How Social Media Is Unhealthy

Social media has gotten to the point where all users care about is the amount of likes or views they are getting. Social media apps are corrupting the youth and basically anyone that uses the apps.

Why Do People Care?

Instagram used to be an app where people could post whatever without worrying about what their followers thought of it. As our generation specifically grew up, we started closely monitoring how many likes each of our pictures got and even started comparing to their friends' pictures as a sort of competition to see who was more "popular". The magic number is eleven. That is until Instagram removed the number of likes visible except to the poster. People go as far as to even delete posts that didn't get the desired number of likes. It's me. I'm "people". Well used to be. The obsession over likes and views is corrupting the youth at large.

Why Does This Matter?

Jason Howie

On almost every app there are people who call themselves "social media influencers" who live these lavish lifestyles and make a living just by posting pictures online. These influencers acquire followers in the millions but don't seem honest in their feed. Take for example the Ace family. They have a following of 18 million subscribers who watch and follow the family's life online. Austin and Catherine and their two daughters look happy as can be online, but are they just putting on a front for their viewers? Outrage sparked when viewers were furiously calling to "cancel the Ace family" after Austin was accused of raping someone and forcing them to sign a nondisclosure agreement after the fact. This then caused some trouble with anyone involved and obviously their marriage, yet they still uploaded their weekly videos as if nothing was wrong. The woman who was allegedly raped put out a statement on Twitter commenting that her friend who initiated the story told her they could get paid $100,000 for getting the story to run. Again, he didn't care to bring justice to his friend, he cared about the attention and spotlight that would be broadcast onto them and the pay that they would eventually get. Users of Instagram also follow models who have millions of followers. Most of their feed is them in swimsuits or revealing clothes which is available for anyone to see. The face that these models put out for the public versus what their life may actually be is very different. Many of these girls have eating disorders or have had work done to make their bodies look that good. When viewers see these pictures, it can cast ugly thoughts into their minds that make them think, "I have to look like her to be pretty" or "If I was that skinny maybe I'd get the amount of attention she does". These thoughts are NOT OKAY.

What Else?

TikTok. Oh how I love TikTok. I spend hours upon hours on this addicting app without even realizing it to only check the time and think, "Ah shit, I have a blog post due tonight". Kidding kidding. But really though, TikTok started as an app called Musical.ly. This app was mainly used by younger kids to make weird dance and lip syncing videos. Eventually the app was acquired by Chinese company ByteDance in November of 2017. I think I can speak for most "older" users when I say we downloaded it as a joke and became addicted. How is this app bad you ask? First off, there are no parental restrictions (that I know of) so kids as young as six years old are exposed to adult humor. Honestly, most of the videos I see on the "ForYou page" are very dirty and not something six year olds should be seeing; not like they understand it anyways, but still. Second, the bigger users only care about how many views or likes their videos are getting. Most of the time the views are only shown to the user but the likes on the video are visible to everyone who sees the video. Our own fellow classmate, Aric Vasquez, went viral on one of his videos with 300,000+ views and 10,000+ likes. He went around asking our friends to go like his video so it could boost his number of likes. Another example of no parental controls, yet a hilarious one, is on Facebook. A little girl tells her Amazon Alexa to play "Little Bo Peep Has Lost Her Sheep" but instead gets a song by Lil Dickie... not exactly something a three year old should be exposed to or listening to at her age. Last but not least, another Amazon Alexa incident where a little boy asks for a song called "Digger Digger" but is given a porn station in return. Both videos are pretty funny but still show that modern technology and social media is not giving/setting good examples for the youth.

Even though social media isn't really "healthy" per-say for people, it's still addicting and people will never really follow through with their "social media cleanse". Admit it, we all love it too much.