Final blog post- Emotional Effects Of Social Media

For today’s final blog post I want to talk about the emotional effects of the internet. We talked and addressed this issue so many times this semester and after doing some of my own thinking, I feel like this is an issue that needs to be address a lot more. It might not seem like a big problem, but I believe that the internet is the number one reason why we see suicide rates go up. The main problem on the internet in this situation is social media and how social media has a big impact on your personal emotions.

In the article by the Fast Company, the girl’s parents had the same rule that my house did when I was growing up. In middle school I was not allowed to have any social media accounts until I got to high school. At first, I didn't really care about having any kind of social media account and really didn’t know why my parents care if I even had a social media account. I thought it was just another gaming app on your phone. When I had reached the seventh grade, kids in my class started to get Snapchat and Instagram and that made me feel left out. Everybody was talking about it, and I didn't have one. Even though my parent had made it a rule that I couldn't have any social media accounts until I reached high school, I went ahead and made my first Instagram account anyway.

After making my first Instagram account I instantly was intrigued by it. You could follow some of your favorite celebrities and figure out what they were doing with their lives outside of their profession, and you can also keep up with your friends and see what they were doing with their lives as well. The reason I got Instagram was not really to show my life and show the fun moments in it, but it was to join the social circle. These social media platforms made me fell apart of something that I thought I'd never be of before. As three months went by my parents found out that I had made a Instagram and Snapchat account without their permission. They were extremely mad at me because I disobeyed them, but I still didn't understand what the big deal was. I felt like it was just another app on my phone. 

As time went by my parents stopped being mad at me and let me continue to use my social media accounts. When they gave me my phone back, they had two rules. The first one was to make the account private so that nobody can see what I post unless I accepted their request. The second rule was to make sure that they followed me on all my social media accounts. At that moment of time, my dad told me when I get older, I'm going to understand why they made that rule in the first place and that I was going to regret having one. 

As I went through life growing up, social media was a great asset to have in your social life. It help me stay in touch with friends that I never thought I was going to see again. All the social aspects of social media I am grateful for, but as I've gotten older, looking back on it my Dad was right. I do regret every day that I didn't listen to my parents back when I was in the 7th grade, not only because I disobeyed them but because they were right. They didn't really do a great job of explaining why I couldn't have a social media account, but I understand why they would make such a rule in our household. It wasn't to get me off technology it was to protect me from the addiction that social media gives you. I feel like I'm on Instagram all the time and starting to realize that it is a problem. Each week my phone gives me a time of how many hours I've been on my phone and the average of hours that I've been on my phone is 5 hours per week. Most of those 5 hours is being on Snapchat and Instagram which is why I'm telling you it is an addiction.

It took me a while to see how it was an addiction but as I get older and older and technology gets better and better, I'm started to see why it is so addictive. It's addictive because It makes you feel sorry about my life. I don't think that my life is bad but us as humans always want more and when you want more we look at people who have what we want. Social media gives you access to look at someone who has what you want and that can become addictive. For example, when you look at people online and you see that they have a nice car or a nice home, it makes you want that stuff, and not only that but it makes you feel sorry for yourself. The example that I just said can lead to depression. We even see this on the social media app called Linkin. When you see all your friends getting fancy jobs and you’re trying to do the same thing it makes you feel worthless and sad. Social media forces you to compare your life with someone else's and that's not mentally healthy.

I'm not saying that we should get rid of social media because it does provide some good qualities. I just feel that we can become more mature about it and learn to reduce the time we spend on it. What we can also do is make sure that we are in a good metal place as well. What I mean by that is we should train ourselves to know when to use and look on social media. When you are depressed, and you fell that life is not going to well, that is when you should not use social media because that can lead you to being even more depressed and lonely. If we can solve this problem on social media, then I am pretty sure the suicide rate will go down and there will be less people that are diagnosed with depression. The world can be if we can work on this issue.