Facebook and Twitter 'Harm Young People's Mental Health' (theguardian.com)

Instagram and Snapchat are really bad for young people's mental health, according to research by two health organisations. Virtually all major social media platforms have a negative impact on the well-being of 14-24-year-olds, the study adds. Instagram was the worst -- followed by Snapchat, Facebook, and Twitter. From a report on The Guardian: Instagram has the most negative impact on young people's mental wellbeing, a survey of almost 1,500 14- to 24-year-olds found, and the health groups accused it of deepening young people's feelings of inadequacy and anxiety. The survey, published on Friday, concluded that Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter are also harmful. Among the five only YouTube was judged to have a positive impact. The four platforms have a negative effect because they can exacerbate children's and young people's body image worries, and worsen bullying, sleep problems and feelings of anxiety, depression and loneliness, the participants said.

Comments

I would say not just young people...

[gosand]

I was on IG for about a year and a half, and it was my only form of social media. One day I just realized one day how corrosive it is. I felt like a chicken, always peck peck pecking at my phone, trying to keep up with my feed. I was mainly involved with motorcycle builder, buying/selling parts, etc. People would visciously gang up on others, and do all kinds of nasty things if they didn't like you, or you wouldn't sell parts as cheap as they wanted. I had real-life friends that would get fired up and angry over things that happened on IG. I know people who stopped being friends because of some things that happened in the comments of IG.

I just walked away from it when I woke up to this. Having been around the internet since 1990, I've seen all this stuff before. But with things like IG it has a very low entry point, meaning anyone can join the fray. It's not just for the technically inclined, and quite honestly I think it shows off the worst parts of society. It can do the opposite, but it seems as in life, the ones who make the most noise and are most aggressive ruin it for the rest.

Shocker

[Nidi62]

I had this conversation with my wife last night. She watches (nowhere near as much as she used to though) several Youtube families. One in particular is a Mormon family with about 5 kids; the father started making the videos years ago and ended up starting a youtube/video production company that got bought out by Disney. So they have literally made millions because of Youtube. In any case, they always projected being the perfect, happy (not so) little family in all of their videos. But it just came out that the father has been fooling around with cam girls and is an alcoholic.

It's a perfect example of why people need to teach children not to put so much stock into social media: all you ever see are the good times, and the personas that people want you to see. It gives children the impression that if their life isn't one exciting or fun event after another then they are missing out or something is wrong with them, which fuels depression. It makes them feel like everyone else is having fun all the time, and gives them unrealistic outlooks on what life is supposed to be like. And this is only part of the problem. Add in the ability of social media to allow bullying to follow children home from school and it's no wonder kids these days have so many issues. Parents really need to be parents and make their kids cut back on the social media. It would all their lives so much easier.