week six

Effects of Social Media on Teenagers

The article How Does Social Media Affect Your Mental Health centers its argument on the negative implications of the different social media platforms on young people. In the past, platforms such as Facebook have been on the spotlight for wanting to develop applications that are considered harmful for young users. Hence, there is a danger that social media has on teenagers, and noting this before using the platform will be helpful in enabling the users to be cautious. The news article notes that “children as young as 13 were targeted within 24 hours of creating an account with harmful content, including material related to eating disorders, extreme diets, sexualized imagery, body shaming, self-harm and suicide” (Daniels). Daniels is presenting factual information that was published in a 2021 July report. The information helps in understanding the risk that teenagers have when accessing the different social media platforms. Upon opening accounts on the platforms, they are continuously given suggestions about content that encourages them to engage in activities that bring them harm. The author outlines some of these suggestions, which include content that encourages them to take up activities that result in eating disorders, such as advertising for specific food that is not healthy. Also, some of the suggestions are about sexualizing their bodies. Without prior knowledge of the effects of these suggestions, teenagers can easily be introduced to sexualized content at an age they are not supposed to. Also, there are cases in which they are shown what the perfect body should look like, and they start having insecurities about their bodies at a young age.

 Work Cited

Daniels, Nicole. “How Does Social Media Affect Your Mental Health?”. The New York Times, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/learning/how-does-social-media-affect-your-mental-health.html#:~:text=The%20group%20published%20a%20report,%2C%20self%2Dharm%20and%20suicide. Accessed 14 Mar 2022.