Unfortunately, social media is something most teenagers today can’t live without. Many teens nowadays spend the majority of their days and evenings scrolling through Facebook, X, and Instagram, trying to keep up with what their so-called ‘friends’ are up to and how many likes they can get on a ‘selfie’ compared to the other guys and girls around them.
Many case studies show that teenagers who are linked with Facebook do much worse in exams than students without any social networking accounts. This may be shocking to some, but I can see how this statement could be true. Since I have deleted all my social media accounts (including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and X), I have been much more focused on my life and my schoolwork. I feel like a completely different person and, as an anxiety sufferer, my problem feels like it is being cured.
Sadly, many teenagers do commit suicide due to cyberbullying. Take Amanda Todd, for example, who is fifteen years old and from the Midlands. She was a beautiful girl and had everything going for her, but was viciously cyber-bullied online. The young girl was found dead in her home in Luton one day after killing herself due to the pressure of social media and cyber trolls. This was after posting a nine-minute video on YouTube about her story of bullying, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts. Unfortunately, many teenagers cannot reveal their feelings and thoughts anywhere. Sometimes, it can be extremely patronising to go to your parents or other family members about mental health. However, it must be done if you ever want to get better.
As a young teenager, I was quite addicted to social media. Every spare moment I got, I would be scrolling through my news feeds, checking up on what my friends were doing, what photos and videos they were liking, and who they were with. Call it stalking if you wish, but I was a very paranoid, uptight girl as a young teen. The first social network I downloaded was Instagram, and looking back on my life when I was younger, I spent far too much time sharing what I was up to rather than enjoying the moments I was having – I was forgetting one thing, which was to live for myself.
Social media is not only a threat because of cyberbullying, but is also a home to hackers and some very strange people; privacy is a key issue to this. So many teenagers, especially females, add boys and men on social networks such as Facebook, and naively agree to meet up with them. The worst part is that the child’s parents usually do not know about this. Also, how is there any proof to show your teenager is not arranging to meet a fifty-year-old paedophile?
Nowadays, you must be so careful about what details you give away and who you add on social media.
This may seem like a barmy idea, but I think the best thing I ever did was delete all of my social media accounts – the whole lot of them. The reason I did this? Because it made me feel like I was finally free. I know that for one fact, people now have to come to my face if they have a problem, and I don’t have to constantly be checking my notifications to see if I’ve got any messages or ‘likes’ on my photos.