About every teenager in this U.S. has social media. In the U.S. it’s strange to not have a phone by the age of 12.  Social media was made to express yourself and to meet new people, but the only thing social media has done is evolved teenagers into programmed robots. Below is a graph of the ages of the people using social media (2014).

Social media provides a false image on how teenagers (females mostly) are supposed to look. If we’re being honest here, social media is a strict guideline on how you should look. Basically, social media has it’s own ‘dress code’. Females are expected to be skinny, short, long haired, and their clothes have to be the cute, modern day clothes. On the other hand males aren’t really expected to look like anything. All these makeup tutorials and tips are influencing teengars to wear an overreached amonut of makeup. It may make females more confident about themselves but shouldn’t they be confident about how they look naturally? Yes, you may think that you aren’t the prettiest but if you truly believe that you are perfect then other people will think that you gorgeous. Álvaro J. Soltero of The Social U has also come to see this problem in social media. 

Females on social media are influenced that everything has to be absolutely perfect. And everything that involves them has to be perfect. The filter has to be perfect, their clothing choice has to be perfect, their makeup has to be perfect, their poses have to be perfect, their feed have to be perfect, their captions have to be perfect, their followers have to be perfect, EVERYTHING has to be perfect. In real life, nothing is ever going to be perfect. So if you think about it, social media is creating a false image for them. People need to be true to themselves and realize that they are perfect the way they are. Teenagers need to know that they are perfect the way they naturally look. You were born in a unique way and you shouldn’t altar it with makeup.

Teenagers will also look at other people and start to downgrade themselves. They think they need to have the same hair as her because it’s ‘perfect’. Or they need to have the same contour as her because people think she’s ‘perfect’. Or they need to have the same type of feed(their homepage) as them because they’re ‘ig famous’. Or I need those clothes so I’m not a ‘loser’. Or I need to change my bio so people will think I’m ‘cool’. In result, they start to do the exact same things as the other people they want to be like. It will eventually kill their self respect. They will no longer respect how they act or how they look based upon how other people look. And eventually, they will start to respect other people more than they respect themselves. You may not visibly see it in teenagers , but when you start to mimic someone and know longer act like yourself...how can you say that you have self respect?

Social lead people in the wrong direction, especially girls. All they start to care about is if people will like their posts. Eventually they look at what other people are doing who are getting people’s attention and mimicking them. Let’s not forget that these are teenagers doing this. Does this not set off a siren to the makers of social media? There are enough of bad influences on social media to be able to impact everyone on there. One by one everyone is doing the same exact thing but they’re trying to do it better. It’s a “let’s see how many people like me” competition. Human nature is to do something someone else is doing if you see that it’s getting what you want. We also have that “trying to fit in” nature. Sonia of the website Gutsy Writer wrote a blog talking about how she experienced firsthand the struggle of wanting to be able to fit in and how she took that weakness and overcome it.

In social media you will occasionally come across a hate page and you will actually see people following and enjoying it. Does that not set off multiple sirens in the makers of social media head? Are they really gonna ignore the fact that someone is being targeted and emotionally hurt. Maybe it’s human nature to just ignore it and pretend it’s not happening. Maybe it’s human nature to just ignore all the negative things and just say a bunch of good things. Or maybe social media has turned us to emotionless robots who don’t care about people being hurt until it’s themselves being hurt. Yes, there are some really nice people on there and support but there shouldn’t even be a hate page in the first place. Everyone on social media should be supportive and nice, not just some.

There are a lot of unnecessary fights in the comments. Like for no reason people will start a fight. It could be between fandoms, friends, random people, rivals, or even a person and their ex. Social media practically just gives people an opportunity to start arguing about anything. From actors to the color of a dress. The arguments are always so silly and avoidable. The most common fights you see on social media is between fandoms.  And fandoms just take arguing to the extreme. You will often see a fandom posting things about a rival fandom saying that they  are disrespectful and disgusting. Or you will see a fandom creating a hashtag that targets another fandom. All of it is pretty annoying and you will often find yourself blocking them.

Also, those exposing pages are terrible. To use one’s bad choice and to make it a whole new terrible situation is completely unnecessary. And no this is not teaching them a lesson to never do it again. It isn’t opening their eyes so they never do it again. It’s killing their pride for themselves and in almost all the cases it mentally messes them up. And when people start to follow the page and comment on the picture..they will eventually want to lock themselves in a room and never let the world see them again. And if there friends were to ever confront them about it...they will more than likely become depressed. A good, but sad example of that is the story of Amanda Todd.

There is also a bunch of drama on social media. Social media basically gives people the chance to publicly post anything. And let’s be honest here, half of the posts that get reported aren’t deleted. Some friends will legitimately post things about their friend and insult them and call them names for their followers to see. And it’s all pretty unnecessary when you could simply have a face to face conversation or even a private conversation via text with the person. It’s not like your followers need to know about your own social life. Half of us don’t even care about our followers personal life. But some people just want to ‘call out’ their friend so they can get some support for themselves. And that’s when you start to see a bunch of drama, name calling, arguing , and taking sides.

Social media disconnects us more than it connects us. Teenagers are basically zoned into their own little world. They are so into what’s on their phone that they start to ‘zone out’ of the real world. When they are anywhere with people they just pull out their phone and they’re in their own little world. Teenagers could be on their phone all day but to them it probably only felt like a couple of hours. If you think about it open mindedly, technology has programmed us to think of it as a comfort zone or our own little friend. We turn to social media when we are sad or feel lost. We turn to social media when we are bored or when we want to talk to someone. We turn to social media for anything that physical human beings can give us. We just don’t know how to connect with our kind anymore.

Social Media decreases social skills. They are so used to talking behind their screens that when they see each other face to face they don’t know how to start or keep a conversation going. When you’re behind a screen you feel comfortable and can think about your response for as long as you want. But when you talk face to face you have to listen to the person, know how to control your facial expressions, and keep up the conversation. Before phones you went to each others house or went shopping together but now you either just text or facetime the person. You basically just see their life behind a screen.

Social Media leads to isolation. Sherry Turkle a professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology stated that ”Social networks are more like mutual isolation networks that detach people from meaningful interactions with one another and make them less human.” We are so used to the comfort of a screen that we get anxious when we need to do something in person. We basically just isolate ourselves from the physical world to talk to the virtual world behind a screen.

In the end, social media may have a some good aspects but the negative aspects outweigh the good. So what good is it trying to argue that social media is only positively impacted us. Teenagers should be outside, shopping with friends. They should be meeting new people, face-to-face. Not sitting in their room on their phone just wasting their life away. Teenegars shouldn’t let social media affect how they act, or look, or what they like. They should express themselves in their own unique way. Don’t let social media set all the standards, set your own standards.