Social Depression: The Effects Of Social Media And Depression

The use of social media is one of the main ways people communicate in today’s society. With social media being a main source of communication social media can change someone’s idea of life. Teens are introduced to seeing the life of celebrities, and luxury life. Which can then leave the teens feeling envy, jealousy, and overall insecure. Using social media on a daily basis, without limit can cause a teen to enter a depression. Social Media is a site a person can interact on for instance Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. And depression is serve feelings of sadness in one’s emotions. Many studies have been conducted that social media and depression are linked, because social media allows teens to fill in the void, depending on how

Rebbeca Wever states “the tendency to check social media in our downtime, when we're more likely to be self-reflective, can make for some ugly juxtapositions” This is stating that teens often use social media in their down time when they have little to do, seeing things like models, celebrities, people traveling the world, or the clothes they have. Makes them gain lower self-esteem, thinking the way they’re living life or the things they’re doing aren’t enough. “There's a reason that teenagers in particular are prone to the feverish pursuit of valuation via social media. Prinstein says it's because the wide variety of regions in the brain that seek and deliver social rewards, including the part of the striatum called the nucleus accumbens, become supercharged at the adolescent transition. “( ) Social Rewards is common in teens, it’s similar to the feeling of being liked by everyone. “Social rewards are basically activation of dopamine within the brain when we feel we're getting attention or positive feedback from peers.” (

Low self-esteem often occurs in teens, and it said as you grow older low self-esteem goes away with time. However a study has shown ” "That hyper-vigilance about how others see you is supposed to go away in adulthood," says Prinstein. "But social media has created this lifelong adolescence. It makes it too easy to keep making comparisons in a very adolescent way."( ) Social Media has the power to make you compare yourself to others even as you get older in life. “Ironically, social media manages to kick us in our Achilles heel not by targeting it deliberately, but by being largely oblivious to it. Our online social networks tend to be broad and impersonal, with people posting information to wide swaths of viewers without necessarily thinking about who's watching.” Even though it might seem like social media can have little to no impact on a person, social media can make a person overthink, and question if they’re good enough even in an older