Social media has many benefits, such as it  provides an easy and customized way to get the information you want, as well as another way to communicate, but the negatives of it outweigh the positives. Social media is harmful for individuals because it causes a lack of sleep, it becomes addicting, and it leads to depression and mental health issues. Social media has become a very impactful part of everyone’s lives over the past decade. Apps like Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat have taken over the internet and have a big influence on people’s opinions and choices. 

The first reason social media is harmful for us is it causes a lack of sleep. This is a major cause of social media in teenagers mostly, as they will stay up late into the night scrolling on social media, even when they have school the next day. Staying up late scrolling through social media also takes time away from studying and spending quality time with friends and family. If you have a test the next day, and are staying up late on social media instead of studying and getting extra sleep to be prepared, students will stay up late on social media, leading to their grades dropping. Staying up late on social media is also linked to mental health issues.

One study was conducted to test this, and the results back it up. According to Rob Newsom from the Sleep Foundation, “This research found that the more time adolescents spent on screen-based activities (like social media, web surfing, watching TV, and gaming), the more trouble they had falling asleep and the less sleep they got during the night. These sleep issues were then linked with increased symptoms of insomnia and depression.” Staying up late on social media is not good, but sometimes it is hard to not stay up late on it, which leads to the next negative effect of social media: it’s addicting.

Social media can be very fun to scroll on, but sometimes we spend too much time on it, and need to take a break. We say we will, but never do because as a society we have become addicted to social media.

 Paul Simeone, the Vice President and Medical director of Behavioral Health at Lee Health says, “Their overdependence on social media has led to symptoms typically associated with substance-use disorder.” This proves that people are addicted to social media and ties in with people not getting sleep at night. If you set limits for yourself, and monitor how much you are on social media, you can create a healthier lifestyle with less social media.

One more downside of social media is the negative effect it has on mental health. Social media is a leading cause of depression and other mental health issues. One study showed that since the release of smartphones, mental health has gotten extremely worse. According to Maria Clark, “Experiencing psychological distress in a given month grew 71% in young adults from 2008 to 2017. Even worse, the rate of suicidal thoughts in young adults increased 47% during that same time.” This is a very large increase, and shows how negative of an effect social media can have on us.

Although social media gives us many negative effects, there are ways to prevent them. We can set limits for ourselves. Some social media platforms have recognized the fact that people spend a lot of time on them, so when you have been scrolling for a while, they will give you the suggestion to take a break. Also, smartphones allow you to set limits for yourself to make sure you don’t spend too much time on social media or just your phone in general. Also, if you are a teenager, and don’t think you could set a limit for yourself, get your parents to do it for you. There are many available solutions to limit social media use we just have to be willing to try them.