the Washington Urban Debate League and the Boston Debate League, who recently debated the topic of social media regulation.

"The 'views' and 'like' features have got to be some of the worst features that were added to social media platforms," said Richemie Chery, a high school student from Massachusetts. "It's a two-edged sword kind of thing, where if you get a lot of likes, then 'Yay,' you look relevant, but then if you don't get a lot of likes and/or views, it can completely crush one's confidence. Especially knowing that you're not the only one who's able to see it."

Kids also understand the addictive intent of autoplay and infinite scroll.

"One of the challenges I face with social media is getting off it," said KesUranNu Baylor, a high school student from Maryland. "Once I get on, I have to really force myself off it because it's so addictive. All I'm doing is scrolling, but I'm subconsciously looking for an end so I can feel accomplished. But the scrolling never stops."

Recommendation algorithms, designed to hold attention at all costs, are uniquely insidious and exploitative.

For example, Facebook intentionally chose to prioritize hateful, divisive, sensationalist content over neutral and positive content in order to increase engagement. Algorithms recommend extremist and conspiratorial content on YouTube and TikTok , sending users down radicalizing rabbit holes. Instagram's algorithms amplify content that promotes social comparison , body dissatisfaction , decreased self-esteem, depressive symptoms , and anxiety around the pressure to look perfect, particularly among girls and young women . Instagram's algorithms also recommend self-harm to unsuspecting users, resulting in replication of the harm techniques shown.

These algorithms have also facilitated the rise of social media influencers -- a glamorized and seemingly attainable path to wealth and fame through the production of content. The potential to become influential incentivizes increased use of social media, which also increases platform revenue.

"The feature that I think makes social media worse is the fact that regular everyday people can be social media influencers and influence any and everyone's life," said Xyra Mercer, a high school student from Massachusetts. "The fact that this can be displayed with a blue check and title of 'public figure' under their name puts them on a pedestal. That makes little kids or young students with impressionable minds look up to them and think, 'I want to be like them,' which is a toxic mindset."

The social media platforms are aware that their design choices encourage addiction and harm kids, but they answer only to profit. If platforms are left unregulated, our children will suffer unimaginable long-term consequences. Given that kids experience these harms en masse, by the hundreds of millions, the consequences of exploitative social media will profoundly shape the future of our society.

Congress is facing a watershed opportunity to make the internet healthier for kids and everyone else. And it is encouraging to see increased bipartisan activity in Congress to hold Big Tech accountable. Congressional leaders have proposed multiple pieces of legislation to advance everything from Section 230 reform to improved child data privacy laws and and measures that could end or significantly curb manipulative marketing and design.

Social media companies will not reform themselves -- they need incentives beyond their business models. We cannot, in good conscience, allow the continued online exploitation of children.

Katie Joseff is the misinformation and disinformation specialist at Common Sense. Her work focuses on platform accountability.

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Social media has become an inescapable part of our lives, with billions of people around the world using platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to connect with each other, share news and opinion, and build online communities. While social media can be a powerful tool for communication and social networking, there is growing concern that it may be doing more harm than good for society.

One of the main arguments against social media is that it can be incredibly addictive, leading to a range of negative consequences for users. Studies have found that excessive social media use can contribute to feelings of loneliness, anxiety, and depression, as well as sleep problems and decreased productivity. Many people also fall victim to the “fear of missing out” (FOMO), feeling a constant pressure to check their notifications and stay up to date on the latest news and trends.

Another concern with social media is the potential for it to exacerbate social divisions and polarize society. Online echo chambers and filter bubbles can create an us vs. them mentality, making it harder for people to engage in constructive dialogue or find common ground. Social media algorithms also have a tendency to promote content that is sensational or controversial, incentivizing creators to generate clickbait and misleading information that can fuel political polarization and tribalism.

Social media has also been linked to a rise in cyberbullying and harassment, with many users feeling emboldened to engage in abusive behavior when they can hide behind the anonymity of a screen. This can have serious consequences for victims, ranging from emotional distress to reputational damage and even physical harm. Moreover, social media companies have faced criticism for their lax approach to moderating hate speech and harmful content, which can further amplify marginalized voices and contribute to online toxicity.

Despite these concerns, there are still many who argue that social media can have a positive impact on society, by providing a platform for activism, promoting public discourse, and facilitating social connections across geographic and cultural boundaries. Some studies have even found that social media can contribute to higher levels of civic engagement and political participation, particularly among young people.

Ultimately, the question of whether social media does more harm than good for society is a complex one, with no clear answer. While the risks and downsides of social media need to be taken seriously, it is also important to acknowledge the potential benefits and opportunities that it can offer. To ensure that social media works for rather than against society, further research, advocacy, and regulation is needed to address the negative effects while harnessing the positive potential of this powerful tool.

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Just How Harmful Is Social Media? Our Experts Weigh-In.

A recent investigation by the Wall Street Journal revealed that Facebook was aware of mental health risks linked to the use of its Instagram app but kept those findings secret. Internal research by the social media giant found that Instagram worsened body image issues for one in three teenage girls, and all teenage users of the app linked it to experiences of anxiety and depression. It isn’t the first evidence of social media’s harms. Watchdog groups have identified Facebook and Instagram as avenues for cyberbullying , and reports have linked TikTok to dangerous and antisocial behavior, including a recent spate of school vandalism .

As social media has proliferated worldwide—Facebook has 2.85 billion users—so too have concerns over how the platforms are affecting individual and collective wellbeing. Social media is criticized for being addictive by design and for its role in the spread of misinformation on critical issues from vaccine safety to election integrity, as well as the rise of right-wing extremism. Social media companies, and many users, defend the platforms as avenues for promoting creativity and community-building. And some research has pushed back against the idea that social media raises the risk for depression in teens . So just how healthy or unhealthy is social media?

Two experts from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia Psychiatry share their insights into one crucial aspect of social media’s influence—its effect on the mental health of young people and adults. Deborah Glasofer , associate professor of psychology in psychiatry, conducts psychotherapy development research for adults with eating disorders and teaches about cognitive behavioral therapy. She is the co-author of the book Eating Disorders: What Everyone Needs to Know. Claude Mellins , Professor of medical psychology in the Departments of Psychiatry and Sociomedical Sciences, studies wellbeing among college and graduate students, among other topics, and serves as program director of CopeColumbia, a peer support program for Columbia faculty and staff whose mental health has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. She co-led the SHIFT research study to reduce sexual violence among undergraduates. Both use social media.

What do we know about the mental health risks of social media use?

Mellins : Facebook and Instagram and other social media platforms are important sources of socialization and relationship-building for many young people. Although there are important benefits, social media can also provide platforms for bullying and exclusion, unrealistic expectations about body image and sources of popularity, normalization of risk-taking behaviors, and can be detrimental to mental health. Girls and young people who identify as sexual and gender minorities can be especially vulnerable as targets. Young people’s brains are still developing, and as individuals, young people are developing their own identities. What they see on social media can define what is expected in ways that is not accurate and that can be destructive to identity development and self-image. Adolescence is a time of risk-taking, which is both a strength and a vulnerability. Social media can exacerbate risks, as we have seen played out in the news.

Although there are important benefits, social media can also provide platforms for bullying and exclusion, unrealistic expectations about body image and sources of popularity, normalization of risk-taking behaviors, and can be detrimental to mental health. – Claude Mellins

Glasofer : For those vulnerable to developing an eating disorder, social media may be especially unhelpful because it allows people to easily compare their appearance to their friends, to celebrities, even older images of themselves. Research tells us that how much someone engages with photo-related activities like posting and sharing photos on Facebook or Instagram is associated with less body acceptance and more obsessing about appearance. For adolescent girls in particular, the more time they spend on social media directly relates to how much they absorb the idea that being thin is ideal, are driven to try to become thin, and/or overly scrutinize their own bodies. Also, if someone is vulnerable to an eating disorder, they may be especially attracted to seeking out unhelpful information—which is all too easy to find on social media.

Are there any upsides to social media?

Mellins : For young people, social media provides a platform to help them figure out who they are. For very shy or introverted young people, it can be a way to meet others with similar interests. During the pandemic, social media made it possible for people to connect in ways when in-person socialization was not possible. Social support and socializing are critical influences on coping and resilience. Friends we couldn’t see in person were available online and allowed us important points of connection. On the other hand, fewer opportunities for in-person interactions with friends and family meant less of a real-world check on some of the negative influences of social media.

Whether it’s social media or in person, a good peer group makes the difference. A group of friends that connects over shared interests like art or music, and is balanced in their outlook on eating and appearance, is a positive. – Deborah Glasofer

Glasofer : Whether it’s social media or in person, a good peer group makes the difference. A group of friends that connects over shared interests like art or music, and is balanced in their outlook on eating and appearance, is a positive. In fact, a good peer group online may be protective against negative in-person influences. For those with a history of eating disorders, there are body-positive and recovery groups on social media. Some people find these groups to be supportive; for others, it’s more beneficial to move on and pursue other interests.

Is there a healthy way to be on social media?

Mellins : If you feel social media is a negative experience, you might need a break. Disengaging with social media permanently is more difficult—especially for young people. These platforms are powerful tools for connecting and staying up-to-date with friends and family. Social events, too. If you’re not on social media then you’re reliant on your friends to reach out to you personally, which doesn’t always happen. It’s complicated.

Glasofer : When you find yourself feeling badly about yourself in relation to what other people are posting about themselves, then social media is not doing you any favors. If there is anything on social media that is negatively affecting your actions or your choices—for example, if you’re starting to eat restrictively or exercise excessively—then it’s time to reassess. Parents should check-in with their kids about their lives on social media. In general, I recommend limiting social media— creating boundaries that are reasonable and work for you—so you can be present with people in your life. I also recommend social media vacations. It’s good to take the time to notice the difference between the virtual world and the real world.

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Social Media: Does More Harm Than Good

Category: Sociology , Entertainment
Topic: Effects of Social Media , Social Media

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