The bad habits of being on social media

Our daily lives are controlled by sophisticated technologies in today’s world. Social media is a must for people like us to function and interact.

Social media is among the most widely used platforms, to which Gen Z users either become addicted or establish routines with that balance technology and reality. And because of their early experiences with loneliness or as a result of their heavy use of technology throughout their formative years, some social media influencers have developed an unhealthy obsession with fame and the desire to be recognized as public figures.

With ease and effectiveness, that addiction transforms into a desire for money, andand an efficient way to have as a “career,” one that often leads to mental illness. Aside from the money, there’d be no positive outcomes for the influencers themselves. Especially how it turned insanely difficult after the COVID pandemic happened with social media.

            Children of ages 4 and up in the present world are harmed by the effect of constant screen time when there is no discipline for time limits. It’s not the parents’ fault, due to their jobs and or other factors, but it’s fair to say that it becomes toxic enough where kids are hooked. And once they grow up to be teens and/or young adults, then social media and or any social platforms like YouTube, for instance, are like heroin mixed with cocaine.

All teens want to do is attract immense attention, only to their convenience. Now it has grown where they know the system by using social media as an escape card from the real world. As teens experience reality, they are more likely invested on the screen to somehow in their minds tell them to drop out and become a millionaire, as a YouTube influencer.

It sounds like a joke sometimes and it can be made fun of, but it doesn’t turn out to be hilarious anymore when it is a real, big decision. It is nice and convenient to make money and spend on all the luxuriest things in the world, but it doesn’t happen forever when drama comes into play – Whew, it could ruin your whole reputation as celebrity and all that time growing up before your twenties has vanished for life.

Kids grow up watching YouTube their whole life, thinking that this how the world acts or is supposed to be now, as if it’s a routine planned out. The same with TikTok, a social media platform that insanely got popular from making short videos into a paid side hustle. Not just a hustle, but a career, because kids crave that fast money more than to waste time with school, which quite frankly is the opposite of the truth.

It is the same obsession with YouTube, except with YouTube you get paid millions rapidly by posting a video every week. They are all the same outcome. The manipulation to make money fast in order to lose it faster is the downfall typical of a mental breakdown. Teens in their Gen Z do not realize that it affects their moods frequently – it causes their brain to be underdeveloped to keep scrolling on through TikTok for eight straight hours, plus more, and waste all their time and energy not to do anything productive nor do any homework, for that matter.

That’s why we have chores as our routines, to get things done for the day. That’s why you learn to do homework and your chores first before you get your reward, which is social media. Growing up in the Millennial generation, we didn’t have much technology to use, let alone social media. During that time we still had MySpace, that nobody recognizes anymore obviously. The point is that then, we had discipline and had learned to balance social media and real life and not get carried away with it.

During the pandemic shutdown, it was far worse to go through, when staying safe in our homes for the longest time yet. The pandemic caused anxiety, panic attacks, and depression, with the constant social media and loneliness on top of it. The psychology instructor at Mt. Hood Community College told my schoolmate about teens who go through the mental anxiety realm who have experienced “deception molded into platforms of depression.” For example:  TikTok was created by the country of China to drive users’ algorithms to show young audiences their interests without them seeing they’re being manipulated, taught that this is okay to have this kind of lifestyle.

An Arabic man posted on Tiktok said, “If you’re in China, and you open up TikTok, the Chinese government wants you to receive, as youth using TikTok are people who are doing achievements, making social enterprise.”

Yes, social media is nice to have for those who are selling their business, that do photography, videography, etc. And it gives an amazing advertising and marketing deal for their careers. But it is far different to use social media as a socializing tool, and as a whole life/career. You could lose your friends, your family, and yourself completely. Everyone always wants the fantasy of fame, but often don’t realize it could destroy you as an individual.

What we’re teaching children is  not normal, in any capacity. We cannot educate our children based on screens everyday. Do you think teens’ mental health and brains are suffering from the year 2020 till now? Because it’s our outlet, but it cannot be our hope. As a community we need to teach and learn the outside world to leave social media and to finally see the sky is blue again.

Let’s teach our children the balance of life away from social media and explain to them that it’s not the only way towards your goals. Be as ordinary as you can be, love your families and friends… Be better to change humanity and educate, for the same reason you would want to make the Earth a better place.