Social media had become a fancy way for us to communicate with each other. Either to
talk, text, or just for entertainment. Most of the times young teens, have been connecting
through apps such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, etc. They are constantly worrying about their profiles and making sure that they have “followers”. It was found that women (68%) use social media more than men (62%). (Perrin, 2015). There are advantages and disadvantages of social media. Some advantages include, keeping in touch with friends and family, using the internet to find certain things, and being able to maintain relationships. The disadvantages of social media are low self-esteem, lack of communication, and being an introvert. Self-esteem can be triggered by someone who is constantly on social media looking at celebrities’ profiles and comparing it to their life. Sometimes self-esteem is just caused by wants. As a young adult myself, I don’t use social media to compare my life or the things I have with other. There is a on going debate whether social media causes our self-esteem to decrease or increase. In my opinion I think social media does and does not cause our self esteem to increase nor decrease, it depends on the person, whether the person already has low self esteem or not. The Relation Among Social Media Addiction, Self-esteem, and Life Satisfaction in University Students (N.S, Hawi, and M. Samaha, 2017). Talk about how social media addiction affects our behavioral ways It has become common today to dismiss that social media is a major factor that plays into young adults’ self-esteem, and whether it increases, or decreases. Hawi and Samaha advocates that social media addiction exhibits behavioral addictions symptoms which is negatively associated to their mental health, which includes self-esteem. According to Hawi and Samaha, “People with low self-esteem, low life satisfaction and who have few offline contacts compensated by using Facebook to gain more friends and more popularity”. Hawi and Samaha agrees when they write, “People with low self-esteem tend to use more social media sites to enhance their self-image and self-esteem” In other words Hawi and Samaha believes that social media does indeed play a factor on young adults own’s self-esteem. Young adults tend to use social media to gain and maintain their relationships. The person with low self-esteem uses social media to make friends and gain more followers. If a person with lower self-esteem use social media, they tend to use social media to perceive a lifestyle that seem to be okay and admiring. They portray a lifestyle that brags about how well they are doing in life. Hawi’s and Samaha claim that self-esteem mediates the relation between social media addiction and satisfaction with life rests upon the questionable assumption that social media has a negative impact on teen’s mental health. Hawi and Samaha is surely right about social media impacting teens mental health because they might not know that teens are often found to be pressured to enhance their profiles almost every day, they want other followers to see that they are doing okay, and are wanting more likes. Adding to Hawi and Samaha argument, I would point out that social media has become a platform that young teens use and are constantly looking and changing. It does indeed change a person’s behavior and can influence the way they present themselves but it can also not impact them in any way; it can impact the way they view themselves or not. In their recent work Heather Cleland Woods and Holly Scott have offered harsh critiques of how social media use is related to self-esteem and anxiety among adolescents. It is often said that social media use can impact a person’s psychological wellbeing and how using social media during the night can impact the way they sleep. Teens are constaly checking social media and are very entertain with it. At the same time, I believe that social media does impact one’s wellbeing especially if you use it during the nighttime, it can cause sleeping problems. In their article “#Sleepyteens: Social media use in adolescence is associated with poor sleep quality , anxiety, depression and low self- esteem”. Heather Cleland Woods and Holly Scoot agree that social media use is associated with lower self-esteem and can increased their self-esteem levels. In Heather Cleland Woos and Holly Scoot view “social media use in bed (leading to later bedtimes and shorter sleep duration) and anxiety at not being connected to social media (making it difficult to disengage from social interaction and relax at bedtime) may explain the observed link between social media use and poor sleep” Basically what Heather and Holly are trying to say is that adolescents who are more likely to be on their phones at night are more likely to experience heavier symptoms of anxiety and depression. Anyone familiar with sleeping late at night for being on their phone should agree that social media can impact the way we function the next day, we feel tired and exhausted. It can control us by keeping us late at night and waking up tired and having trouble concentrating .These conclusions, which they discuss in how social media can impact the way a teen reacts during the night time add weight to the argument that social media is an influential piece that impacts the way it’s related to self-esteem Here many young adults would probably object that social media has no impact on their self esteem and they way they use social media. Social media had played a role in my life during middle school, I have found myself comparing myself with my other friends and I wanted my profile to be better than others. I felt as if social media were the only way I could communicate with other. My self-esteem went down because I would see other profiles and the number of likes. While it’s true that social media did impact me negatively, as I was growing I realized that my self esteem and they way I carried myself had a lot to do with the way I used social media. I believe that most of the times young adults may have lower self-esteem has to do with the way they seem themselves. Most of the time young adults go on social media to have a laugh but it has to do a lot with their self-esteem that makes it go down more. Although I agree that social media can affect one’s self esteem by the content present, We start to compare the things we see, and desire them, making ourselves feel “useless” and wanting a better life. Sometimes we see pictures with body slim, thick females and the amount of followers and wanting that. But I cannot accept the fact that there are young adults who don’t have the desire of wanting money or goods, rather they use social media to talk
with friends and enjoy the funny content it presents. While its true that there is a zero correlation between social media addiction and satisfaction with life (N.S. Hawi, M.Samaha, 2017) , it does not necessarily mean that there is other young adults who are contemplating about their life and thinking about suicide because their self-esteem has been lowered every time they go on social media. If we are right about how social media can affect those who already have low self esteem and they are constantly using it and comparing themselves to what they see then major consequences follow for more interactions with them, low self-esteem can lead to depression and lead to poor decision making. Depression is a common factor for suicide and if we don’t take the person’s feelings into consideration, low self esteem can lead to many mental problems.
In this researching this topic, I hope to learn how social media can affect our wellbeing.
Also I want to learn about self awareness and what can we do to make us love ourselves more. I
hope that young adults are more aware about their self-esteem. Also I hope to learn how to
manage my feelings apart from social media. I hope to learn that not everything in life has to go on social media and my feelings doesn’t depend on a simple like or comment.
In conclusion social media and self-esteem are a topic that we need to take seriously,
because most of the time young adults tend to show a side that is “perfect”. Young adults are in a era where they are investigating and finding themselves. Social media does impact one’s self esteem by seeing things online that are better than what we have or are. According to “Gaining
likes, but at what cost? Longitudinal relations between young adults’ deceptive like-seeking on
Instagram, peer belonging and self-esteem” (T.M, Dumas, M. A, Maxwell-Smith, P. F, Tremblay, D.M, Litt, and W. Ellis, 2020) “Young adults in particular, have a strong desire to gain likes on SNS and engage in a wide variety of behaviors to secure them”. Which shows that young adults would do anything to gain more likes and obtain more popularity