INTRODUCTION    When you are bored, what is the first thing that you tend to do? Read a book? Catch up on missing assignments?  Find a new hobby? No. Women and men of ages 15- 30 tend to pick up their phone for hours and just scroll through social media apps such as Instagram or TikTok. Social media is used for everything whether it’s promoting a business, posting a funny video or connecting with your peers through likes, shares and comments. According to the social media engagement tool, Status Brew, “active social media users have passed the 4.55 billion mark. The average usage of social media is 2 hours and 27 minutes daily” with 2895 million MAU (monthly active users) on Facebook,1393 million MAU on Instagram and more than 2291 million MAU on Youtube and other applications(Status Brew). Users are not fully aware of the impacts social media can have on them not only mentally but physically. Before establishing a conclusion of the relationship between people ages 15-30 and the impact of their excessive use of  social media, it is important to review previous literature on the science behind social media, social media’s impact on one’s body image, and ones need to fit in as well as some of the positive impact that come with having these social media apps.

          THE SCIENCE BEHIND SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE BRAIN    Dopamine (the happy chemical) is a chemical produced by the brain promoting motivation and beneficial feelings and behaviors. Dopamine is like a reward for the brain, the more dopamine released the happier you are which makes you want to repeat the actions that  produce the happiness/ dopamine again even more. Some activities that help the release of dopamine are, eating, shopping, exercising, getting a like or even a follow on social media (basically anything that makes you happy). Although dopamine produces this good feeling, too much of it can cause addiction; too much of anything can cause addiction which heavily impacts your brain and the way it processes things.

                Like stated before, the average person spends 2-3 hours a day on social media, looking for a like or a new follower, which can seem harmless but can have a really bad effect later on in life. Research from organizations, such as The NeuroGrow Brain Fitness Center (NeuroGrow), proves that repetitive social media use can have a detrimental physiological effect on your brain.

Social media has the ability to allow its users to capture new information every second which can have an adverse effect on the brain, changing its structure and how we process information. According to a article from NeurGrow, social media can cause a lot of distractions and with that daily 2 hour span where we use these apps, it can lead to a decreased attention span shrinking the part of the brain that deals with what we give our attention to, overall changing the brain’s neuroplasticity (the ability of the brain to form connections)  impacting its cognitive function/ performance  (how we receive, store and develop information). Beyond lowering the brain’s cognitive performance, the constant use of social media can lead to the brain becoming very similar to the brain of drug addicts. There is also a link between social media and memory deficiency, especially in the transactive memory (decides what information is important enough to keep).

            Without the brain, people would not be able to do the things they do on a daily basis, like remembering that breathing is a thing or eating or remembering to wash your hands before you leave the bathroom. The brain is a very important organ used for many important functions and the fact that an excessive use of social media impacts our brain should be alarming to many people of any age. Especially the youth because our brains are still developing so it’s important to take care of it.

             BODY IMAGE   What you see on social media on your FYP (for you page) or explore page is based on what you live, share, follow and watch. What a teenage girl sees might be different from what a 27 year old might watch. Throughout social media you see workout videos, you see ‘body goals’,  you see the lifestyle that you “should” have or the body that you “should ” get or have to be considered “living your best life”. Because of this nowadays everyone is going to the gym to get a summer body so they could have a hot girl summer and who wouldn’t want that? But posts like that make certain people feel as though they need to push themselves to look like a model or to be slim thick before the XYZ date. These posts can even make people feel insecure about themselves, not only when it comes to how they look but also when it comes to certain actions they take.

         In their TedxOttawa, “Our Body Image and Social Media: Live Life Unfiltered ”, Keisha and Teagon Simpson  focus on the impact of instagram and the body image issues of women. In their speech both Keisha and Teagon explain their own experiences when it comes to social media and how it encourages body comparison even between each other as well as pressures people to be “perfect” . Reagan Simpson tells a story about them going on a date. “ I spent 2 hours on my hair and makeup and then for  another hour I smiled and posed for photos… looking happy and then posted the photos for the world to see…. The crazy thing is I didn’t actually go to the party”(Simpson)  after taking the pictures she had the feeling of being alone so she stayed home alone crying, not feeling beautiful. “If you judge who I was based off instagram, you would not have the perfect idea of who I am.”She also mentions that she thought that her sister was more like her just because of her body.  “We struggle to feel as beautiful as we thought others felt or looked, ” says Keisha Simpson, “our story wasn’t unique at all, that’s why it needed to be shared.” 

         Many individuals feel the same way as Keisha and Teagon Simpson, they feel as though they are not beautiful because they don’t look like the majority and they feel like they need to look like the majority in order to feel beautiful or be happy which shouldn’t be the case. We shouldn’t have to look like others to be happy, we shouldn’t have to seek the validation of others to be happy. The viral TikTok sound of “bodies that look like this also look like this”   also makes audiences aware that the bodies you see on social media aren’t perfect, they are still “flawed” just as everyone else’s. What you see on social media isn’t the reality. What you see is what people want you to see and people often want you to see the good despite the bad that can happen quickly after they are presumed to be  good.      

            Constantly seeing posts of men with hardcore abs and muscle can pressure boys and other men into thinking that “I must go to the gym to work out… it’s what gets me girls… It’s what makes me look the best of the best” while constantly seeing posts of women with unrealistic body expectations  cause girls and other women to force themselves to look like that at any cost.

             People would go through anything to look the same as someone else just to fit in because they assume that the life they see on social media is the life that they want because it’s either popular or because it’s the life that they presume everyone has. This mentality can even impact your health. Thousands of people around the world starve themselves or even take some unprescribed pills just because they want to have the body of a social media influencer. It teaches young children and even adults that they need to change themselves just to feel beautiful or even be happy.

               INFLUENCE   In a 2018 study conducted by researchers Zhi-Ping Fan, Minghe Sun and Yu Chen, they collected data to see if social media has a connection to the adaptation of certain behaviors, other ways known as the influence of social media.  In the study Fan, Sun and Chen  used “machine learning models to predict user adoption behaviors, uses stimulation to infer unobservable potential outcomes and uses a counterfactual framework to identify individual level social influence” (Fan, Sun and Chen) focusing on repeated purchases among users.As a result of the experiment they found that social influence identification can change the views of  others while spreading social awareness; when one person buys something and constantly amps up the product and it becomes popular, others are more likely to buy the product increasing homophily levels.

             Zhi-Ping Fan, Minghe Sun and Yu Chen prove that due to social media users are more able to adapt to the social environment that they are in, which can sometimes lead to there being little to in differentiation between people and their thoughts. The popular thoughts can easily become “your thoughts’ ‘ just because it’s popular. For example, if you constantly hear “ you must wear name brand clothing to have style”  then you are forced to believe that it’s true and you start to buy name brand clothing without considering the fact that it might not be something you actually want to wear or even considering the fact that it isn’t truly your opinion it’s just a trend. Leading to one changing their identity just to follow the trend, losing their sense of self which can later on cause psychological issues such as stress or depression due to the constant need to fit in or need to seek approval.

             PROS OF SOCIAL MEDIA   Social media doesn’t always have to be a problem. It’s the excessive use that causes these harmful impacts.

            While social media have all these bad impacts on the youth, it can also positively impact them as well. Social media can bring light to all of the current issues going on around the world while also making people feel good about themselves as a person. Social media also has the potential to cause self reflection making people aware of their self doubt and aware that their comparisons have allowed them to also find solutions to their problem  on social media but they do have to be aware that what works for the other person may not work for them as well.

          Social media also has the power of bringing people together, connecting them in ways they never thought of. Just like Teagan and Keisha Simpson. One they they had a discussion with their friends about social media and the girls found that the same way that they thought social media affected them is the same way it affected their friends who seem to be having perfect lives, allowing them to connect on a different level.

            CONCLUSION   Overall social media can cause as much good as it can cause harm. The excessive use of social media can lead to different mental health issues such as depression while also leading to physical issues such as over working your body to meet unrealistic goals society has made for us as well as the constant comparison to other people.

                Continuously seeing posts about getting the perfect body or living the perfect life can take a toll on our own personal goals. Seeing what we see on social media would make us want to live the lives of others because that is what we think will make us happy. Because of this we make goals that revolve around a life that we see on social media forcing our minds to want the “perfect life” that we see on social media,  which might not actually be the life that we want.

            As a community we should proactive safe social media. We should limit the amount of time we spend on these social media apps and focus on working on ourselves physically and mentally for ourselves and no one else while also allowing ourselves to get comfortable with the bad and posting it sometimes. We should spend time getting to know ourselves and figuring out what we want without the voices of others.

 

    References

1) Devgan, Shivam. “100 Social Media Statistics You Must Know In 2022 [+Infographic].” Status Brew , 9 Dec. 2021, statusbrew.com/insights/social-media-statistics/#:~:text=Social%20Media%20Statistics%202022%20Summary,Instagram%20has%201393%20million%20MAU

2)NeuroGrow Fitness Center . “What Social Media Does to Your Brain.” Lizzie Lewis, 2020, neurogrow.com/what-social-media-does-to-your-brain/#:~:text=Research%20also%20shows%20that%20heavy,what%20information%20can%20be%20outsourced

 3)Simpson, Teagan, and Keisha Simpson, narrator. Our Body Image and Social Media: Live Li. , Tedx, 2018. Youtube,       www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWc5rQ_YvYw.

  4)Sun, Minghe, et al. “Individual-level social influence identification in social media: A learning-simulation coordinated method.” European journal of operational research, vol. 273, no. 3, 16 Mar. 2019, pp. 1005-15. CCNY| Libraries ,  doi:https://cuny-cc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CUNY_CC/gc81bt/cdi_gale_infotracacademiconefile_A564317343  .