Final Essay

worsening already existing conditions. Another solution to the problem of social media causing self-esteem issues based on unrealistic standards is to persuade youth to be more realistic on social media, such as by not editing photos or putting heavy filters on them to look better, or trying to make themselves look perfect to other people. According to Udorie (2015), it is becoming more obvious how the pressures of social media are affecting teenage girls, pressure to be perfect, look perfect, act perfect, have the perfect body, perfect group of friends, and perfect amount of likes on Instagram. This further supports my argument that these unrealistic standards for living are detrimental to our youth’s mental health, and could be limited by

While this can be true through youth getting likes and positive support on social media and feeling good about themselves from it, it does not eliminate the heavy risk of lowered self-esteem through social comparisons, cyberbullying, and unrealistic expectations. Even though there are benefits to social media use, these risks are too important to ignore, as even in a large amount of positive comments that build self-confidence, there is likely to be a comment that stands out and provides these negative effects. I personally have experienced these effects before, and the intense pressure of insecurity and self-hatred based off of something as simple as a couple social media accounts led me to suffer from an eating disorder when I was 14. My personal experience led me to observe these effects and provoked my argument that any benefit possible from social media is not worth these potential risks that can pertain to

The usage of social media by our youth needs to be avoided or changed also because of how it can lead to depression through self-esteem issues and other factors, which supports my argument by showing another effect that could be prevented by the halt of social media usage or by following the solutions I am arguing for. According to the article “Social Media and Depression” by Liu (2015), a writer for Culture and Youth Studies about today’s global culture and its relationship with youth, when social media usage affects the sense of identity of our youth with a lowered sense of self-esteem and self-efficiency, the inaccurate view of self leads these teens vulnerable to depression (Liu, 2015). Increased risk of depression is another reason that it is important for these teens to change social media usage to prevent the negative affects on their identity and further emotional problems, both from and not from self-esteem issues. A solution to this that our youth needs to do is to keep the sense of their identity outside of social media by having an equal, healthy balance between their online life and outside activities, hobbies, and social life. The article “Social Media Is Causing Depression Among Teen Girls” explains how a group of psychologists from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health studied the rising rate of depression from the past